Amnesty International says the police in Nigeria execute hundreds of people every year on their own authority. The human rights organisation also claims that the Nigerian government ignores the problem, which results in the guilty parties going unpunished.

In a report released on Wednesday, Amnesty said: "The Nigerian Police Force is responsible for hundreds of extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings and enforced disappearances every year.” In some cases, motorists are rumoured to have been shot for refusing to pay bribes at checkpoints.

Responding to the report, the Nigerian police admitted that there are problems and said they would investigate the cases Amnesty specified.

On Tuesday, the BBC reported that a hospital in the Nigerian city of Enugu had been overwhelmed by dozens of corpses delivered by the police. The bodies were rumoured to have been those of executed prisoners.

Map of Nigeria by Simon Taylor (flickr)