No fewer than one million complaints of human rights violation were received in the 2016 by the National Human Rights Commission.
The Director, Monitoring Department, National Human Rights Commission, Tony Ojukwu, made this known while also declaring the importance of the need to protect human rights as a way of developing a nation.
Ojukwu spoke on Wednesday at the Policy Monitoring Dialogue Series organised by the Savannah Centre for Diplomacy Democracy and Development (SCDDD) in Lagos.
He said despite the huge amount of complaints, there was little the NHRC could do as it lacked adequate fund to perform optimally.
His words: “As at close of business in 2016, the NHRC had received above one (1) million complaints for the year. Due to poor funding, the treatment of these complaints remains a huge challenge to NHRC.”
He said it was also noteworthy that NHRC national efforts in protecting human rights in Nigeria had seen the commission handle high profile cases and increase its presence and accessibility across the federation by the creation of 23 State Offices from the initial six (6) Zonal Offices.
“By increasing its presence and access across the country, many people who hitherto could not access the services of the Commission due to distance are now able to approach the Commission and have their matters resolved,” he said.
Speaking on the importance of the fight against human rights violation as a major means of developing the society, he said the efforts would help in promoting prosperity, good governance and general development.
Said he: “The importance of human rights in any society can never be over-emphasized. We must as a people continue to champion the cause of human rights as a means of building a prosperous nation, strengthening our justice and democratic institutions and generally developing our nation.
“The United Nations has postulated that weak institutions, poor governance culture, lack of awareness and docility on the part of the people in the face of abuses and violations of their human rights are among the main challenges to the effective realization of human rights.”
He said since the protection of human rights was one of the major means through which development could be attained, the NHRC had regularly performed its activities with development at the back of its mind.
He however said the work should not be the sole monopoly of the NHRC.
Rather, he said, everybody should be involved in the task of using human rights protection to ensure development.
He said with the participation of everybody, the job would be made a lot easier and progress would be made faster.
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“The NHRC in its daily activities seeks to address these challenges through the performance of its core mandates. However, this is no work for NHRC alone and I want to use this opportunity to call on well-meaning Nigerians, Governments, civil society organizations, international organisations to continue to support the NHRC to effectively carry out its mandate.
“By so doing, we will together continue to strengthen the framework for human rights protection and promotion in Nigeria and in turn, our justice and democratic institutions,” he said.
Ojukwu who also spoke generally on the activities of the NHRC said the protection of human rights was one of the core functions of the NHRC and that the commission achieved that by receiving, investigating and treating complaints with the overall objective of helping the complainants and victims of human rights abuses secure remedy and redress as provided by law.
He explained that in carrying out its mandate, it had developed thematic and focal areas of interest for proper planning, effectiveness and efficiency.
“This ensures that when NHRC receives complaints of human rights violations from individuals, group of persons, communities amongst others, the complaints are easily categorised into these thematic and focal areas and accordingly assigned to officers of NHRC in charge of the thematic areas to handle.
“Some of these thematic areas include women, children and gender matters, corruption, elections and good governance, detention centres and regulatory agencies, education, environment and Niger-delta, independence of the judiciary and access to justice, law reforms and review, torture and extra-judicial killings, terrorism, communal conflict and other related violence, health, labour, food and shelter, Refugees, IDPs and Migrants, Human Rights Defenders, etc.,” he said.
He stated that to strengthen the ability of the NHRC to protect human rights in Nigeria, the Commission in 2013 developed and adopted standard guidelines for the management of all complaints received by the commission otherwise known as Standing Orders and Rules of Procedure (STORP).
He said the STORP not only stipulated the procedure for handling complaints but also provided guidelines on admissibility of complaints and modalities for conducting public inquires/hearings on alleged cases of gross human rights violation.
According to him, through the mechanisms, the NHRC had been able to effectively handle complaints and protect human rights in Nigeria.
