IN another damning narration, the United States State Department’s 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices recently highlighted the dismal state of basic rights in Nigeria that belies the country’s claim to being a democratic polity. From routine violations of the fundamental rights to life, freedom, conscience and religion, state and non-state actors have turned the country into a living hell for millions and derailed the promise of a better life under civil rule. But without the full enforcement of fundamental rights, democracy is a hollow slogan. Nigerians must therefore not relent in insisting on enjoying their natural rights.
Evidence of human rights abuses abound; arbitrary detention without trial, brutality by security agencies against civilians and religious discrimination. Unsparingly, the report detailed unlawful and arbitrary killings, forced disappearances by the government, terrorists and criminal groups, torture and assault on the right to assembly and free expression. It also cites “serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on the press and the Internet; religious freedom; arbitrary interference with privacy; serious acts of corruption; trafficking in persons; child labour and violence against women.” There is an obsession with stifling online media seen only in autocratic states. Excessive force is routinely deployed against peaceful protesters.
The Heritage Foundation identifies sustainability of human rights as bedrocks of democracy that promote human flourishing, freedom and justice. “To deny people their human rights,” declared the democracy icon, the late Nelson Mandela, “is to challenge their very humanity.”
However, from deprivation of political and socio-economic rights –right to education and health care– to denial of personal liberty, 22 years of civil rule have brought Nigerians only marginal relief from the oppression of military rule. The assault has worsened on the watch of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.). Under him, security agencies have become less restrained. Significantly, the State Department classified the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Ibrahim el-Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenah, as political prisoners. Their experience demonstrates the impunity and lawlessness of the regime.
They have been detained since December 2015 after the Shiites recklessly blocked the convoy of the then Army chief and a subsequent military assault on their Zaria (Kaduna State) base that left 347 Shiites dead (including the Zakzakys’ children). Since then, the government has defied several court orders to free them on bail. Such disregard for court orders is woven into the regime’s DNA. A former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, was similarly detained in defiance of court orders for over three years and many other Nigerians are locked up for long periods by the police, the military and the State Security Service.
The world was outraged by the brutality of police and soldiers against youths during the #EndSARS protest that was organised to challenge horrific human rights abuses by the now disbanded Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad. The culmination was the killing of unarmed youths at the Lekki Toll Plaza, Lagos. There is a pattern of excessive use of force by law enforcement: in the first two weeks of the COVID-19-induced lockdown last year, the National Human Rights Commission said while only 12 persons died of the disease, police and soldiers enforcing the restrictions killed 18 persons extrajudicially. Being abusers of rights, state agencies are ineffective in protecting civilians from non-state rights violators. Police, other security agencies; terrorists, bandits and kidnappers and murderers are separately, actively violating people’s rights.
The US report corroborates similar missives. Said Amnesty International, “The police regularly commit human rights violations; including unlawful killings, torture and enforced disappearances. The justice system is under-resourced and riddled with delays. Prisons are overcrowded; the majority of inmates are pre-trial detainees, some held for many years.” Between 2011 and 2015, 72.5 per cent of total prison population were awaiting trial, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The Nigerian Correctional Service confirmed that of the 73,726 inmates by April 2020, 51,983 were awaiting trial. While the law forbids anyone being detained without trial for more than 48 hours, police, the military and SSS routinely lock up persons for months, even years. True, some efforts are made to prosecute some state agents involved in egregious abuses, but these have been too few to halt the prevailing culture of impunity. This was on display recently when the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, Danladi Umar and his security detail were caught on video assaulting a parking lot attendant in Abuja only for the victim to become the accused. The country pays for this ill-repute: human rights abuses by Nigeria’s military preclude the US and European Union by law from providing badly needed full scale assistance in fighting terrorism.
Nigerians should never give up fighting for their rights; these rights are natural, God-given entitlements, not gifts bestowed by any government. They are spelt out in Chapter 1V of the 1999 Constitution; guaranteed by the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Nigeria is signatory. The country is also signed to several other international conventions protecting religious preferences, women, children and minority rights, among others.
Through continuous agitation, lawsuits and mass protests, Nigerians must continue to insist on the full observance and enforcement of these rights. As the US report noted, the Sharia laws enacted by 12 northern states by which they continue to violate the rights of others have not been contested in the courts to the appellate level, leaving the religious police to seize and destroy alcoholic beverages, prosecute people for “blasphemy,” “indecent dressing or hairstyle.”
Right to education, employment and healthcare should be made enforceable. The 11 states that have failed to domesticate the Child Rights Act that mandates free public education for at least nine years should do so. The right to education of the 10.5 million out-of-school children is being violated. Peaceful protest is an inalienable right under democracy and dissent is not a crime. So also is the right to canvass separation. Separatist advocates in Scotland, United Kingdom; in Texas and California, USA; and in Quebec, Canada, are never treated as criminals. Nigeria’s agitators should not be either if they do not break the law.
Civil society groups should step up their activities. Other states should, like Lagos, establish, fund and empower Offices of the Public Defender to protect the weak and vulnerable. Protests, a basic right, should be employed by the people and groups; eternal vigilance, as postulated by Thomas Jefferson, remains the price of liberty.
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