Criminal Politics: Violence, “Godfathers” and Corruption in Nigeria

Entrenching Impunity: Federal Government Complicity, Human
Rights Abuse and Corruption
“Many people have been killed in this system and no one has been
held to account for it.”
—Hon. Ben Chuks, Anambra State
During its eight years in power the Obasanjo administration made little significant
effort to ensure that government officials and members of the security forces
implicated in violations of civil and political rights, including election-related
violence, were held to account. While only a small minority of the human rights
abuses documented in this report were directly carried out by federal government
officials, the federal government’s failure to combat widespread impunity for abuses
orchestrated by government and PDP officials at the state and local level has
fostered the unabated continuation of those abuses.
Impunity and Governance in Nigeria
Throughout Nigeria there exists a deeply entrenched culture of impunity that
developed at all levels of Nigeria’s government under military rule and remains as a
source of the country’s worst human rights abuses since the return to civilian rule in
1999. On several occasions since then, the Nigerian military has carried out
misdirected reprisals against civilian populations, destroying entire communities
and murdering hundreds of Nigerian civilians. 124 No one has been held to account for
ordering or participating in those atrocities. The Nigerian police routinely torture
criminal suspects and others who fall into their custody. President Obasanjo’s
rhetorical acknowledgement of the problem of police torture in 2005 was not
124 In November 1999 the Nigerian military razed the town of Odi in apparent retaliation for the killing of several soldiers by an
armed gang in the town. See Human Rights Watch, Nigeria—The Destruction of Odi and Rape in Choba, December 1999,
http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/dec/nibg1299.htm. On October 22–24, 2001, several hundred soldiers of the Nigerian army
killed more than 200 unarmed civilians and destroyed homes, shops, public buildings and other property in more than seven
towns and villages in Benue State in central-eastern Nigeria. See Human Rights Watch, Nigeria—Military Revenge in Benue: A
Population Under Attack, vol. 14, no. 2(A), April 2002, http://hrw.org/reports/2002/nigeria/. On August 24, 2006, the
Nigerian military razed the community of Aker Base outside Port Harcourt after militants abducted an Italian oil worker and
shot one soldier there. See “Nigeria: Military Must be held to Account for Razing of Community,” Human Rights Watch news
release, August 29, 2006, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/29/nigeri14087.htm.
41
Human Rights Watch October 2007