A former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Chidi Odinkalu, has attacked President Muhammadu Buhari, saying his government is “unwholesomely lawless.”
Mr. Oddinkalu, who spoke to NEXT EDITION in an exclusive interview, also accused the Information of Minister, Lai Mohammed, of lying to Nigerians.
He argued that the Buhari administration is wrong to subject persons alleged to have committed offences to administrative detention.
“You cannot, no matter the circumstance, subject citizens to administrative detention. El-Zakzaky has been under administrative detention for almost one and a half years now and till date, nobody knows what the crime is,” Mr. Odinkalu said.
“Sambo Dasuki is held as well in administrative detention, Nnamdi Kanu was held under administrative detention too.
“And you have a situation where the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, comes up with the disreputable lie that no one wants to be El-Zakzaky’s neighbor and that is why he is held under administrative detention.”
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The former rights commission’s boss also condemned in strong terms, the December 2015 killings of members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) by the Nigerian military.
He blamed the government for not acting against the military that carried out the killings and described the action as “irresponsible.”
“You send soldiers to some selected neighborhoods in Zaria, to mow down innocent people especially little children, who are amongst them and you don’t want to do anything about it? That’s irresponsible and there’s no way to minimize it,” he said.
However, Mr. Odinkalu was quick to highlight the differences between Mr. Buhari’s approach to human rights with that of Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.
He reasoned that Mr. Osinjabo could have acted better if the Zaria killings were to happen under his watch as acting president.
“Since Osinbajo became acting president, there has been a little considerate difference in the handling of human rights matters,” Mr. Odinkalu said.
“I’ve got to distinguish what happened when President Buhari was around from what’s happened when the acting president has been in charge.”
“I think there has been a notable nuance and a notable difference in the way each of them has managed human rights issues and I’d like to think that if the acting president had been in charge when the unfortunate Zaria incidence occurred in December 2015, the attitude would’ve been different.”
Speaking on the NGO Censoring Bill being considered by the National Assembly, Mr. Odinkalu said there was nothing positive about the proposed legislation.
He described the action of the lawmakers was “utterly misguided, madness and illiteracy.”
He argued that the NGOs in the country have a regulatory framework and advised Nigerian senators to go back and carry out proper checks on the issue.
He said, “I cannot understand how anybody who knows the country and the legal history of Nigeria can possibly say that there is no legal framework for regulating NGOs.
“We can’t get into a situation whereby people in the National Assembly think it’s a license to unleash lawlessness in the country.”
