ABUJA, Sept 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nigeria’s multiple security problems have created a crisis that requires urgent attention and could lead to instability in other African countries if it is not addressed, a United Nations rapporteur said.
Security forces in Africa’s most populous country are trying to tackle a decade-long Islamist insurgency in the northeast, banditry in the northwest and bloody clashes between nomadic herdsmen and farming communities over dwindling arable land in central states.
Agnes Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Nigeria was a “pressure cooker of internal conflict”.
“The overall situation I have found is one of extreme concern,” she told a news conference in the capital, Abuja, where she presented her preliminary findings following a 12-day visit to the country
If ignored, the ripple effects of the situation in Nigeria could destabilize the sub-region, if not the whole continent, Callamard warned.
“Nigeria is confronting nationwide, regional and global pressures, such as population explosion, an increased number of people living in absolute poverty, climate change and desertification, and increasing proliferation of weapons,” she said.
“These are re-enforcing localized systems and country-wide patterns of violence, many of which are seemingly spinning out of control.”
Areas of concern, include the armed conflict against the Boko Haram terror group in the northeast, insecurity and violence in the northwest, the conflict in the central area known as the Middle Belt and parts of the northwest and south between nomadic Fulani herdsmen and indigenous farming communities.
Nigeria’s south is plagued by armed gangs, general repression of minority and indigenous groups, killings during evictions in slum areas and widespread police brutality, said Callamard.
Callamard also reported some positive signs, including progress against Boko Haram group and its affiliates, as well as fewer reports of arbitrary killings and deaths in custody at the hands of the military over the last two years.
However, there has been little progress in terms of accountability and reparations for grave human rights violations in the past, she underlined.
“I particularly urge the Nigerian Government, and the international community, to prioritize as a matter of urgency, accountability and access to justice for all victims and addressing the conflicts between nomadic cattle breeding and farming communities, fuelled by toxic narratives and the large availability of weapons,” she said.
Some high-profile cases of killings by police have resulted in the arrest and prosecution of the officers responsible and others involving clashes between Fulani herdsmen and indigenous farming communities have been investigated in Benue State, Callamard noted.
But, “such examples of accountability remain the exception”.
In almost all of the cases brought to Callamard’s attention during her visit, none of the alleged perpetrators had been brought to justice, she said.
“The loss of trust and confidence in public institutions prompts Nigerians to take matters of protection into their own hands, which is leading to a proliferation of self-protecting armed militia and cases of ‘jungle justice’,” she said.
Callamard called on the Nigerian authorities “to look carefully into my findings”, saying that she remains “available for further cooperation”.
During her mission, the Special Rapporteur met government officials, local authorities and civil society representatives, family members whose relatives had been brutally killed and people forced from their homes.
Among the cities on Callamard’s itinerary were Abuja, Maiduguri, Makurdi, Jos, Port Harcourt and Lagos.
Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report back on a situation, which Callamard will do in June 2020. — NNN-AGENCIES