About 24 hours to the 2015 presidential and National Assembly elections, the Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, has said some leading politicians in the country have engaged political thugs to perpetrate violence during the elections.
Odinkalu, who addressed journalists in Abuja on Thursday, said the presence of small arms and light weapons in Lagos, Rivers and Kaduna States is worrisome.
According to him, hate speech was at unprecedented level during the campaigns of all the political parties.
He said: “It’s clear that there are gangs, cults and militias that have been cultivated and to whom the leading political parties or people claiming to act on their behalf have somewhat “outsourced” election violence.
“This has made election-related both transactional and casual.
“In some of the states, well known militia leaders have become candidates in the elections, guaranteeing that the violence is part of the election and campaign narrative.
“In the three main locations in particular, small arms and light weapons are present in very worrying quantities in the hands of cults, gangs, militias and unlawful hands.
“The calibre of ordinance in private hands in Rivers State, in particular, goes beyond anything that can be licensed for private use and, indeed, beyond what is legitimate or even for lawful law enforcement purposes.
“All the institutions, entities and communities whom we consulted with affirmed that hate speech was at unprecedented levels and nearly all warned that the level of such hate now presents a clear threat to national cohesion irrespective of the outcome of the elections.”
Odinkalu also said the closure of courts in Rivers and Kaduna State has created a major crisis of lack of access to remedies for election-related violence.
He said: “The police complain that they suffer interference from politicians in policing election violence.
“They also say they have no courts to charge arrested persons to and are now short of cell space for detainees.
“Parties in some cases allege their supporters are being held interminably under opaque rules or “orders from above”.
“Serial and repeated bomb attacks on courts in Rivers are the immediate cause of the court closures there and have not attracted the right form of reprobation from the authorities.
“Judges need to be secured ahead of contentious election disputes.
“In Kaduna, we also heard allegations of interference with lower bench dealing with violence.
“These fuel a growing narrative of election vigilantism and ‘self defence’.”
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