By Tosin Olatokunbo
The President Muhammadu Buhari administration is riddled with massive corruption, the United States of America, USA has said in its ‘2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices’. The report, released on Tuesday also accused the government of stifling free speech and waging war against human rights activists.
The US report come after President Buhari medical trip to the United Kingdom which drawn wide spread condemnation from opposition groups and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP who said the president failed to seek medical intervention in the country because the yearly budget to the health sector has not yielded results.
The Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, the umbrella body of medical doctors in the country has also put government on notice of an impending strike over unpaid allowances and infrastructural decay in the health sector.
A huge part of trillion of naira allocated to various sector of the economy, some say, may have been shared or mismanaged by top civil servants and politicians, the US report said, adding that the administration has also failed to secure convictions against corrupt government officials despite the Buhari administration’s quest to fight corruption.
Referring to the enabling EFCC and ICPC laws the US said and other anti-graft agency “the law provides criminal penalties for conviction of official corruption, the government did not consistently implement the law, and government employees frequently engaged in corrupt practices with impunity.
“Massive, widespread, and pervasive corruption affected all levels of government, including the judiciary and security services. There were numerous allegations of government corruption during the year.”
Rather than fight corruption squarely, the Nigerian government, according to the report, has shifted focus to clamping down on the media, human rights bodies and others who have been targeted over their views official graft. The President Joe Biden administration slamed the Buhari government for its bad human rights record, citing various government laws used to target media houses and journalists.
According to the report, “Security services detained and harassed journalists, sometimes for reporting sensitive problems such as political corruption and security. Security services including the DSS (Department of State Services) and police occasionally arrested and detained journalists who criticised the government.’’ .
“On at least six occasions, journalists were charged with treason, economic sabotage, or fraud when uncovering corruption or public protests.Numerous journalists were killed, detained, abducted, or arrested during the year (2020). Citing violations of amendments to the sixth edition of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code in August, the NBC fined local radio station Nigeria Info 99.3 FM for comments by the former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Obadiah Mailafia, on insecurity in the country.
“The NBC also sanctioned private television stations Africa Independent Television, Channels TV and Arise News during October’s #EndSARS protests, alleging their reportage of the nationwide protests relied on unverifiable video footage from social media handles. In their prosecution of corruption cases, law enforcement and intelligence agencies did not always follow due process, arresting suspects without appropriate arrest and search warrants,’’ the report said.
It cited the October 20 Lekki tollgate #EndSARS protest in Lekki, Lagos where protesters were believed to have been shot at by soldiers and other human rights abuses by security forces against civilians , though the US said it has not confirm fatality on the EndSARS matter.
‘’Several unofficial military detention facilities continued to operate, including the Giwa Barracks facility in Maiduguri, Borno State. Although conditions in the Giwa Barracks detention facility reportedly improved, detainees were not always given due process and were subjected to arbitrary and indefinite detention.
“There were no reports of accountability for past deaths in custody, nor for past reports from Amnesty International alleging that an estimated 20,000 persons were arbitrarily detained between 2009 and 2015, with as many as 7,000 dying in custody,’’ the report said.
The federal government has yet to respond to the report.
