NHRC plans new strategy to check human rights violation
TO stem the tide of multiplicity of human rights abuses in the country, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is to create a Human Rights and Atrocity Unit with the mandate of bringing violators to book.Chairperson of the commission’s Governing Council, Dr. Chidi Anselem Odinkalu, disclosed this in an interview with The Guardian in Lagos after a two-day national dialogue on the state of human rights in Nigeria.
Odinkalu said the workers in the new unit would be skilled to determine which kind of human rights case needs to be prosecuted, as well as to monitor proceedings on cases going on in the courts.
The unit will, after proper examination of human rights abuses, demand fiat from the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice or other relevant government bodies for the prosecution of human rights violators, especially in cases of rape and sexual violence.
While urging Nigerians not to surrender the right to fight for their rights under any circumstances, Odinkalu said the commission was being repositioned to give Nigerians new orientation on the sanctions awaiting violators of human rights.
He, however, bemoaned alleged lack of proper funding of the agency, insisting that NHRC remains one of the poorly funded agencies of the Federal Government.
According to Odinkalu, who chaired the opening session of the dialogue, NHRC has been badly funded to the level that the agency even lacks basic tools, such as operational vehicles and writing materials with which to work.
He, however, expressed happiness with the recently passed NHRC Act and the Freedom of Information Act, saying the two laws, together with the constitution, would greatly assist in entrenching the culture of respect for rights of citizens.
The commission, he said, had been strategising on how to anticipate and prevent human rights abuses rather than addressing them after violation must have been committed.
“There would have been more casualties in the January protest by Nigerians against the removal of subsidy on the pump price of petrol but for the timely intervention of the commission because the government had directed the police to clamp down on protesters”, he noted.
Earlier in her remarks, the Managing Partner of Partnership for Justice (PJ), who organised the national dialogue in collaboration with MacArthur Foundation, Mrs. Itoro Eze-Anaba, said the event was aimed at creating awareness among civil society organisations and monitoring the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) on the promotion and protection of human rights in Nigeria.
