Tag: pack

You have been on the saddle as Chief Executive Officer of this commission for almost one year. What has your experience been like?

I am today, one year, one month and fourteen days on this seat as the Executive Secretary of the Commission. I want to say that it has been an interesting experience, given my background before I assumed this duty.

What is your background?

In all my life, I have always tried to work for humanity, I have tried to work for the benefit of human beings. I have tried to defend the right of Nigerians. Before I assumed duty here, apart from the fact that I was teaching human rights and humanitarian law, I was also serving humanity in other ways.

In what ways?

I had a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that was basically aimed at providing free legal services for indigent Nigerians, so upon the assumption of duty here, I realised that what I was doing was only but preparatory to the challenges that I am now made to face here. I consider my coming here as an act of God, because I never thought for one day, that I might come to the National Human Rights Commission.

What do you mean by this?

Yes, I was contented being a lecturer. I was contented touching human lives at that level, but here is a calling from God and I find it very, very interesting. It is challenging, but it is good to give your best to humanity, it is good to put your life down for the sake of working for fellow human beings.

The law establishing the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) was amended in 2011 to enhance efficiency and autonomy in the commission’s operations. How has this amendment impacted on your performance?

Let me give you a little bit of background here. In 1993, the nations of the world convened at Paris France, under the umbrella of the United Nations General Assembly. At that assembly, nations resolved that countries should establish national institutions that would be given the responsibility to promote, protect and enforce the rights of their people. This was to demonstrate the commitment of the international community to the recognition, promotion and ensuring respect for the rights of all peoples of the world.

So, Nigeria being a good member of the United Nations ratified this convention and all the resolutions. And in 1995, this national institution, which we today call the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria, was established. It is interesting to note that this institution was established by the military regime in Nigeria to show the world that Nigeria was also committed to the protection and promotion of human rights. However, given that scenario, the commission was not given all the powers that were envisaged and agreed upon by the international community under the principles which we refer today as the Paris Principles.

Which powers were envisaged by the international community under Paris Principles?

Under the Paris principles, all such national institutions were to be given autonomy. They were to be independent in their operations and were to have financial autonomy and security of tenure for the major operators which includes the Chief Executive and the Commissioners.

However, this NHRC was not given such powers at the time it was established. Happily, on the February 25, 2011, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, signed into law a bill that was passed by the National Assembly, which today, has enhanced the powers of the commission.

In which areas did the amendment enhance the Commission’s powers?

By this amendment, the Commission is today independent in its operations. It is not under the authority or control of any person in this country in carrying out its duties and mandate. In relation to that, we have financial autonomy in the sense that it is placed directly under the first line charge of the consolidated revenue of the Federation and then, the security of tenure of the Governing Council members and that of the chief executive is also guaranteed to the extent that they cannot be removed from office except by the resolution of the National Assembly.

Again, the commission is empowered to take decisions that are enforced like the judgments of a High Court. To this end, the commission can bark and bite, which means that it has enforcement powers that will ensure that it does not only promote, protect, but also provides remedies to victims and aggrieved persons when such rights are violated. This is different from the commission that was in existence prior to amendment which had no such enforcement powers.

As a seasoned human rights lecturer and promoter of human rights before your appointment as the Executive Secretary of the Commission, which changes and or innovations have you brought to the Commission since your appointment?

When I assumed duties here, I saw the challenges and knew that expectations were very high. And I have been praying to God to give me not only the strength but the wisdom to live up to the expectations.

From the start, I knew that the Commission was operating in seven offices, one in the headquarters in Abuja and one in each of the six geo-political zones of the country. I realised again the powers that this commission has bearing in mind the fact that many Nigerians are not yet aware of their fundamental rights. So, I felt that there was a need for the commission to do more to ensure that Nigerians become aware of their rights, ensure protection of such rights and in doing so, there is the imperative need for the commission to give Nigerians access to its services. And it is not possible for the commission to give such access while we operate one office in each of the six geo-political zones.

What are you doing about this?

I decided to expand the services of the commission and, by the grace of God, this commission now has 24 offices and I hope that by the end of March, this year, the Commission would have offices in the 36 states of the federation. If we have offices in the 36 states of the Federation, there is no doubt that Nigerians will freely walk into any of our offices as they are doing now, to make their complaints which they don’t necessarily need the services of a legal practitioner to do. Even those who are not well educated have been coming to us, we reduce their petitions or complaints into writing and we investigate them accordingly. So I expanded the scope of operations of this commission, I also restructured the operations of the commission in such a way as to meet up with the needs of every Nigerian, particularly in the area of human rights protection.

In addition to that, I started carrying out some enlightenment campaigns, creation of awareness and so on. Today, we are translating the basic human rights instruments in the constitution into major Nigerian Languages so that Nigerians will be able to read and understand their rights in their own languages.

I have also paid visits to major stakeholders and in addition to that, we have constituted a working team with the Nigeria Police to improve human rights protection in the country.

What do you mean by this?

Well, I wrote a letter to the Inspector–General of Police (IG) that there is a need for the human rights commission to work with the Police to improve the promotion and protection of the rights of Nigerians. In that letter, I stated that the commission was nominating a team of five people led by me and requested the IG to also nominate a team of five persons, which he promptly did, his team is led by a Deputy Inspector–General of Police (DIG); so, today, we have a working group whereby we look at issues of human rights violations by the police, because prior to my assumption of office and up till today, a lot of complaints have been coming in against the operations of the police and the IG has given us a commitment to ensure that the Police works in accordance with the dictates of human rights. I also made them to realise that the work of the Human Rights Commission and that of the Police is the same, because the Police have the mandate to protect the rights, lives and property of Nigerians and in doing so, they have the mandate to protect the rights of the people and that is exactly what the NHRC is doing. So, there is a great need for us to team up together.

The IG has realised that and has promised to ensure that police officers that are engaged in the violation of human rights are not only disciplined, but are also relieved of their appointment and so far, he has kept his words, some police officers that have been identified as major culprits in human rights violations have not only been dismissed from the service, they are also facing prosecution; so we are working together.

What other things are you doing to improve the performance of the Police?

We are also embarking on a training programme for the Police; we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) whereby the NHRC will be involved in teaching courses in all Police colleges in the Federation. We have requested for time; they have allotted time for us and in every of their courses, we are going to have a syllabus that will teach them protection and promotion of human rights.

In addition to that, we are also going to carry out massive capacity building on human rights and the mode of operation in a manner that ensures observance and respect for human rights by all the members of Police Force, so it is a good development.

We have carried out prison audit whereby we realised that more than 30 per cent of Nigerians who are in the prisons are those on awaiting trial. We have equally tried to figure out the factors that are responsible for this.

So, what were your findings?

Principally, we have realised that the criminal justice system in Nigeria needs to be reformed in such a way as to prevent many Nigerians who are awaiting trials at various prisons from having to go through the ordeals that they are at present going through. One fundamental factor responsible for this is the police arrest people, put them in detention or arraign such suspect before the court without having the with which evidence to prosecute them. You find out that in many cases, when police arraign people before the courts, they seek adjournments on the ground that they are still investigating such matters.

So, what are you doing about this?

We want a situation whereby Nigerians will also take a cue from what is happening in the other parts of the world whereby police take time to carry out their investigations and when they are satisfied that a prima facie case has been established, they will then arraign such a person and from that point, they prosecute with evidence and the trial goes on. So, this practice whereby you arrest people, detain them, take them to court, remand them in prison custody before looking for the evidence is not healthy because it does not guarantee that fundamental rights of citizens, which presume the accused persons to be innocent until the contrary is proved.

The practice seems to criminalise Nigerians in a manner that is not acceptable. In addition to that, we also discovered that most of the trials in Nigeria courts do not go on because of the issue of waiting for the Director of Public Prosecutions’ (DPP) advice.

What is your reaction to this ?

We have looked into this matter and found out that some people are not just doing their work and at the same time, the various ministries of justice across the country are grossly understaffed. The work that one person is expected to do is so enormous that it prevents him from bringing out the legal advice as promptly as he would have done, since so much of such cases are before him.

So, we are looking into that and we have also discovered that sometimes, even when the legal advice is out, it takes them two to three years to file the information on the matter before a competent court, particularly in a matter that is to be tried by a High Court, it takes two to three years before they can file such information before a High Court.

And to keep these people in prison awaiting all that period is a serious problem. We also have discovered that most of the time judges do not sit and when they sit, the prosecutors are not there to prosecute the cases. We are also meeting with and discussing with the Chief Judges of some states of the Federation to see how certain things should be done to put an end to these lengthy trials.

Also, we have started having contacts with various prison officials. We convened a meeting of all the Comptroller-Generals, all the comptrollers of prisons of the 36 states of the Federation with the Comptroller- Generals, we also convened a meeting of all desk human rights officers of all the various prisons in the 36 states of the federation, we have got information on every prison inmate in this country and we have discovered that there are a lot of problems there. We have all the statistics there and then this commission is going to use the public interest litigation unit to carry out simultaneous actions against those states that have allowed some inmates to be kept in prison for more than 10 to 15 years to enforce the rights of Nigerians, because where a trial is delayed for a long time ranging from 10 to 20 years, it amounts to a violation of the rights of the people concerned because those people are still presumed to be innocent and if you keep them in prison for such number of years and, if eventually, they are proven innocent, what amount of money will compensate them for that long period already spent in prison?

These are the issues we are addressing and I strongly believe that at the end of the day, this commission will be in a better position to provide that hope to Nigerians, because

the commission is intended to provide hope for all Nigerians and we are determined to do so.
Again, we have a series of lectures aimed at bringing all the stakeholders together to discuss topical issues in the country. We had a special dialogue on access to food, as a very fundamental right. We had a dialogue on access to self-medication because we discovered that many Nigerians are consuming fake drugs; because they do not have access to safe medicine and we consider access to safe medicine as a fundamental human right. We also have a dialogue on the role of effective leadership and good governance in the protection of human rights. We also had another discourse on business and human rights and we discovered that many multi-national corporations operating in Nigeria are violating the rights of the people.
Can you be specifics?
We find examples of this in the operations of oil companies operating in the Southern parts of the country. Even the operations of such big companies, such as Julius Berger in Abuja, most of the time you see them packing Nigerians in trailers as if they cattle taking them to work and from work, this is impossible in other parts of the world. It is only in Nigeria that you can pack Nigerians like that. These are the sort of things that we are determined to put an end to and I tell you that this commission will not rest until we are able to achieve results, we would not be deterred. we will be very persuasive. We would be strong and where there is no end to it, we shall not hesitate in enforcing the rights of Nigerians and ordering for such adequate compensation to be paid to such people.
What is your reaction to the demolition of people’s homes across the country?
Yes, we have taken steps to make sure that Nigerians are not denied their rights to shelter. A lot of policies of government have come up seeking to demolish and turn away Nigerians from their places of residence without adequate compensations being made for them. We have received complaints from the residents of Pape in Abuja, the residents of Makoko in Lagos and Waterfronts in Rivers State, I led a team of the commission’s officials. We saw the circumstances, we saw the situations, we dialogued with the officials concerned, dialogued with the governments concerned and also with the people concerned. We have got commitments that there would not be any further demolitions until the governments are able to provide alternative shelter for the people concerned. These are some of the things we are doing to ensure that the rights of Nigerians are protected.
There was a meeting of the Governing Council of the commission recently. Did you take any decisions at the meeting?
That was the first of meetings we had; we were able to strategise on how the Governing Council is going to proceed in carrying out this task of protecting the rights of Nigerians. We have done the ground work. We are prepared; by March, we are going to meet and the Governing Council of the commission is going to take decisions on some human rights violations on which the commission has received petitions and complaints, which have also been investigated. So, this Governing Council is set to work for Nigerians. It is committed to ensuring that the rights of Nigerians that have been violated, will be redressed
You said that you are in the process of translating human rights provision of the constitution, particularly Chapter Four into major Nigerian local languages. When do you intend to finish it and how can Nigerians access them?
We are hoping that by March, we would launch the translations. Once we do that, we are going to post it on the website of the commission. We are also going to reduce them into pamphlets and leaflets and ensure their distribution among Nigerians. We will send them to our state offices. We shall make them available to Nigerians free.
What is your reaction to the call that Chapter Two of the constitution be made justiceable?
This is also where you have the problem of interpretation. If you look at Section 6 of the constitution that talks about Judicial powers, the judiciary is not to inquire into the provisions of chapter two which makes people to think that it is not justiceable.
But if you look at the provisions of Chapter 13, which is the beginning chapter for Section two, look at it well, the state organs that are responsible for ensuring the administration of justice are also enjoined to ensure that the provisions of chapter two are given effect, so it is a matter of interpretation. You can use that section to ensure that the rights are justicable. The courts can adjudicate on them because the section specifically said state organs should ensure that these provisions are given effect to, so if a court decides to do that, the court cannot be challenged. It depends on which of the sections the court would like to rely upon.
In any case, the commission is making a position very clear that some of these rights protected under chapter two should also be considered to become fundamental human rights under chapter four that can be adjudicated upon.
Why do you say this?
You know what happened is that some of these rights were taken for granted at the time of framing the constitution. It was taken that they were already there, so, were taken for granted.