450 Human Rights Violations Reported During Polls – NHRC

The National Human Rights Commission received 450 complaints of human rights violations during the general elections, its Executive Secretary, Chief Tony Ojukwu (SAN), said on Wednesday.

According to him, while 300 complaints of human rights violation were received during the presidential and National Assembly elections, 150 cases were recorded during the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.

Ojukwu stated these in an interview with journalists in Abuja during the launch of the e-rights project by the Avocats Sans Frontières France, popularly known as Lawyers Without Borders.

The project, which was funded by the European Union, is aimed at promoting the rights of Nigerians in the digital sphere, harnessing opportunities and addressing challenges provided by new technologies.

Ojukwu explained that the NHRC closely monitored activities of law enforcement and security agencies during the elections.

He said, “During the presidential elections, we had about 300 cases of complaints or human rights violations and during the governorship and states Houses of Assembly elections we had about 150 complaints.

“However, I cannot say exactly the categorisation. This is because some were about violence, vote-buying, voters suppression, intimidation, hate speech and so on. Don’t forget, we had a Situation Room which was able to harness the complaints of Nigerians across board of the violations that happened during the election.”

The Vice President of ASF France, Ivan Paneff, said the agency had, over the last 15 years, worked with Nigerian institutions to protect human rights of the citizens.

He, however, said the coming of modern technologies had made it necessary to look at the aspect of digital rights.

“Now, we have entered a new phase in a new area of the law due to the permanent intervention of electronic devices, tools, networks in our day to day life.

“It means that we have to take that in account to protect the rights of the citizens and to fight against abuses using tools, networks, different bad behavior of certain bodies or certain companies. That’s why we opened a partnership with Nigerian institution in that way,” Paneff stated.

The Country Representative of ASF France in Nigeria, Angela Uwandu, warned against censorship of online platforms, saying freedom of expression have to be guaranteed, not just offline, but also on online platforms.