By Dike Onwuamaeze
Monday, August 01, 2005

"Despite Nigeria's progress on democratic reforms, Nigeria police routinely commit brutal acts of torture that have since endured since the country's era of military rule," the report says. It notes that officers who engage in these human rights abuses are never brought to justice by either the government or the police authorities. The report was presented to the press by Human Rights Watch in Lagos July 27.

In a press release accompanying the 76-page report based on an extensive investigation of human rights abuses by the police in March this year, Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the Africa division at Human Rights Watch, observed: "If President Olusegun Obasanjo wants to show the world that he is serious about pursuing justice, he should ensure that police torturers are held accountable for their crimes." He said that "for too long, the police in Nigeria have gotten away with murder and brutality."

The report says that police torture has endured in Nigeria as a socially acceptable norm because of its long practice and the culture of impunity that protects its perpetrators because there are no independent mechanisms to mitigate police abuses. "In recent years," according to the report, "not a single police officer has been successfully prosecuted for committing torture in Nigeria."

Human Rights Watch conducted its investigations in Enugu, Lagos and Kano. Its research officers interviewed fifty victims of, and witnesses to, police torture and brutality. It says that senior police officers are aware of the torture of detainees and that the practice is "so routine that some of these senior officers are known within police stations by the nickname, Officer in charge of torture."

The report says the forms of torture include "the tying of arms and legs tightly behind the body, suspension by hands and legs from the ceiling or a pole, repeated and severe beatings with metal or wooden objects (including planks of wood, iron bars, and cable wire) resting of concrete blocks on the arms and back while suspended, spraying of tear gas in the face and eyes, rape of and other sexual violence against female detainees, use of pliers or electric shocks on private parts, shooting in the foot or leg, stoning, death threats, slapping and kicking with hands and boots and denial of food and water." The report quotes an unnamed 23 year-old former detainee in Enugu as saying that "they handcuffed me and tied me with my hands behind my knees, a wooden rod behind my knees, and hung me from hooks on the wall, like goal posts."

Takirambudde said that although Britain and the United States had invested "millions in police reform initiatives in Nigeria…police practices have changed little since the end of military era." He called on Britain and the United States to make measurable improvements in police conduct as a condition for further aid to Nigeria.

In a swift reaction to the report, the federal government denied that torture was routinely practised in Nigeria. Frank Nweke, minister of information, in a press release, said that Obasanjo was "very much aware of the problems within the criminal justice administration in the country, including the police." He said that the federal government had included police reforms in its reform agenda. The minister said that part of the reforms included community policing, which was already being piloted in Enugu State.