UN demands urgent action to stop torture in Nigeria

The United Nations has pointed out the inadequacy of measures to end torture and ill-treatment and enhance the conditions of detention in Nigeria, especially in police stations and other facilities of security forces.

Shujune Muhammad, the head of delegation of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT), mave this call this when the team visited the country on 18 September.

Facilities assessed included various detention facilities, including those for men, women, and children, police stations, criminal investigation departments, and facilities addressing drug and human trafficking.

In a statement shared with PREMIUM TIMES, the delegation explained that the purpose of the visit is to determine the treatment of individuals in police custody and correctional facilities, including the nation’s progress in safeguarding human rights for those deprived of their liberty.

“The situation in most places of detention is abysmal. Legal safeguards must be immediately implemented, and the current impunity of perpetrators for acts of torture must end,” he said.

The delegation also regretted the lack of cooperation from Nigerian authorities, during and prior to the visit. “We were confronted with a climate of hostility and faced access issues in several places of detention.”

But, the team argued that the visit and allowing it to exercise its mandate without obstruction is an international obligation under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), which the Nigerian authorities ratified in 2009.

The anti-torture committee also expressed displeasure about the inability of the Nigerian government to establish a functional national preventive mechanism on dentention issues in the country’s criminal justice system.

“This, unfortunately, shows that the prevention of torture and ill-treatment is not taken seriously by the State party, and the horrific situation we have documented speaks to this,” it said.

Paper-tiger laws on torture

In 2018, the United States Department of State observed that the failure of the Nigerian government to investigate and punish both state and non-state actors accused of human rights violations in the country has led to the entrenchment of abuses such as torture, illegal detention, human trafficking and sexual exploitations.

The observation which covered various instances of human rights violation excoriated the Nigerian government for the political will to identify and prosecute perpetrators of rights abuses despite passing laws and other legislation to check these violations.

Meanwhile, the situation keeps deteriorating. For instance, Amnesty International recorded a widespread police brutality during the 2020 EndSars protest and the just-concluded #EndBadGovernance protests in Nigeria.

This impunity festers not because of lack of appropriate laws to prosecute perpetrators but in most cases, the laws are rendered redundant due to lack of a political will to enforce them.