Human Rights Watch Reports on Nigeria: “An All Pervading Climate of Impunity” Blocks Change

The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) routinely conducts fact-finding investigations into human rights abuses in all regions of the world.
One of such is the newly released 123-page report on Nigeria, which the agency claims is “based largely on two four-week Human Rights Watch research missions to Nigeria in early 2007 before, during, and after the April 2007 elections.”

The report included field research in Anambra, Delta, Ekiti, Gombe, Katsina, Lagos, Oyo, and Rivers States and interviews in the capital Abuja…and one hundred interviews with federal, state, and local public officials; politicians from ruling and opposition political parties; journalists; civil society workers; religious leaders; lawyers; members of armed gangs and cult groups; political godfathers; and victims of human rights abuse.”

“Nigeria is mired in a crisis of governance”, is the opening statement of the summary. The summary states further “the conduct of many public officials and government institutions is so pervasively marked by violence and corruption as to more resemble criminal activity than democratic governance.”

Human Rights Watch documents in the report what it “considers to be the most important human rights dimensions of this crisis: first, systemic violence openly fomented by politicians and other political elites that undermines the rights of Nigerians to freely choose their leaders and enjoy basic security; second, the corruption that both fuels and rewards Nigeria’s violent brand of politics at the expense of the general populace; and third, the impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these abuses that both denies justice to its victims and obstructs reform.”

More excerpts:

Nigeria’s most serious problems of governance are all underwritten by an all pervading climate of impunity that blocks change. One obvious and important place to start would be for the federal government to enact and aggressively implement the long delayed Freedom of Information Bill, which would make it possible for Nigerians to peel back the veils of secrecy that allow many government officials to conceal the evidence of their misdeeds by denying access to even the most basic government-held information…

Many political figures openly recruit and arm criminal gangs to unleash terror upon their opponents and ordinary members of the public. In Gombe State, for example, politicians openly recruited violent cult gangs to intimidate their opponents and rig the voting on Election Day. Encouraged by the prevailing climate of impunity, these gangs unleashed a wave of violence on local communities that included murder, rape, arson and other crimes. In Rivers State, criminal gangs hired to rig Nigeria’s 2003 elections have since become a law unto themselves, spreading violence and insecurity throughout the restive Niger Delta. Scores of civilians have either been killed or injured during clashes involving those gangs since the 2007 elections alone. No one has been held to account for sponsoring these gangs.

Read more of the report and recommendations: HRW: “Criminal Politics - Violence, “Godfathers” and Corruption in Nigeria”

Download report in PDF