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*2007 elections: presidential and parliamentary candidates must publicly commit to human rights reform

Introduction

With a few months to go before the 2007 elections, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) is calling on all the presidential and parliamentary candidates to publicly commit themselves to a clear programme of human rights reform, if the next democratic dispensation is to be able to meet the basic needs of the citizens, majority of which continues to live in poverty and deprivation.

Presidential and parliamentary candidates for the 2007 elections have so far failed to come up with coherent and clear plans for how they intend to increase the promotion and protection of human rights, accountability and the rule of law. But the candidates need to say to the electorates “here is what we are going to do to protect and promote human rights, accountability and the rule of law”.

SERAP is therefore seeking to promote debate over how human rights, especially economic, social and cultural rights, may be more effectively promoted and protected in Nigeria.
Elections provide an opportunity for consolidating democracy and justice in a country such as Nigeria that is characterised by corruption and insufficient attention to economic, social and cultural rights protection. Human rights principles, including accountability and transparency, should be at the heart of any proposed agenda of each candidate, and of the future government.

Nigeria has oil wealth and abundant human resources. It is the world’s sixth largest producer of oil, and a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It earns about $50 million daily from crude oil export alone. Its large natural resource base should have made the country prosperous and able to meet the basic needs, including health, food, education, and housing, of its population.

Several years after independence, however, Nigeria is far from realizing the objectives of its independence or the aspirations of its founding fathers. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in December 2002 reported that about 70 million Nigerians are living below the poverty level, increase of 20 million people since 1998. Yet, successive Nigerian constitutions, including the present 1999 Constitution frequently failed to incorporate legally enforceable economic, social and cultural rights, including the rights to food, education, health, housing and work.



Furthermore, constitutional provisions prohibiting corruption are weak and largely non-enforceable. The 1999 Constitution does not contain a human right to corruption-free society, and does not provide effective remedies to victims of official corruption.
Yet, the prevalence of poverty in Nigeria is primarily caused by the venality and self-aggrandizement of the nation’s leaders, both military and civilian, since independence in 1960. Virtually all government institutions, including the judiciary and the police, are affected. Corruption has become a way of life, enabling impunity.

The return of democracy in 1999 was seen as major landmark and opportunity for the restoration of justice, accountability, transparency and enjoyment of human rights, especially basic economic and social rights, of the Nigerian people.

However, citizens’ expectations of enjoyment of basic necessities of life under a democratic dispensation have dimmed, as the nation’s wealth and resources that should naturally be available to meet those needs are plundered by the country’s political ‘leaders’, without saturation or remorse. The result has been massive and direct denial of the right to work, and the right to an adequate standard of living, including the rights to food, housing, health and education.

SERAP believes that the forthcoming elections provide an important opportunity for Nigerian citizens to raise their human rights concerns with candidates. In this document, SERAP is highlighting several key human rights areas: the need for constitutional reform to ensure that economic, social and cultural rights are recognized as legally enforceable human rights; develop a human rights policy for education and health; defend the rights of human rights defenders; establish a judicial commission of enquiries to investigate the amount of money that have been stolen since independence in 1960; comply with international human rights recommendations relating to economic, social and cultural rights; and strengthen the constitutional, legal and judicial framework for addressing corruption The organization also calls on election candidates to adopt the following priorities for reform:

1.Strengthen the national legal framework to recognize and guarantee economic and social rights explicitly as enforceable human rights:The ratification by Nigeria of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights is a welcome development.

However, while Nigeria has incorporated the African Charter into its domestic legislation in accordance with constitutional provision requiring such incorporation, it has neither incorporated the ICESCR, which contains more comprehensive set of economic and social rights than the African Charter, nor recognized explicitly economic and social rights as human rights.

In addition, the Nigerian Constitution does not include economic and social rights as enforceable human rights. Yet, the most effective method of ensuring the enjoyment of human rights is undoubtedly to provide the individual with appropriate remedies at a national level.

SERAP recommends that presidential and parliamentary candidates should:
•Publicly express support for the recognition and guarantee of economic and social rights constitutionally and through appropriate legislative and administrative provisions, as enforceable human rights.

•Publicly commit to supporting the incorporation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which Nigeria has ratified into national legislation.

2. Overcome the paralysis in the education and health systems. All economic, social and cultural rights are clearly important human rights, and should be fully implemented. However, the clear priority for Nigeria is to address the problems confronting the education and health systems. Both the rights to education and health are clearly defined human rights under international law.

But investment in both education and health is very low, contrary to human rights principles. Only people with adequate purchasing power can buy education and health for themselves and for their children, but poor children and their parents cannot get any access to education and health.

Corruption and other systemic problems have meant that money budgeted for education and health hardly reach and impact these sectors. Overall, Nigeria’s education and health strategies are not informed by human rights law.

The government should devise and periodically review a human rights plan of action on the implementation of a rights-based approach to education and health. The plan of action should aim to translate Nigeria’s international obligations into reality, including by covering specific contents of the rights to education and to health and the corresponding obligations, define clear objectives, set targets or goals to be achieved and the time-frame for their achievement, and formulate adequate policies and corresponding benchmarks and indicators.



The plan should establish institutional responsibility for the process, identify resources available to attain the objectives, targets and goals; allocate resources appropriately according to institutional responsibility and establish accountability mechanisms to ensure full implementation. A national plan of action to implement a rights-based approach to education and health would provide a policy framework with which to address the problems confronting the education and health sectors, and ensure compliance with Nigeria’s international human rights obligations.

SERAP recommends that presidential and parliamentary candidates should: •Publicly acknowledge that both education and health are matters of human rights, and Nigeria has a responsibility to guarantee them.
•Publicly commit to ensuring the development of a human rights action plan on education and health.
•Publicly commit to making primary and secondary education free and compulsory.
•Publicly acknowledge the public expenditure gap between the promise and the reality and articulate what are the options for closing it.
•Publicly express support for the provision, free of charge, of anti-retroviral drugs for children living with HIV.
•Publicly commit to increase government resources and to devise and implement a comprehensive and coordinated program to realize the right to have access to life saving drugs and surgeries for children living with HIV.
•Publicly commit to adequately resource action plans on HIV prevention, care and support for children and pre-natal medication for pregnant women.

3. Defend the rights of human rights defenders and other members of civil society Almost every successive government in Nigeria, especially military governments, have undermined the ability of human rights defenders to demand accountability from the governments and their agents with respect to their commitment to fulfill the economic and social rights of the citizens. Yet, the role of the civil society, including human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a catalyst for promoting and protecting human rights can hardly be overestimated.

SERAP recommends that presidential and parliamentary candidates should: •Publicly express support for the work carried out by human rights defenders, and publicly commit to ending the apparent campaign to undermine the legitimate work of human rights defenders.
•Publicly commit to review the use of the legal system to undermine the work of human rights defenders, national human rights commission, trade unionists and community activists.
•Publicly commit to investigate and sanction public officials who undermine the work of human rights activists.
•Publicly commit to adopt effective measures to ensure that the judicial authorities advance full and impartial criminal investigations into human rights violations and abuses against human rights defenders, trade unionists and community activists.

4. Establish a national judicial commission of enquiry to investigate the amount of monies that have been stolen by governments or their agents since independence in 1960, and to recommend mechanisms to locate and recover such funds wherever they may be found.The project for the reinvigoration of Nigeria must inevitably include finding, recovering and utilizing stolen funds since independence in 1960 to reverse the massive poverty to which majority of its citizens is subjected.

SERAP recommends that an independent commission of enquiry, to be composed of representatives of civil society and relevant authorities, should be set up to conduct thorough, independent and impartial investigations into the amount of money that have been stolen since Nigeria achieved its independence, as well as the impact of this on the social and economic life of the people.

It should be equipped with the necessary authority and resources, and should be involved in wide consultation with Nigerian civil society and relevant international bodies about its mandate, methodology and scope of work and be generally accountable to and transparent to the public.

The African Charter on Human and Peoples, Rights recognizes that in case of spoliation of natural resources, the dispossessed people shall have the right to lawful recovery and to adequate compensation.

Accordingly, it is obligatory on the government not only to recover stolen funds, but also to ensure that the citizens receive adequate compensation. SERAP recommends that presidential and parliamentary candidates should: •Publicly express support for the establishment of a judicial commission of enquiries to investigate the amount of money that has been stolen from Nigeria as articulated above.

5. Comply with international human rights recommendations.In its concluding observations on Nigeria in 1998, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, expressed its concerns about the lack of implementation of economic, social and cultural rights including the rights to food, to health, to education and to housing in Nigeria.

In order to ensure that Nigeria complies with its obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Committee made a number of recommendations to the Nigerian government.

First, it asked the government to strengthen the authority of the Nigerian judiciary and the Human Rights Commission.

Second, the Committee urged the Government to open-up to international organizations, U.N. organs and Specialized Agencies and to conduct constructive dialogues with them in openness and transparency with a view to restoring confidence in Nigeria’s intentions to implement its human rights obligations, including those under the Covenant.

Third, the Committee asked the government to respect and restore trade union freedoms and academic freedom; and the rights of minority and ethnic communities, including the Ogoni people, and provide full redress for the violations of the rights set forth in the Covenant that they may have suffered.

Fourth, the Committee called on the Government to cease and prevent, in law and in practice, all forms of social, economic and physical violence and discrimination against women and children.

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Furthermore, the Nigerian Government was asked to enact legislation and ensure by all appropriate means protection against the many negative consequences, which have ensured child school dropouts, child labor, and child malnutrition. Finally, the Committee urged the government to enforce the right to compulsory free primary education and to cease the massive and arbitrary evictions of people from their homes and take such measures as are necessary in order to alleviate the plight of those who are subject to arbitrary evictions or are too poor to afford a decent accommodation.

The concluding observations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights highlighted above illustrate the extent to which individuals’ basic economic and social rights, such as the rights to food, housing, health and education, have been grossly denied, and the degree of Nigeria’s compliance, or more accurately, non-compliance, with its treaty obligations.

Although the Committee asked the Nigerian Government to submit a comprehensive second periodic report by January 1 2000, as of August 2006 no such report is known to have been submitted.

SERAP recommends that presidential and parliamentary candidates should:
•Publicly commit to full and prompt implementation of the human rights recommendations by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

6.Strengthen the constitutional, legal and judicial framework for addressing corruption.

SERAP recommends that presidential and parliamentary candidates should:
•Publicly express support for a broadened definition of treason to include economic crimes and depredations of public funds.

•Publicly acknowledge the failure of many public officials to declare their assets, contrary to the Constitution; and then commit to implementing the Constitutional framework to ensure that top state officials, including president, not only declare their assets but also cause such declaration to be published widely and regularly, to ensure access of every citizen.

•Publicly commit to addressing the problem of impunity for corruption, and for fair investigation and prosecution of corruption cases and other violations of economic, social and cultural rights.

•Publicly commit to the ratification of the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption.

Conclusion

SERAP aims by this document to help promote economic, social and cultural rights debate before, during and after the 2007 elections. SERAP hopes that the key human rights issues highlighted above will be placed at the forefront of the election agenda and emerge as a top priority for all the presidential and parliamentary candidates. SERAP will work individually and with other stakeholders to ensure that all the presidential and parliamentary candidates incorporate the above recommendations into their election manifestos and make a public commitment to comply with them should they emerge as winners of the elections.

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To view other Publications please click the following below

Complaint to UN

Serap Welcomes Anti-Corruption

Support Ratification

Lagos State Government

National Human Rights Commission

Open Letter To The President

Request to investigate spending

Campaign for Accountable Governance

Cage asks Senate panel

Request to procecute all suspected perpetrators

Universal access to Healthcare for Women and Children