Being a paper delivered by Gloria Mabeiam Ballason Esq at the Maxwell Kyon Foundation Seminar Held at the Kaduna State High Court Conference Hall, Bida Road on Thursday 23 May, 2024.
I have been called upon to undertake the duty of collating and amplifying thoughts about the present state of human rights in Nigeria and how that impinges on justice especially with reference to Kaduna state. I have no reluctance in availing myself to this task because the convener, Maxwell Kyon Esq is my big brother and an irrepressible voice against oppression, injustice and human rights violation. His consistency over the years has proved his mettle and yaya you do know now and always that my respect for you is full some.
The second reason is that I am a Nigerian by birth and by choice who holds Kaduna so dearly in my heart as my birthplace and the territory where I am the most emotionally invested in. As one who has experienced what nadir of suffering can be inflicted when human rights are violated, I view the conversation as a call to affirm the inviolability of what in essence makes us universally qualified to ascend the higher rung of a state of being called humanity. I therefore approach the conversation with an anxious mix of presentiments of failings and possibilities and how the latter can trump the former.
Nigeria Our Country.
Nigeria is a great nation of multitudes that number up to 215 million people spread across a wide expanse of fertile lands, cascading mountains, running rivers and a determination to triumph over the worst of circumstances. Kaduna state, the place where this conversation is going on, is the third largest state in the country and a melting point of cultures, ideologies and arguably the political centre of Northern Nigeria. As ebullient and resilient as our people can be, one thing remains clear: To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.
This challenge of humanity has sadly, been a familiar reoccurrence in Nigeria and recently, even more in Kaduna state. If we are agreed that the values of freedom, respect for human rights are essential elements not just for democracy but for giving life meaning, then it begs the question: If human rights are so intricately bound to human worth and democracy, why are there often tensions that are incompatible to the values upon which human rights and democracy were distinctly founded? Put in other words: why do some people feel it is their right to violate the rights of others and who or what institutions should be responsible for the balance of these powers to ensure boundaries are set not only for the respect of human rights but also for its enforcement? I am glad you asked because that inevitably takes us to assessing the human rights records in Nigeria and Kaduna state in recent times.
Human Rights Record In Nigeria
When General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida took over government in Nigeria and repealed Decree No 4 of 1984, a law that made it criminal to publish any material that were considered embarrassing or against the interests of the government, there was renewed hope both for democracy and the media. Babangida’s government had rode on the wings of promise to respect human rights and so there was great anticipation for the fulfilment of the promise especially because General Muhammadu Buhari, his predecessor’s War Against Indiscipline (WAI) and penchant for applying the law even retroactively such as his Decree 20 of 1984 under which Gloria Okon was retroactively sentenced to death for instance, built for the Buhari regime a bad human rights record that already had the international community screaming in protest and in solidarity with Nigerians.
However, the same Babangida regime that offered an unprecedented promise of the respect of human rights began jailing critics and firing employees who did not promote their views and ideas. The Babangida regime closed down more newspapers and banned more popular organizations than any other in Nigeria’s post colonial history. The abysmal record of the Babangida’s regime was so poor that it called into very serious question its commitment to declared principles which made it a recipient of a watchful trust by the Nigerian populace. This was quite shocking because Babangida had in August 1985 overthrown General Muhammadu Buhari and declared that his major plank of rulership would be the respect of human rights.
By May 1986, Dr. Festus Iyayi who at the time was ASUU president recounts how students who had gone out to peacefully protest certain policies of university administration including allegations of corruption, were killed and the government not only insisted it was right but made it clear that students and lecturers had no right to make any statements about the killing.
On 24 July 1988, Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka summarized what many felt about the Babangida’s military regime in these words:
“ The government is rapidly shooting itself on the foot. An atmosphere of fear is replacing what once was openness…every day of silence is interpreted by uniformed men as legitimation of acts of British cowardice. It must stop. If it does not then no one should express astonishment if Nigerians begin to take unprecedented steps to safeguard their daily security. The signs of restiveness are all too apparent. The lid on restraint is being tested by mindless provocations’
To be clear, human rights record under the military was not just a Babangida regime thing, the entire military regime post 1999 had an abysmal record of human rights violations and suppressions that included murder, torture, extortion, maiming, enforced disappearances, collective punishments or wanton destruction without recourse to the due process of law.
With the coming of democracy, hopes heightened. Democracy after all is supposed to carry along with it the innate characteristics of respect for human rights and the rule of law, individual freedom, accountability, equality, tolerance, participation of citizens, independent judiciary, individual responsibility separation of powers and voting rights. Till date, the permeating consensus (at least for now) is that democracy is the most successful of the experimented political ideas as it puts people at the centre and not at the edge but the biggest deliverable of democracy is respect for human rights and the rule of law.
Whether this deliverable is delivered is a question of fact because under the democratic dispensation and even now, Nigeria currently faces wide spread human rights violations with scant prospect of effective internal enforcement or redress. Despite the stated commitment for respect of fundamental rights in a democratic dispensation the rights of Nigerians are constantly and consistently being violated thus continuing a long standing pattern of ‘permanent transiting’ that never concludes its cycle because the more things change, the more they remain the same. To drive home the point of how we not only spin at a spot but jump off tangent into peril we will situate the national human rights records in state context:
kaduna state human rights records as epitome OF national human rights violations .
There are no words to describe the abysmal human rights record in Kaduna state especially under the ‘democratic regime’ of Mallam Nasir Ahmad Elrufai.
In fact one clear case where you could draw a straight line from the human rights violations in the military regime to the democratic dispensation is that as you would recall,the murder of Dele Giwa during the Babangida era stood out his regime as one fully unsubscribed to the voice of dissent. News flash: in 2017, under the Nasir Ahmad Elrufai’s government, Kaduna state was declared by the Nigerian Union of Journalists as the deadliest state for journalists. The situation was actually more dire:
Thousands of people were killed from Birnin Gwari to Southern Kaduna in villages, urban and suburban areas, at school or in churches and mosques by road or by rail and even the airport had to be shut down. The killing spree was unabated and the only figures that exceeded the different modes people were killed were the death casualties. For those who were lucky to survive, there were other human rights threshold to cross: many citizens, traditional leaders, activists and journalists were imprisoned, hundreds of thousands of houses were demolished without court orders, businesses were destroyed, thousands were thrown out of jobs, traditional institutions were desecrated, land boundaries were moved arbitrarily, the governor honoured the constitution in breach rather than in compliance even arrogating to himself powers in the exclusive legislative list on holidays and currency for example. Sadly in the face of all this, the judicial sector comprising of lawyers and judges did not do much to stand up in defence of the rule of law.
Aside from state sponsored violations, there are sometimes violations by security agents. On 3 December, 2023, a drone strike was carried out by the Nigerian Armed Forces on Tudun Biri in Igabi Local government targeting what they reportedly thought was a group of bandits, the Army ‘mistakenly’ hit a village killing hundreds of casualties reported as 120 by Amnesty International and 88 by Nigerian authorities. That the number cannot be ascertained is in itself problematic because we cannot account for what we are unwilling to count. The second issue is that having said it was a mistake, the Nigerian tabloids in May, 2024 has been awash with news of the court martial of two personnel. The incongruence between an admission of ‘mistake’ on the one hand and disciplinary measures on the other hand leave a wide chasm of imagination of where the truth lies.
Crime is contagious but even more, when the government becomes a law breaker it breeds contempt for law and invites every one to become a law to themselves. No where is anarchy such a sure bet than when government or any of its agencies decide to perpetrate crimes and violate rights as an act of their will.
However, while history has shown us that tyrants and usurpers of rights and people of the baser instincts can arise at any point, what makes the situation hopeless is where there is no strong judicial institution to draw the line in the sand and say thus far can you go and no more. From the Nigeria Bar Association’s refusal to sue the government in the face of egregious human rights violations to how it looked away when Alhaji Inuwa Abdulkdir, a very senior member, a former Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice had his house demolished because of his dissenting opinion even as a party leader to Governor Elrufai to how some of the courts sometimes enabled these violations by detaining innocent citizens whose actions have no probable inclination to crimes except that the government wants to persecute them , the judicial sector must admit that we could have done more.
Judicial Sector Challenges And Prospects To Human Rights Protection In Kaduna State.
Let us use ‘Judicial Sector’ as an encompassing term for Judges and lawyers. The primary call for judges and lawyers is to dispense justice. The legal maxim ‘ubi jus, ibi remedium’ provides a compass to the end that where there is an injury there must be a remedy. The purpose of law is not to defeat justice. Laws exist to lead to justice and where laws defeat justice, then the laws serve no purpose at all. From the foregoing discourse, it would seem clear that human rights violations seem to escalate under the democratic dispensation beyond the promise that democracy presents. Democracy has not provided the required ease for human rights protection and enforcement. Is democracy to blame? Surely not. Democracy as a system is man-driven. What humans put into it is what they get from it. The Judiciary has the major role of ensuring justice and preserving the independence of the judiciary. The judiciary cannot afford to subsume itself as subservient to the executive or judiciary nor should they be found wanting in the things that fall weak humans because like Ceasar’s wife, they must be above board.
The Drafters Of The Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules made clear the purpose of the rules in the preamble to wit:
‘The Court shall constantly and conscientiously seek to give effect to the overriding objectives of these rules at every stage of human rights action especially whenever it exercises any power given it by these rules or any other law and whenever it applies or interpretes any rule.’ The preamble goes on to be exhaustive about the need to advance as opposed to restricting rights and freedoms, the need to proactively pursue enhanced access to justice for all classes of litigants, encourage public interest litigation and advance democracy, good governance and the speedy and efficient enforcement and realization of human rights.
If human rights will be enhanced, then the Courts must provide access to justice by keeping the doors open for all litigants to present their concerns and be welcoming towards public interest litigation that enable the interests of the underserved to be presented. No executive should have the gumption to intimidate the judiciary- not by keeping Judges and Magistrates hungry by not paying them their salaries and emoluments nor by ‘gifting’ them cars as dangling carrots. The independence of the judiciary must be preserved at all times because it is what keeps the entire judicial sector immune from the shenanigans of corrupt politicians who would want to put the system in their pockets. It therefore goes without saying that the quality of leadership in the judiciary is vital because leadership sets the tone and defines the barriers for insulation or incursion.
The process of appointment of Judges or Magistrates, the preservation of the integrity of the courts, ensuring that Judges and Magistrates are paid as and when due and their security is guaranteed to enable them perform their jobs without fear or favour, are all vital to securing the judicial territory. All entitlements of the judiciary should be paid into their accounts. Cars meant for Judges for instance should be included in judiciary budgets as opposed to Governors brandishing cars as though they are personal gifts to them when in essence, they are tax payers monies.
The Judiciary itself must be jealous for itself. This requires a robust in-house cleansing mechanism by the state judicial service commission or the National Judicial Service Commission in ensuring that Judges and Magistrates comply with their Judicial oaths and those who err are brought to book. The question of accountability in the judicial sector is so important that we must draw inspiration from the Almighty on how to go about it. If a person commits sins and does not repent, although the Almighty loves him, the fact that he chose sin the individual will go to jahannama. The soul that sinneth dies. It is therefore an aberration that rather than address egregious failings, sentiments sometimes come in and so gross violations are not addressed. To say for instance that the penalty for a judge who issues a writ of possession without a judgment is ‘caution’ is to open a floodgate of abuses capable of sinking the judiciary. In developed climes, the threshold for judicial probity is so high that when a judicial officer fails, the judicial officer does not contest his unworthiness he simply goes to the law to cleanse him rather than wait for the law to catch up with him.
And in Kaduna, we have had quite a share of the good, the bad and the ugly especially under Elrufai. There were too many incidents where the government would order people arrested and jailed and the government had their way. There were many instances where Elrufai violated judgments in state and federal courts and he got away with it. When he declared Friday as a ‘No Work Day’ he got away with it. It was not that some lawyers were not pushing back by representing clients whose rights and interest were violated whether they were cases of demolishing of houses, markets and business premises, throwing people out of jobs, moving boundary lines, confiscating lands and giving them to his friends and cronies, arresting journalists and activists or the worse, murders while he ‘paid killers to stop killing’, the courts chose to ‘play safe’ while the lines of judicial enforcement of justice and human rights were eroded.
To be fair, there were some judicial officers who at great risks and costs, insisted that justice had to be done even if the heaven fell and but for them, things would have been irredeemably bad. We are grateful for their sacrifice and convinced that their reward is eternal. The reality though is that the violations were too many that collective action was necessary to stay back the overwhelming abuses that Kaduna state residents suffered under Elrufai some of which the people may never recover from.
The spotlight should also turn to the office of the State Attorney General. There has long been a debate on who the client of the Attorney General is whether it is the public or the Government. A situation where an executive no matter how highly placed he deems himself to be can direct that people be arrested, jailed or their houses pulled down and these violations are supervised and enabled by the public office of the Attorney General is to put it most mildly, unfortunate.
There should be no conflict when the question of justice arises. In 2019, I attended an Academy for Forensics Evidence and DNA training in Guatemala, Central America. Guatemala fought a civil law from 1960-1996 between the government and various leftist groups. An estimated 200,000 people were killed including about 50,000 enforced disappearances. The justice sector in Guatemala did not get intimidated by the numbers of cases. Till date, people are still being brought to justice. But the most mind-blowing discovery for me was how the office of the Attorney General was working with citizens-based and private initiatives to find justice for victims.
This is the point where I say, that if you do not take away anything from this lecture please do not forget that the fight against injustice and human rights violations is not a fight against the Executive vs Judiciary, Security Agents vs. Civilians, Ministry of Justice vs. Victims, or Activists vs. Government. The fight against injustice and human rights abuse is simply a fight against Right vs. Wrong, Good vs. Evil. Each of us must choose whether we want to fight on the side of the right or we want to play on the side of wrong. We must make a choice against good and evil, humanity or inhumanity. We must choose a side because there is no fence to straddle.
Concluding Thoughts.
Lord Acton, the 19th century English historian was right when he said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. While some may have the moral rectitude to stay within the circumscribed dimensions of their powers, others could get so power drunk that the powers go on rampage but that exactly is why the concept of separation of powers was propounded by English Philosopher, John Locke and French philosopher Baron Montesquieu who popularized it in his The Spirit of Laws.
We must insist that the lines that separate powers are enforced. Only the most qualified and courageous of us should preside in judgment over fellow men in fear of God, conscious of the equality of all men, the fleeting nature of life and fully equipped with conviction and good faith. Violations must be addressed when people are in power or out of it otherwise it will form an ugly legacy spectacle. The Nigeria Bar Association should be alive in its responsibility of protecting the rule of law. The office of the Attorney General should be at the fore of defending the public against rights violations and not shield the government when it goes wrong. Citizens must own the power in their voice by ensuring that they do not accept rights violations but challenge it. Insisting on rights protection is not often a tea party but we must do it or shall perish if we do not.
On the whole, each of us must remember that we are pilgrims on this path way. There are many who came before us who lit the way. This is our moment to make a difference. May all who come behind us find us faithful and may the fires of our devotion light their way. May the justice we embody, encourage them to believe. May the lives we live inspire them to be courageous in the face of injustice and may history be kind to us all, amen.
Gloria Mabeiam Ballason Esq is the C.E.O. House of Justice and Principal Partner MIVE Legals. She may be reached on gloriaballason@houseofjusticeng.com
