The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is set to assess the impact of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s ongoing economic reforms on the increasing incidences of human rights violations in Nigeria.
The commission announced this at the public presentation of the May human rights dashboard on Friday at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
During the presentation, the NHRC’s senior adviser, Hillary Ogbona, revealed that the country recorded 5,528 incidents of human rights complaints in May alone.
A further breakdown shows 360 kidnapping cases, 298 cases of killings, and 323 incidences of child abandonment in May.
In his welcome address, the executive secretary of the commission, Tony Ojukwu, SAN, stated that governments worldwide bear the responsibility of promoting human rights through the provision of necessary policies.
Ojukwu stressed that the commission’s responsibility extends beyond providing monthly details of human rights violations to collaborating with civil society organisations and relevant stakeholders to reduce these incidents.
Ojukwu, during the presentation of the 5th edition of the human rights dashboard on Friday, emphasised the commission’s concern over the substantial increase in rights violation complaints.
He noted that the most worrisome issues include the rising incidence of mass killings, kidnappings, arrests of journalists, and attacks on security agencies, which topped the scale in May.
The commission stated it would investigate and present the impact of the ongoing economic reforms on the upsurge of human rights violations in the next monthly human rights dashboard presentation.
