Barely one month to the first anniversary of the emergence of the current Federal administration headed by Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who was sworn in as the third executive civilian president of the federal republic of Nigeria on May 29, 2007, a majority of Nigerians that should know are at a loss as to the precise human rights agenda of the administration. The question that has continued to echo across different schools of thought in Nigeria and even the developed western world is what is President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s human rights agenda?

This question was reinforced when it emerged that the seven-point agenda reeled out by the current administration seems bereft of human rights contents even as the pronouncements and actions of key government officials like the Secretary to the Federal Government, Baba Gana Kingibe, who reportedly announced the dissolution of the legally constituted governing council of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria (NHRC) without regard to international obligations of Nigeria to respect the Paris principle.

That principle prescribes compliance with statutory tenures for the officials of the country’s Human Rights Commission as enshrined in the 1995 National Human Rights Commission Act, which is an Act of the National Assembly. The dissolution did not help matters and this has made analysts around the world to believe that the current administration does not have any clearly defined Human Rights agenda.

In the seven point agenda of the current administration, power and energy, food security, wealth creation, transport, land reforms, security, and education were the major components just as the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua-led administration did not deem it appropriate to at least mention the term human rights in the entire gamut of the seven-point agenda which is now the ground rule for the management of Nigeria’s civil, political and economic administration.

Though the current Federal Minister of Information and communication, Mr. John Ogar Odey who has done so much to explain the underlying objectives of the seven-point agenda of this administration insists that the respect for the human rights of Nigerians and other citizens of the world resident in Nigeria was germane in the compilation of the seven point agenda, the Federal Government is yet to manifest more than a passing and ephemeral commitment to ensure the enthronement of the respect of the human rights of Nigerians.

Unemployment and poverty are widening by the day and millions of Nigerians are left to roam around without any concrete agenda to rescue them from the massive frustrations that they face on daily basis in Nigeria. All the interventionist institutions like the National Directorate of Employment [NDE], the National Agency for Poverty Eradication [NAPEP] and even the office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have not impacted positively to redress the widening chasm between the rich and the large army of poor Nigerians.

In the power and energy sector for instance, the Federal Government promised that the infrastructure reforms in this sector, especially the development of sufficient and adequate power supply, will ensure Nigeria’s ability to develop as a modern economy and an industrialized nation by the year 2015. One year after this pronouncement was made by the current administration with an added promise to declare what it calls a state of emergency in the power sector, nothing significant has been done.

Apart from the fact that the promised state of emergency is yet to be declared, Government has further demonstrated its resolve to outsource the power and energy sector to the whims and caprices of private sector investors because according to the Federal Government, Nigerian Government does not have the funds to revitalize the ailing power and energy sector which is seriously weakened by institutional corruption especially in the last eight years when over $16 Billion United States of Nigeria’s funds were mismanaged by the immediate past administration.

In the area of food security, the current government emphasized that the development of modern technology, research, financial injection into research, production and development of agricultural inputs will revolutionize the agricultural sector leading to what it calls a 5-10 fold increase in yield and production. This move, according to the Federal Government will result in massive domestic and commercial outputs and technological knowledge transfer to farmers. Majority of Nigerian farmers who ought to be the beneficiaries of this gesture by government know very well from experience that these are easier said than done.

Now, Nigeria is at the verge of food insecurity because of Government’s deliberate neglect of the agricultural sector over the last fifty years and the trend has continued even now. The global food insecurity has worsened Nigerians’ predicament. The 1999 Constitution did not make the chapter two which enunciates the fundamental principles of state policies explicitly justifiable so that Nigerians who feel strongly that government is not keeping to its words to protect and promote their socio-political rights as basic human rights can challenge government in the law court and compel the implementation of this rights-based approach to food security. Section 14 (1) (b) of the 1999 Constitution states that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of Government.

For instance, section 18(3) of the 1999 Constitution was so ambiguous that it stated that Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy; and to this end Government shall and when practicable provide…. The wording of this provision is very unreliable. The pronouncement by Government in the seven point agenda is bereft of workable time frame and modalities for actualizing the goals. This is why most people support the move by the National Assembly to amend the 1999 Constitution to comply substantially with the rights-based demands of the citizenry and to hold government officials accountable to the electorate.

Black, in his eighth edition Law Dictionary defined Human Rights as “The freedoms, immunities and the benefits that... all human beings should be able to claim as a matter of right in the society which they live”. The Vienna World Conference on Human Rights held in 1993, encouraged States to draw up National Human Rights Action plans to develop a human rights strategy suited to their own situations. The main function of such a plan is to improve the promotion and protection of human rights. To that end, human rights improvements are expressed as tangible objectives of public policy, which are to be attained through the implementation of specific programmes, the participation of all relevant sectors of government and society, and the allocation of sufficient resources.

Nigeria, through the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria (NHRC), drew up a National Action Plan on Human Rights which was presented in early 2006 to the Federal Executive Council by the then Federal Attorney General, Bayo Ojo, accompanied by the Governing Council of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria appointed in 2005 for a four-year tenure, including this writer. Shortly after the National Action Plan on Human Rights was presented to the Federal Executive Council and adopted as a working document in Nigeria and subsequently presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Government embarked on deliberate moves to undermine the independence and powers of National Human Rights Commission [NHRC] with the removal of the then Executive Secretary, Buhari Bello, who indeed is also a civil servant.

Human rights campaigners in Nigeria advocated the appointment of an independent human rights expert to be appointed to head the Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) but Government went on to appoint another civil servant. From 2006 to late 2007, the functions and powers of the Governing Council of the National Human Rights Commission encapsulated in the 1995 National Human Rights Commission establishment Act were systematically abused and the Council sat for fewer times than is required by the enabling Act.

Nigeria’s National Action Plan on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights is comprehensive and encapsulates some of the finest programmes that if the current administration had relied on the document in writing its’ seven point agenda, governance would have been enriched. Prison Reforms, which was mouthed loudly by the immediate past administration, was not attended to as quickly as Nigerians were expecting. The prison decongestion programme spearheaded by the office of the federal Attorney General is not receiving the right kind of attention and, in fact, it is alleged that only lawyers loyal to the current Federal Attorney General are been settled with the big briefs to decongest the prison through the court system.

It is interesting to note here that for close to two weeks now, Iyabo Obasanjo, a serving Senator wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission over charges of N300 Million naira scam in the Federal Ministry of Health claimed that she is hiding from the EFCC because of fear of torture. This claim is crucial because this writer has met at least a dozen persons allegedly tortured by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

Government must do something crucial to assure Nigerians that it is committed to protecting and promoting their fundamental Human Rights because for now, as an insider in the Human Rights sector, I believe that the current administration does not have a clearly defined Human Rights agenda.