Shoot-On-Sight Order: Legal Synonym for Extrajudicial Killing and Abridgement of Right to Life?
Introduction A media release of Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, on 3rd March, 2021 gave marching orders to security agents to shoot-on-sight any civilian found in the forest with an AK-47 weapon. Since then the media has been abuzz with mainly non-legal analyses of the subject, until the President directly corroborated the order on 11th March, 2021 during his meeting with the nation’s traditional rulers on the subject of insecurity in Nigeria. Some analysts are of the view that the order is a product of doctrine of necessity. In the humble view of th...