The Nigeria Customs Service has been ordered by the Federal House of Representatives to pay N390 million in compensation to victims of extrajudicial deaths and injuries committed by its personnel across the country.
This decision was decided during the green chamber’s plenary meeting on Tuesday. The demand for compensation follows recommendations made by the House Committee on Customs and Excise in reports following investigations into two incidences in Oyo State and one in Katsina State.
Leke Abejide, the chairman of the Committee on Customs and Excise, delivered the reports last week, which the House discussed and adopted in plenary on Tuesday.
This comes after the committee investigated the violence in Oyo State’s Iseyin Local Government Area, which was sparked by the killing of indigenes by Nigeria Customs Service agents.
In upholding the committee’s recommendation, the House agreed that “life has no duplicate and cannot be replaced once lost, as such, the families of the deceased should be compensated in monetary terms, each soul lost at the Iseyin incidence be compensated by the Nigeria Customs Service with the sum of N20, 000,000 each. The number of souls lost being four; the value of total compensation for the four deceased is N80, 000,000 only.”
“For the person who sustained a gunshot injury in the Iseyin incident, the sum of N2,000,000 only be paid as compensation for the treatment of the injuries sustained,” the recommendation further read.
“The grand total for compensation for both the deceased and the injured is the sum of N82,000,000 only.”
NAAS Recommends N390m Compensation For victims of Customs Brutality in Oyo, other state
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