HRW calls on the Nigerian president to make human rights a priority within days of his inauguration

May 26. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has asked this Friday the president-elect of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, to make Human Rights a flag of the mandate that he will formally assume next Monday, amid economic uncertainty and insecurity in the country .

Accompanying his petition, HRW makes a pessimistic assessment of the situation in Nigeria, a country that “has failed to guarantee economic and social rights for all.” According to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, approximately 133 million people in the country live in poverty in a country where inequality has also reached extreme levels as the gap between rich and poor “continues to widen at an alarming rate.” understands HRW.

The NGO indicates that the country lacks a functional social security system capable of protecting the population from economic crises and stages of personal economic insecurity such as those that occur during old age, unemployment, illness or childbirth.

HRW also recalls the endemic threat posed by “bandits”, armed groups dedicated to kidnapping and extortion, especially in the northwest of the country, and whose activity feeds off the conflict in the northeast between the Islamist armed group Boko Haram, its factions dissidents and the Nigerian security forces.

This latest confrontation, recalls Human Rights Watch, has caused the death of some 350,000 civilians and has created a humanitarian crisis that includes the displacement of more than two million civilians within Nigeria and more than 280,000 to Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

To all this must be added the activities of separatist groups operating in the southeast of the country, responsible for the murders and mutilations of the local population to terrorize people and paralyze economic activity.

The Nigerian security forces have not escaped criticism from the organization, which accuses the Army and the Police of “serious abuses against Human Rights, including arbitrary arrests, illegal detentions and extrajudicial executions.”

“The security forces also use excessive force to suppress the right of citizens to protest, while the authorities have repeatedly failed to hold the agents responsible for the abuses accountable,” the NGO adds.

“Tinubu will take the reins at a time of deep uncertainty, with worsening poverty and inequality, amid high levels of insecurity and recurring violations of civil and political rights,” said Anietie Ewang, HRW’s Nigerian researcher.

“Once in office, the president-elect must focus on these critical issues and make efforts to reverse the course of significant human rights setbacks,” he added.

Tinubu, who was declared the winner of the presidential elections in February 2023, will thus take office on May 29 for a period of four years after elections, HRW finally recalls, which were marred by irregularities, violence at the polls and the impossibility of uploading the electoral results of the voting units in real time.

The inauguration will thus take place, amid the claims of his two great rivals, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, and Labor Peter Obi, before the Court of Appeal, which functions as the presidential electoral court.