Elombah.com has carried series of observations on the state of human rights in Nigeria since the return of civilian rule in 1999. This is a part of our ongoing monitoring of Nigerian development, a multi-disciplinary study to be published later this year. As a general observation, the vibrancy shown by the Nigerian human right activists during the military rule seems to have waned since the return to civil rule. Yet, certain observable trends remain alarming. There appears to have worse human rights violations since 1999 to present in Nigeria than comparable previous period. Going by recent reports by United States State Department, the Human Right Watch, and other international human rights organizations and monitors, Nigeria appears to have made no progress in the arrears of human right, and possibly the country has actually retrogressed from the pre-civilian era.
There seems to be some perception in the civil society and local human right community that because this is a civil rule, the urgency of rights issues has been diminished. This is seen in the fact that many former civil rights leaders in Nigeria appear to have moved on to other pursuits and ways of life. And many of the remaining right activists such as Tunde Bakare and Femi Falana tend to work from the point of view of partisan political opposition. Recent gross human rights abuses such as the gross abuse of human rights in North east Nigeria in pursuit of Boko haram militants, the Odi incident, the Zaki Biam incident, the killings of six Igbo traders in Abuja by the police, the killings of four university students near Port Harcourt, by a vigilante mob, and the recent discovery of dead bodies in a river in Anambra State, which still has not been explained by the police, and more, have not attracted any noticeable attention from the human right community in Nigeria.
Despite the above observations, it is too early to give up on the Nigerian human right community. There are new players emerging. Noticeable in recent times it the dramatic entry of Mr. Emeka Ugwuonye, a Harvard trained and US-based lawyer. Elombah.com's recent interaction with Ugwuonye reveals a rather interesting approach and theory to the human rights crises and need for reforms in Nigeria. His views reflect the perspective of an international lawyer and one who has lived in the United States for the past twenty years and has been a lawyer in the United States for most of that time. In the written statement below, which was sent to Elombah.com, Ugwuonye espouses a theory of freedom that links rights to economic development. His argument, in which he calls right reforms the only solution for Nigeria, is just as eloquent and passionate as Ugwuonye himself.
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