The executive secretary who lamented the unfortunate increase in human rights abuses and violations which he said has climaxed due to the activities of arm-bandits and insurgents predominantly in the northern parts of the country, also, reiterated that his Commission is leveraging on the federal government’s programme of deradicalisation and rehabilitation of Boko Haram fighters by instituting a peace and reconciliation platform starting from the north eastern region of the country.
He said, we want to tackle issues little by little to prevent them from escalating into major problems”. He stated that “the project intends to penetrate the local communities that are worst hit in the region, in order to interact with the community leaders to see how we can reconcile victims and perpetrators to prevent further destructions of lives and properties as well avoid situations of further displacements”, he said.
While commenting on the forthcoming Annual National Human Rights Award, the NHRC boss, said the nominations will be in three categories; federal government agencies, state governments and civil society organizations. He further revealed that the selection process will be done independently by members of the public.
Members of the public are expected to select from the list of nominations through voting. The indicators for selecting deserving MDA for the award includes the impact of the MDAs’ work in the enjoyment of human rights in Nigeria, the level of compliance of the MDAs to court judgements as well as the degree of accessibility of the MDAs services to the public, the extent to which the MDA complies with the five per cent employment ratio of persons with disabilities and the impact of the MDA’s work or contributions in promoting social justice and eliminating discriminatory attitudes and practices’, he stated.