Two human rights groups called on the Nigerian authorities...

Two human rights groups called on the Nigerian authorities to disband government-backed vigilante groups, including one accused of a reign of terror in the southeast of the country.
The appeal was made in an in-depth report by New York-based Human Rights Watch and the Centre for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN), based in Lagos, which accused the Bakassi Boys of being responsible for scores of extrajudicial executions and hundreds of cases of torture and arbitrary detentions. The 45-page report, "Nigeria: The Bakassi Boys: The Legitimisation of Murder and Torture," gives detailed accounts of abductions and killings, naming victims who had, in some cases, been publicly executed and their bodies set ablaze.
"...they have executed and mutilated their victims in public, and detained and tortured them in illegal detention cells, often with a view to extracting confessions," said the report, released in Lagos. It said abuses had been tolerated, and sometimes actively supported and encouraged, by state government authorities, who set up the group in 1998 to combat rampant armed robbery.
The armed group that has practically taken over the duties of the police in the southeastern states of Abia, Anambra and Imo. "State governments have provided the Bakassi Boys with offices, uniforms and vehicles, as well as paying their salaries," it said.
"In Anambra State, a law was passed in August 2000 to recognise the group officially as the Anambra State Vigilante Services." Human Rights Watch Nigeria researchert, Carina Tertsakian said "effectively, the Bakassi Boys have taken over the functions of law enforcement agencies in these States, yet they are completely unaccountable."
Human Rights Watch and CLEEN said there was evidence that the Bakassi Boys took their instructions directly from the State government. "In one case, in Anambra State, the Bakassi Boys forced their way into the house of a man they abducted and later killed, announcing: We are Bakassi Boys. It's a government order," the report further said.
The report made several recommendations, including calling on the Nigerian government to "disarm and disband the Bakassi Boys and close down all their detention centres". It also called on the government to "repeal laws which endorse activities of the Bakassi Boys or similar vigilante groups".
There was no immediate official Nigerian reaction to the report, but the Anambra state government has consistently defended its support of the Bakassi Boys, accusing the police of corruption and inability to tackle violent crime. President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2001 denounced the activities of vigilante groups stoking a three-year cycle of mainly ethnic bloodletting across the populous country.
He said ethnic militia groups were illegal but Nigerian human rights activists accused him of not backing his words with legislation. Lawmakers say Obasanjo has now sent a draft bill to parliament on the measure.