Expert commends FG for scaling human rights protection
NAN-H-72
Commendation
By Wandoo Sombo
Abuja, July 27, 2017 (NAN) Prof. Mohammed Ladan, a Policy Consultant on Access to Justice has commended the Federal Government for scaling up human rights promotion and protection in the country.
Ladan gave the commendation on Thursday in Abuja at a one day National Stakeholders’ Validation Workshop on Nigeria’s 6th Periodic Country Report to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The workshop was organised by the Ministry of Justice to review and validate the periodic report which it compiled with the assistance of Ladan as a consultant.
The professor, a lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, specifically commended the Government for addressing the recurrent allegations against the military on violation of human rights while fighting insurgency.
“On the issue of military abusing civilian’s rights, particularly with the role of the security agencies in counter-terrorism operations, there have been major improvements.
” Report shows that the National Human Rights Commission and the military worked together to improve on military-civilian relations, to the extent that a human rights desk has been established at the Defence Headquarters.,” he said.
He noted that establishing a human rights desk in the military formation showed that there was a degree of “openness, transparency and accountability” with regards to ending human rights violation.
Ladan said another indices of Government’s improvement on Human Rights protection was the recorded increase in number of girls retained in schools.
“The current report shows that from 76.5 per cent retention rate, it has gone up to 86.7 per cent of the girl child education except for the North East where insurgency is prevalent.
“There is also a scale up with regards to the rehabilitation of destroyed schools in the North East which has rekindled the resumption of students in these schools,” he said
The professor noted that human rights promotion and protection in the world has never been a matter of excellence or perfection.
“Every country tries to improve on its human rights records on a daily basis and no administration or tenure can successful say that it has completely eradicated human rights violations,” he said.
Declaring the workshop open, Mr Taiwo Abidogun, the Solicitor-General of the Federation said that since the release of the 5th report in 2015, there had been new developments with regards to human rights protection.
“Since the last report was presented, significant developments and achievements have been recorded by Nigeria in the promotion and protection of human and peoples’ rights as guaranteed in the African Charter,” he said.
Abidogun who the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice, said that the validation workshop was in fulfillment of the present administration’s commitment to its obligations to the African Union and its organs. (NAN)
WS/ROT