Focus on probe into human rights violations

One of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first acts since his inauguration in May 1999 was to set up the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (HRVIC), which he tasked with probing past abuses and helping to bring about reconciliation. Initially, the commission was to have investigated abuses committed since January 1984, when the military overthrew a civilian government, aborting the the country’s second period of democratic rule (1979-1984). Obasanjo later extended the period under the HRVIC’s remit, mandating the commission to investigate abuses perpetrated since 15 January 1966, the start of the first military regime in Nigeria, which gained independence from Britain in 1960. Modelled after South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the HRVIC panel is headed by Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, a retired Supreme Court judge. For 15 months it worked to set up a structure to deal with an assignment unique in the country’s history. It was flooded with petitions. By the start of hearings on 24 October, HRVIC officials said, the commission had received more than 10,000 complaints of murder, torture, imprisonment and other forms of abuse. After careful review, the officials said, the number of petitions to be dealt with in public hearings was pruned to about 150. These are considered the most serious cases. Hearings in Abuja were dominated by allegations of abuses committed during the regime of General Sani Abacha, who ruled with an iron fist for five years until his sudden death in June 1998 paved the way for a return to civilian rule. Key cases that came up in the Abuja hearings included that of Obasanjo and his former deputy as military ruler in the mid-1970s, late Maj-Gen Shehu Yar’Adua. They were arrested in early 1995 and accused of involvement in an alleged plot to topple Abacha. After summary trials both were given long jail terms, but Yar’Adua died in prison, allegedly murdered by Abacha’s agents. Most other witnesses who appeared during the panel’s hearings in Abuja reported murder, torture and unjust imprisonment for their alleged involvement in coup plots against Abacha in 1995 and 1997. A retired colonel, Azuka Martins Igwe, recalled being tortured into a coma by state security agents, who trussed him up and hung him over a pit filled with human faeces until he passed out. He said his torturers wanted him to implicate innocent colleagues, perceived opponents of Abacha, in the alleged coup. The testimonies have included that of Ibrahim Umar, former commander of one of Abacha’s security outfits known as Strike Force. He accused Abacha’s close associates, including ex-army chief Ishaya Bamaiyi and former personal security chief Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, of hatching the coup plots, assassinations and a bombing campaign which rocked Nigeria during the Abacha years as a pretext to deal with suspected opponents. He blamed most of the atrocities perpetrated under Abacha on his former security chief. “Al-Mustapha was a powerful, arrogant, brutal and ruthlessly ambitious chief security officer who wanted to control everybody that mattered in the government,” Umar said. “A lot of people who had personal problems with him found themselves in either the 1995 or the 1997 coup arrangements.” The Oputa Panel hearings shifted this month to Lagos, where they opened on 13 November. They have given Al-Mustapha and his aides, currently facing trial for several murders and attempted murders committed in Lagos, the opportunity to respond to the many allegations against them. When Al-Mustapha appeared before the commission for the first time on 15 November, he promised to cooperate fully. “Since the last two years that I have been incarcerated, a lot of things have been said and written about me and my involvement in so many things,” he said. “Now that I have the chance, it is my wish to explain everything, even beyond the areas in which I am expected to assist this commission.” More than 70 cases of political murders, disappearances and imprisonment are scheduled for hearing in Lagos alone, before the commission moves to other parts of the country. The family of Moshood Abiola has petitioned it on the incarceration of the late businessman by Abacha. Abiola was jailed when he proclaimed himself president after elections he had apparently won in 1993 were annulled by the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. A number of the cases to be heard predate the Abacha years. The best known include the murder by parcel bomb of Dele Giwa, an outspoken journalist. He was killed in 1986, under the rule of Babangida, who is listed as a witness along with a number of his top security aides. Giwa’s former colleagues from a publication he co-founded and human rights lawyer Gani Fawehinmi have accused them of masterminding the journalist’s elimination. Another petition comes from the family of late musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His residence was sacked and burnt by soldiers in 1977 and his property was confiscated during Obasanjo’s first term as a military ruler. Many consider that this could be an embarrassing hearing for the president, but human rights lawyer Emeka Anichebe thinks the benefits of the hearings transcend the discomforts of any individual. “There is every likelihood that the nation will learn more truths from the proceedings of the Oputa Panel than what we would get from the normal courts on many of heinous political crimes committed in these past years,” Anichebe told IRIN. “And then we might know better not to let such things happen again.”