Still on human rights abuses

Last week’s discourse which was on the maltreatment of the Muslim Shi’ites in Nigeria was essentially for me a human rights issue. By any stretch of the imagination, it is absolutely wrong to attack a human settlement, brutally eliminate over 300 persons, hide the corpses and later bury them in a mass grave. It is more terrible when this is as a result of state terrorism. No argument can justify such a dastardly development; it is simply repulsive and in fact a crime against humanity. This week, I had wanted to give the many fans of this column their space but on a second thought I chose to continue with this issue because the subject of abuse and dehumanization of citizens is one matter that is at the back of our backwardness as a nation. Every nation where the citizen’s confidence is battered never experiences growth; it is difficult to have patriotic citizens when the basis for it has been eroded. This is why I think the issue of human rights should remain priority task to be sorted out by all of us not just those in government, just like corruption.
Between 1970-1999, enforcement of human rights was an issue, and individuals, particularly lawyers who wanted to get into national consciousness, threw themselves into cases of human rights abuses, the civil rights community was very alive on this at that time. I don’t know why it is no longer so today. Few days ago, the first son of late Gani Fawehimi in an interview threw little light on why they don’t find issues of human rights very interesting and one of the points is that the era of military administration has gone and people are sold to the false belief that not much of human rights abuses happen under a democratic dispensation. Anybody conversant with history would know that this position is not only wrong but dangerous as well. When Thomas Jefferson even before the inception of the American Nation as we know it today said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” and Wendell Phillips later amplified Jefferson’s statement by saying, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few,” the point they made, which we should take seriously is that the urge to abuse citizens and deny them their rights is always inherent in any system but it is nipped in the bud when citizens realize that they have a responsibility to prevent or oppose any unlawful attempt to breach of their natural and constitutionally guaranteed rights.
We have let down our guard or do I say we don’t even know what we should do in this regard; so the few tyrants among us have seized the space and are abusing the rights of citizens and diminishing their worth. We encounter such abuses every minute and the unfortunate thing is that many of such actions are perpetrated by people elected or appointed into public office, and even private companies, officers whose main responsibility ought to be the wholesome protection of the citizens against all kinds of abuses and deprivation. Let me touch on a few of such abuses in the interest of those who live with us but don’t know what is happening around them. The justice system for instance has become a Dracula, a blood sucking apparatus on its own. It is difficult to use words to amply reflect what the citizens, especially the poor ones, go through in the hands of justice officials. By this I mean the police, lawyers, court officials and judges of different categories. A police official I met by chance told me anybody who has a case and has no money is likely to go to jail; what about the manner they treat suspects, removing their clothes, parading them in front of cameras and detaining them in environments not suitable for even dogs. In the other instances, citizens find it hard to see top officials to explain off few details. When opportunities present themselves, they face possibility of being ordered out like a dog at a church altar on a Sunday service.
Last week, I mentioned how security personnel extort and dehumanize citizens and how civil servants think they do us a favour when they serve us. Today I want to add to the list of human rights abuses and dehumanization of citizens. When government takes peoples’ lands and doesn’t pay compensations, I wouldn’t know what that means, neither would I know how much it adds to their comfort. Last Wednesday, I came across a pensioner who was at loggerhead with officials of Enugu Electricity Distribution Company over a service charge of N7,000. He told me that besides not using power during the period, he could not pay such amount because since his retirement, he had neither received his pensions nor gratuity. What about workers with children, some of them couples working in the same establishment, who stay six to eight months without salaries. Is this not an abuse of human rights? Does it not amount to dehumanization of citizens? What about the increasing cases of rape? Why would we have a system that tolerates the maltreatment of wives after their husbands have died?
I also wonder why the poor fight against themselves; the gate keeper in a ministry or company often assumes the role and authority of his master, even without instruction; he takes delight in turning away members of his class sometimes under inclement weather and this is against the fact that he was kept there not to debar, rather to facilitate, the easy passage and better treatment of those who have genuine businesses to do with the organization. What about sex for marks in higher institutions? I don’t know the all reasons why we do all these things. However, I think it has to do with poor quality leadership at all levels; our experience has been that of reluctant presidents, governors and local government chairmen; it has always been a case of imposition of specimens of poor originals; stunted economy and accompanying deprivations add to it. A hungry man can’t think right. There is also the issue of no long-term policy on all aspects of national life. We don’t train citizens even when we know that in the heart of every man is plenty of folly. Chinese that we beg and cajole to give us their hard earned money would not have been where they are if they failed to train their citizens and to have long-term development plans. Few weeks ago the authorities there said by 2050 China would become a football powerhouse and a look would show that they have started working towards that goal – through a systematic approach, by building facilities and spending money to recruit foreign stars to play in the league. Do we see any lesson there on how to build a society in which there is prosperity and honour so that the rights of citizens can be guaranteed without much hassle? When we recruit 10,000 new police recruits into a system notorious for its human rights abuses, can this be a true indication of seriousness to deal with issues of human rights defects plaguing our nation? Very difficult question to answer, perhaps somebody would be kind to offer me some answers.