Nigeria’s human rights crisis is acquiring a new dimension as abuses that once played out mainly in homes, streets, detention facilities and conflict zones increasingly migrate to smartphones and digital platforms, raising fresh concerns ahead of the 2027 general elections.

This emerging shift was highlighted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) as it presented its July 2026 Human Rights Situation Dashboard, which recorded 354,997 complaints across the country.

The commision said while killings, kidnapping, sexual violence and other conventional violations remain major concerns, it drew attention to a growing category of technology-enabled abuses, including online harassment, cyberbullying, digital surveillance, data exploitation, blackmail, extortion, hate speech and the use of digital platforms to incite violence.

Presenting the dashboard, the Executive Secretary of the NHRC, Chief Tony Ojukwu, SAN, said the figures should not be viewed merely as statistics but as evidence of the human rights realities confronting citizens across the country.

According to him, the dashboard provides an indication of where violations are occurring, the patterns emerging and areas requiring urgent intervention.

The Human Rights Adviser to the Executive Secretary, Dr Hilary Ogbonna, who gave a graphic presentation of the dashboard, highlighted the continuing abuse of women and children, as well as killings, kidnapping and other forms of violence.

The Commission recorded 25 cases of sexual violence against children and minors in July alone, underscoring that the movement of human rights violations into the digital space does not mean conventional abuses have diminished.

Rather, the emerging picture suggests that Nigeria is facing two interconnected rights battlegrounds, the physical and the digital.

In the digital space, a single abusive post, manipulated image, threat or inciting message can potentially reach thousands of people within minutes, while technology can make harassment, blackmail and intimidation persistent long after the initial incident.

The commission said this has become particularly significant as Nigeria approaches the 2027 elections, when political competition, religious mobilisation and public debate are expected to intensify across social media platforms.

The NHRC has therefore warned politicians, religious leaders and traditional rulers against rhetoric capable of deepening hatred and division.

With artificial intelligence increasingly capable of generating convincing text, images, audio and video, the ability to manufacture or amplify harmful content has become considerably easier.

Messages capable of provoking fear, hatred or violence can move rapidly from one digital platform to another before authorities or victims are able to respond.

For the human rights community, this creates a difficult enforcement problem as the violation may be committed anonymously, across multiple platforms and sometimes from outside the victim’s immediate jurisdiction, while the consequences are experienced by a real person in a real community.

It is against this changing landscape that the NHRC has begun strengthening its response to technology-enabled rights abuses.

At the presentation of the July dashboard, the Commission and Hope Behind Bars Africa signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at strengthening cooperation on technology-enabled human rights challenges and the protection of detainees.

The partnership is anchored on Justice Tech-Node, an initiative designed to strengthen Nigeria’s technology-justice ecosystem and develop practical responses to rights violations occurring through or with the aid of technology.

Founder and Executive Director of Hope Behind Bars Africa, Mrs Funke Adeoye, reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to working with the Commission, particularly on detainee protection and technology-related justice concerns.

She also commended the Human Rights Dashboard for providing a mechanism through which violations can be brought to the attention of relevant authorities and stakeholders for redress.

Unlike many conventional violations, digital abuse can be replicated almost indefinitely. A threatening message can be forwarded, a private image distributed, an individual’s personal information exposed, or hateful content amplified to an audience far beyond the original target.

The smartphone therefore increasingly occupies an unusual position in Nigeria’s human rights landscape.

It can serve simultaneously as a tool for documenting abuse, seeking help and mobilising citizens , and as an instrument through which abuse itself is committed.