Nigeria’s human rights picture darkened further in July, with the National Human Rights Commission logging 354,997 complaints, a 20 percent jump from June and the highest monthly total recorded so far this year. The spike came alongside the commission’s new two year partnership with Hope Behind Bars Africa aimed at improving access to justice, civic participation and digital rights.
The commission’s dashboard, drawn from complaints filed at its 38 offices nationwide and from its own monitoring, showed the North Central region accounting for 42 percent of complaints, with the North West and North East each responsible for 19 percent, the South East for 12 percent, and the South West and South South each at 4 percent. Benue led individual states with 41,664 complaints, followed by Kaduna, Niger, Plateau and Imo, while the top ten states plus the Abuja headquarters together accounted for 69 percent of all complaints. The commission also documented 382 killings and 230 kidnappings during the month.
Mass killings continued in Benue and Plateau, and abductions hit children, communities and individuals across the country. In Kaduna’s Kauru local government area, gunmen reportedly killed 30 people, including five siblings; in Zamfara, 23 farmers were reportedly killed in Ruwan Gora community; and Benue recorded a string of deadly attacks across several communities. Bandits reportedly abducted more than 50 people in Sokoto’s Garin Idi community, with further abductions in Makuwana and Tambuwal, while 13 passengers were reportedly seized along the Jos Kano highway. Attacks also reached schools, including the abduction of four students, a principal and an exam board staff member during ongoing exams in Kogi, and the abduction of a 60 year old headmaster in Oyo whose captors demanded a 30 million naira ransom.
Violence against children featured heavily in the report, spanning physical and sexual abuse, child labour, trafficking, abandonment and child marriage, including the killing of nine members of one family, among them a two month old baby, in Plateau. Farmers and community defenders were also targeted, with the commission recording farmer killings in Zamfara, Kaduna, Sokoto, Benue, Kwara and Plateau, alongside the killing of vigilantes and security personnel in several states.
Against that backdrop, the commission and Hope Behind Bars Africa signed a memorandum covering human rights protection, access to justice, civic space, digital rights and accountability, including a Justice Tech Node meant to connect justice institutions, civil society, lawyers and technologists working on emerging digital rights issues such as online surveillance and harassment. The agreement also covers efforts to improve conditions for pretrial detainees through custodial visits, legal referral systems and joint reporting on the state of Nigeria’s correctional facilities. In July alone, the commission completed 10,084 investigations, carried out 124 visits to police and detention facilities, issued 26 summonses to police and visited ten military formations.
