Inquiry call over Nigeria deaths

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Human rights activists have called on the Nigerian government to open an independent inquiry into the number of people shot by the police.

The New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, said official statistics recorded that police had killed 8,000 Nigerians since 2000.

Most died in what are described as shootouts with robbers.

Armed robbery is a huge problem in Nigeria, fuelled by unemployment, poverty and the proliferation of guns.

'Entrenched abuses'

A few days ago Nigeria's chief of police announced that his forces had killed 785 suspected armed robbers in the three months since he took office.

That is almost nine people every day.

It is this figure and the pride with which it was announced that prompted Human Rights Watch to call for an independent investigation into the number of people shot by Nigerian police.

Such death rates are not new here. Over the past seven years police admit they have killed thousands of people - every single one was deemed to be an armed robber.

Human Rights Watch says the police force here remains mired in deeply entrenched patterns of corruption, murder, torture and other forms of human rights abuses.

Other than banks, gunmen regularly target people stuck in traffic jams, restaurants and if there are enough gunmen, even whole neighbourhoods have been held up.

It gets particularly bad in the run up to Christmas and while the public may have almost no faith in the police, there is perhaps even less public sympathy for the fate of armed robbers.