That the International community considers human rights situation frightening in Nigeria even in the face of democracy currently being enjoyed in the nation is not surprising after all at least to key observers. If for anything, the Nigerian government has failed to put certain factors right so that its citizens can enjoy certain natural priorities and necessities of life available to mankind.
It is as a result of this development that amnesty international still scores the nation very low in this regard and believes that it may certainly take time before an improvement is recorded in the nation as far as human rights in Nigeria is concerned and only a very sincere leaders will bring about this. Criminal justice system in Nigeria is indeed nothing to write home about in Nigeria and this has taken a negative toll on the nation’s perceived promotion of human rights, and as they say only he who wears the shoes feels the pain, so we Nigerians know better.
Human rights is one area that I have always wanted to write about, maybe not to crave in the indulgence of the Nigerian government but to let the whole world know just how it is and what should be done for the simple reason that the Nigerian government know better than I do, after all, in any nation the government of that country is the most briefed and the case of Nigeria is not an exception.
I begin this write-up by establishing that as some of the most brilliant people ever made by God, Nigerians know their rights but have not enhanced it because there is no money, the people are extremely too poor to do this, so the government take advantage of this, the wealthy therefore assert their dominance over the poor thus extending the gap between the rich and the poor in the country. The Agencies of the government are the tools used to actualize this. Like the Bible puts it “money answereth all things.” Without money what can the righteous people of Nigeria do but watch and pray that they may not fall into temptation, and when temptation comes they nothing but plead their guiltless course, such is the way of life of Nigerians.
The Legal Aids Council in Nigeria at present is having about 91 lawyers in Nigeria and one is left to wonder how 91 free lawyers can serve about 150 million impoverished people of Nigeria including even our politicians who also love free things. I therefore conclude that Legal Aids Council does not exist in Nigeria, and since this happens a suspect simply walks his way into the prisons where he either gets sentenced or awaits trial. People cannot represent themselves in courts so they sometimes plead guilty to avoid money “wahala” as we put here.
This writer will not go into the area of people abuse of people’s rights in the country because it is a very long story. Police in Nigeria still extract confessional statements from suspects even in local and state police stations in the country according to transparency international. Need we state that this use of this very method is known to all no matter how we want to pretend about it? The difference is just that no one is visibly willing to delve into this area for the fear of incurring the wrath of the police. Bail in Nigeria is supposed to be free but the police still collect money before suspects are released and our government does nothing about it while this undermines the fundamental human rights of Nigerians, as pointed out earlier in this work, Nigerians have learnt to accept this as their fate because the resources to pursue the usual rigorous litigations in the Nigerian courts of law are lacking. The police station should have a place people freely walk in to acquire or give free information but in my country Nigeria, the fear of police stations is the beginning of wisdom.
The Bill in National Assembly on detention has been lying idle since 2006, with no one laying emphasis on it simply because it concerns the welfare of mostly the ordinary masses of the country. It is for this reason that I commend the efforts of the Lagos State Government which has decreed that anywhere in Lagos where the police are taking statements from suspects, camera must be present, and maybe in the presence of suspects lawyers too. This will no doubt reduce drastically the any fowl play on the part of the police and give individuals confidence in the police.
Again, our police stations must be computerized so that the challenges of the future as well as the present can be met with, files in police stations should be electronically documents and this must also be extended to our law courts to avoid the a “certain Mr. James Onanefe Ibori” saga where another court had to seat up to the highest level to determine who was convicted by same court with legal operational business in the country, which to me is a very funny development. Recently, the Economic and financial Crimes Commission reportedly announced that the files of Ex-governors standing trials were missing, only electronic propelled files can avoid this.
Corruption is one area Nigerians have not fared well either, corruption in Nigeria is systemic and Transparency methodology is clearly incapable of perceiving Nigeria according to Rev Iloh as reported in the Vanguard, 14 October 2008. Corruption bites hard in Nigeria. Religion has not helped Nigeria as millions troupe to churches and mosques yet transformations elude the country.
Obasanjo, the former president of the country invented the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) an idea which for the first time created the fear of looting the nation’s treasury for the first time but we did not see the Commission function up to the average as jail sentences handed down to convicts were rather amusing and senseless. A big fish who stole the nation’s money in billions only end up serving between two and three months jail sentence while a frustrated unemployed youth who snatches a 3310 nokia phone goes in to serve three years imprisonment usually after spending more than 2 years in detention perhaps with his file missing.
The news of people in high places in Nigeria who steal in billions and are never convicted at all but faced with unending trials often encourage the youth to work hard and steal some monies too in dollars go to jail return and enjoy these monies. What kind of societies is our government building?
Prison conditions in Nigeria is not different as people waiting to be executed stay in detention for between 7-9 years according to Transparency International, again need we deny this fact? Several cases will establish this fact to the extent that one of your friends or relatives may have been a victim now or in the past. Prisons should be rehabilitation centers and not punishment rooms where correctional forms of reforms should be carried out. This was at its height in decades of military rule in Nigeria where the regimes had hoped to teach civilians as well as khaki men hard lessons.
Interestingly many of the once victims of this ugly developments when freed and returned to fruitful positions especially in this present democratic dispensation forgot their ugly experiences to the neglect of the bad prison conditions and continued life as usual, unmindful of Ibusa people in Delta State of the country’s adage that “the broom used in sweeping out the first wife is waiting for the second wife.” A situation which connotes our prisons as places where criminals visit and return to become harder and even more dangerous to the communities must be avoided.
The Nigerian government should do something today to make the Nigerian society more meaningful and useful to the international community. Nigerians certainly are not the worst rogues as characterized by the outside world, however only a good promotion of the social development of the society will return to the lost glory to the nation and greatly advance our society.
By: Emeka Esogbue
Human Rights Situation in Nigeria in the Eye of the International Community
Human Rights in Nigeria: the Buhari/idiagbon and Abacha Situations Compared and Contrasted
Wikipedia encyclopedia refers to human rights as “basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled.” This exists in the areas of civil and political rights and particularly describes the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law, social, cultural and economic rights includes the rights to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work and the right to education. This is expressly summed up by Article 1 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR as:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Although this article will not delve into the history of Human rights which covers thousands of years and mainly drawn from almost every department of life such as culture, politics, religion and economy etc, it will merely look into a certain period of military rule in Nigeria when Buhari/Idiagbon and the Late General Abacha were in power as the rulers of Nigeria. It will seek to some extent objectively compare and contrast these two regimes for the purpose of establishing human rights situation in Nigeria within the period under study.
However, it is very germane to add here that so many ancient documents which can be recognized as concepts of human rights have existed globally, but credit should be given the United Nations Organization for the shaping of International Human rights Law as we have it today.
Human rights is agreed to be violated when a state or non-state actor within the International Community breaches any part of the United Nations Human rights treaty. This is hard to hard as such state or non-state actor may constantly risk condemnation by vehemently denying the act, and consequently covering up these acts of abuses with several sets of further acts which may prove difficult to demonstrate, particularly in several parts of the African continent.
General Mohammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon (now deceased) came to power on Saturday December 31, 1983 although the regime of this duo was too short to appraise but the regime reigned in what many people of Nigeria could at best describe as dictatorial, even the successor regime of this regime led by General Ibrahim Babangida described the regime thus:
“He was too rigid and uncompromising in his attitude to issues of national significance”.
No sooner did Buhari/Idiagbon ceased government than the infamous Decree Number Four (DN4) of 1984 was promulgated by the duo; Buhari/Idiagbon became famous for coming down heavily against the Nigerian press, making the report of truth a very serious offence in the country, not many will for get the terrible situation of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor of the Guardian who were imprisoned for making a ca report on the Government. The Buhari/Idiagbon regime would also executed Bernard Ogedengbe, Bartholomew Owoh and Lawal Ojulope for an offence committed by them as alleged by the regime after a national debate in spite of public pleas, the execution of these gentlemen were made possible by a retroactive decree courtesy of Buhari/Idiagbon regime.
Buhari and his Deputy would again promulgate another Decree called Decree Number two (DN2) of 1984 which made it possible for Tunde Idiagbon to detain anybody whether such person is a citizen of the country or foreigner, this decree stripped the court of law of the powers to depend the reason such person is being detained. In essence, the decree did not recognize the significance of the judiciary but was merely interested in achieving its aims of dictatorial tendencies. In what would later follow, the world became amused to hear the verdicts of 125 years imprisonments handed down to the regime suspects.
Buhari was also noted to have utilized excessive force in handling drug peddlers caught, as he issued death penalties to them in what political commentators believed should not have attracted death sentences, still death was the fate of several of these suspects in laws that resembled that of Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations.
The tactics of the Buhari/Idiagbon regime became too harsh for the survival of the people, with arbitrary creation of decrees to lead the regime but promulgated to harshly lure the Nigerian public into playing into the waiting ready-made hand of the regime. Victims who became preys of these draconian decrees were mostly detained and made to remain inside prisons for as many years as Buhari and Idiagbon pleased.
There are those have argued in favour of this regime, in that according them the regime came up with the famous War Against Indiscipline which re-awakened Nigerians to the social norms of the society and helped to maintain societal order and respect for the Nigerian society as a whole. But this is outside the human rights records of the time.
The regime of General Sani Abacha who lived from 20 September 1943-8 June 1998 and the de facto military leader of Nigeria between 1993 and 1998) suffered stiff opposition internally and externally because Pro-democracy activists made the regime unpopular. His regime was accused of gross human rights abuses both home and abroad. The heights of his human rights abuses was the arrest and detention of Chief Moshhod Kolawole Olawale Abiola, the man who won the 1993 Presidential election in the country, Abiola would later die in detention in a circumstance yet unclear till this day though this was not in the days of Abacha but his mere detention caused a global uproar as the appeals of several notable people from around the world to the Military leader to free Abiola was not heeded by him.
But the peak of the gross abuse of human rights in the country was ushered by the arrest, detention and hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa, an activist by the regime in what was globally condemned.
Some the activities that characterized his regime as a tool for the gross violations of human rights in the country were the trial in absentia of Prof. Wole Soyinka, charged for treason, and the arrest and detention of Olusegun Obasanjo also jailed for treason. Abacha was also notable for banning political parties, in what people viewed as a means of likely transformation of himself to the life president of the country, and the personal control of the press. Several human rights activists who opposed his policies whether from the military or civil society were either detained without trial or jailed. Many other persons, chiefly members of the press were also jailed. Allegations of coups and counter coups reined in this regime too. The regime abruptly ended when General Sani Abacha reportedly died of heart attack in June 1998 at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Having narrated the background of certain of the human rights violations of two military regimes Nigeria during the military era of the nation, this article will go further in comparing and contrasting the regimes in terms of human rights violations.
In the first place, both regimes were not democratically welcomed by Nigerians as power was ceased through fraudulent means, Buhari/Iidiagbon overthrew a democratically elected government of shehu Shagari , while Abacha ceased power from an interim government led Ernest Shonekan. It is also a known fact that Buhari, Idiagbon and Abacha all participated in the coup that overthrew the government of Shehu Shagari. Abacha and Babangida would further bring down the government of Buhari/Abacha.
While the regime of Buhari/Idiagbon reigned for too short a period that any political analyst could valuably access, one can still point out that certain violations of human rights charter were committed that resembled the Abacha regime. One can not forget the incessant arrest and detentions of pressmen many of whom were jailed after trials too unconvincing to justify their offences. Buhari/Idiagbon shut down some media houses which was also a major feature of Abacha, in trying to personally control information and limit it to the whims and caprices of the regimes. Innocent pressmen who heard the names of Buhari/Idiagbon and Abacha fled for their dare lives and often abandoned their cameras and materials.
The two regimes also shared in the executions of persons globally thought innocent, especially after unconvincing trials, Buhari/Idiagbon executed Bernard Ogedengbe Bartholomew Owoh and Lawal Ojulope in yet a controversial circumstance, while Abacha executed Ken Saro Wiwa and his kinsmen, yet in another controversial circumstances. General sani Abacha operated with many of the draconian decrees set up by Buhari/Idiagbon administration, which both regimes used to try to gag the press and haul many innocent people into prisons.
Both regimes were tough on Nigerians, operating with draconian laws without recourse to the rule of law and legalities. This affected Nigerians negatively and brought sufferings to the people without correcting the anomalies both regimes claimed brought them to power. Again, it would seem that none of these two regimes announced a set date for the return of power to a democratically elected government.
Both regimes continuously received harsh criticism from the civil populace, and in fact, however, while the overthrow of Buhari/Idiagbon was very surprising to the people, many Nigerians may have rejoiced over the exit of Abacha which they attributed to divine intervention, believing it to be welcome development.
Again, the attitude of Buhari in present time, has been described as a desperate one as he continues to express absolute ambition to once again lead the people of Nigeria, the extent he has pursued this to the Supreme Court level amidst the lack of interest attitude of his party has been used as indices to conclude that Buhari is power thirsty and may not have concluded his plans within himselve as the Head of State of the country to hand over power to any democratically elected government, a date he never mentioned until he was overthrown by Babangida. Abacha also never expressed any desire to hand over to civilians; in essence, both regimes had no plans for transiting to civil rule. Buhari/Idiagbon and Abacha were no democrats.
I have so far tried in some way to compare the regimes and shall now dwell on the area differences between the two regimes, Buhari/Idiagbon we may conclude was a not self-centered one, while that of Abacha was considered selfish with a lot of looting, accountability was not considered a responsibility to the people of Nigeria by Abacha while Buhari/Idiagbon felt they owe the nation regular accountability and transparency.
The major point of departure of these regimes was a more vocal international condemnation of Gen. Abacha which would further lead to the suspension of the country from Commonwealth in November 1995, when the regime hanged Ken Saro Wiwa and nine other persons believed to be enemies of the military regime in the country. This was with further condition “That if no demonstrable progress was made towards the fulfilment of these conditions (democratisation and respect for human rights/release of political prisoners) within a time frame (of two years), Nigeria would be expelled from the association.”
As we later observed Abacha bluffed this condition and the nation was made a pariah State, and in fact a leper-State not deemed fit for relations by other good nations of the world, Abiola would soon die in Jail still die in detention in a controversial State, it was partly as a result of this that the country failed to make it to a particular nations cup in South-Africa.
With the reported recovery of huge sums by the Obasanjo regime from Overseas which has implicated the deceased general and his family in a wholesale looting of Nigeria’s coffers and some $3 or $4 billion USD in foreign assets have been traced to Abacha, his family and their representatives, $2.1 billion of which the Nigerian government tentatively came to an agreement with the Abacha family to return, the Abacha is regarded as highly corrupt, another major departure from the Buhari/Idiagbon regime.
However, we conclude this article by stating that in spite of the differences highlighted here no military government is ever considered good by the people, and as they say, the worst civilian government is better than the best military government.
By: Emeka Esogbue