HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES: BANE OF NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE

1. The history of Nigeria is laced with rights abuses, neglect and violation. Consequently, all the facets of Nigerian life  and polity, socioreligious and cultural life, however show that “might is right” – a clear reflection of the evil conspiracy against Barr. Emeka Ugwuonye by the Nigerian Police force.
3. An overview of the human rights practices in Nigeria portray a story of disheartening calamities and violence indeed. It is therefore, unfortunate that while other police formations in the World  are on the threshold of modern and scientific policing, the Nigerian Police are thinking in the reverse order. While other Police formations think of how to curtail and disperse protesters using harmless means like water cannons, the Nigerian Police fire life bullets on peaceful protesters. While other formations think of providing superior logic and facts to counter those that criticise them, the Nigerian Police think of ways to bend the laws in order to have them incarcerated.
5. While our contemporaries even in Africa are on the threshold of scientific discovery, hypertechnologization of the World like China and India, most Nigerians struggle with the fundamental recognition of their human dignity, right and freedom. The situation in Nigeria is quite appalling.
7. How can you speak of  rights in a society like ours where the Police has the power of life and death. Police arrest and detain innocent Nigerians arbitrarily. People who made effort to criticise them are arrested, detained unlawfully and charged with spurious but baseless allegations just to silence them. Look at the kind of wicked but childish game they played on Barr. Emeka Ugwuonye. They suspended all due process just to have him remanded.
9. How can one speak of human rights violations in Nigeria with structural injustices, brutal killings, ritual killings, reckless imprisonment without trial; where there is no freedom of speech or opinion? How can one speak of human rights in Nigeria where “Might is right”? How can you speak of your right in Nigeria where “man  is wolf unto man”? A brutish and nasty country. A country of “anything goes and anyhow”. Is human right not a mere tag in Nigeria?
11. How can one speak of human right in a country where the basic human needs are illusions; a country sick with underprivileged ones, with dire wrinkles of poverty on the faces of many. At the background of our exposition of Nigerian society and her experience of human rights are the above nuances which are in sharp  contrast to what is obtained in other civilizations. How then can any one speak of a realistic human rights in today’s Nigeria?

Nwafor Ifeanyi

1. Director Of Information
2. DPA.