Odinkalu: impunity should be over

Chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission, Professor Chidi Odinkalu has demanded that the government prosecute those responsible for the killings of at least 97 people in election-related violence in Rivers State.

Odinkalu, said in a Twitter message that the assassins belong in jail and Nigeria should end impunity for political violence.

Odinkalu chaired a commission of inquiry that in May published the names of 117 people it said should be prosecuted for crimes from killings to burning houses in the run-up to the March presidential and April governorship elections that brought Nigeria’s first democratic change of government.

A tribunal Saturday nullified the election won by Rivers State incumbent Governor Nyesom Wike, raising more tension in the oil-rich state.