Nigerians and the world must continue to hold Buhari’s government accountable for gross human rights abuses

The Due Process Advocates Foundation (DPA) acknowledges that today, amidst blistering international pressure, the government of Mohammadu Buhari, acting through its Attorney General, Mr. Abubakar Malami, ordered the release of Omoyele Sowore and Gambo Dasuki, who have both been in unlawful indefinite detention. In ordering their release, the government based its order on the various orders of Nigerian courts that had granted bail to these men.

While we welcome the release of the two men as serving the purpose of justice, we also decry the shameful conduct of the Nigerian Government in the continued detention of these men despite court orders that mandated their release. It is particularly remarkable that these men are being released on no other conditions than those already imposed by court. It raises the question therefore as to the basis for detaining them after courts had ordered their release. Indeed, what the directive of Mr. Malami has confirmed is the sickening belief on the part of this Government that no court order can take effect without further approval by the executive arm of government.

The action of the government, as shown in Mr. Malami’s needless intervention today, is a confirmation of the ugly truth, which is that Buhari’s government will go down in history as the most dictatorial government in the time of democracy. It is an admission that court orders were routinely ignored and the courts rendered powerless. It is also an admission that this government has been callous and most reckless as regards human rights and rule of law. It is further an admission that it will be dangerous for Nigerians or the world to trust Buhari’s administration on rule of law.

The world must not take the release of the two men as a genuine sign that this administration is willing to change. On the contrary, what we saw is a syndical deception calculated to mislead the world and to lure the seekers of justice into complacency or false sense of victory. The fact remains that thousands of innocent Nigerians are in various detentions all contrary to rule of law and due process. It is a dangerous tokenism to release a few while many are left to languish in detentions. The fact is that in the same DSS cells that held Sowore for months and Dasuki for years, DSS is holding hundreds of innocent people contrary to law and due process.

We must therefore continue to demand for justice from Buhari’s government. Let our next step be to demand for the government to open the gates to various secret detention places in Nigeria whether these detention centers are run by DSS, the police or other security or law enforcement agencies. Every detention of a person in Nigeria must be brought under the control of the judiciary, a judiciary that must be free from corruption and which shall enjoy independence from the executive.

Second, we must shine the light on the various processes through which the security forces seek to justify abusive detentions. As we write, DPA has come across overwhelming evidence of how the Nigerian police fabricated criminal charges against innocent citizens to justify detentions and how judges are being induced to play along. In the cases of Sowore and Dasuki, things were made a bit easy because the judges did not play along. But we have cases in which the judges play a role in a corrupt scheme to abuse the rights of citizens. These also should be practices to which the seekers of justice must direct their protests.

Rather than rest and assume it is over, Nigerians and the world must understand that the release of Dasuki and Sowore is on the beginning, the late beginning, of the fight for justice against an administration that has no regard for law, liberty and basic freedoms. Rather than fold our tents and retreat, we must strengthen and fortify ourselves for further resistance to repression and dangerous autocracy.

By DPA Administration.

December 24, 2019