The Nigerian elections in 2019
that brought President Muhammadu Buhari back into office for a second term were
marred by political violence, some of it by soldiers and police officers, Human
Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday.
Buhari defeated Atiku Abubakar of
the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the keenly-contested poll.
HRW called on Buhari to take
concrete steps to address the widespread political violence and ensure
accountability for human rights abuses by soldiers and police as he begins his
second term.
The report on the election
released on the HRW website on Monday noted that the election period included
persistent attacks by factions of Boko Haram terrorist group in the northeast;
increased communal violence between nomadic herdsmen and farmers spreading
southward from north-central states; and a dramatic uptick in banditry,
kidnapping, and killings in the northwestern states of Kaduna, Katsina, and
Zamfara. It maintained that security forces have failed to respond effectively
to threats to people’s lives and security.
Human Rights Watch said it
interviewed 32 people; including voters, journalists, election observers,
activists, and Independent National Electoral Commission officials in Rivers
and Kano states, and documented 11 deaths specifically related to violent
interference in the election process during the February 23 presidential
election and subsequent state elections.
It added: “The national and state
elections in February, March, and April 2019 contributed to the general
insecurity across the country. The politically related violence reported in
many states was in contrast to the relatively peaceful 2015 elections that
brought Buhari into his first term in office. According to a report by SBM
Intelligence, which monitors sociopolitical and economic developments in
Nigeria, 626 people were killed during the 2019 election cycle, starting with
campaigns in 2018.
“Kano state, in northwestern
Nigeria, has the highest number of registered voters in the country. Rivers
state, in the Niger Delta, receives the largest share of crude-oil-based
national revenue, representing significant electoral value to any political
party. The history of elections in both states is replete with violence by
state security agencies and criminal elements.
“Human Rights Watch focused its
research on both states in view of projections and reports of violence during
the 2019 elections. Despite police claims of increased security measures to
ensure peaceful voting, there seems to have been little or no police response
to reports of threats and acts of violence by hired political thugs and
soldiers against voters and election officials, Human Rights Watch found.
“Voters and election officials
said that policemen either fled or stood idly by, fueling allegations of complicity,
as perpetrators stole election materials, disrupted voting, and harassed
voters. Witnesses said that the police also shot live rounds of ammunition and
used teargas to disperse people protesting voting disruptions.
“Witnesses said that after a soldier
was killed in the town of Abonnema, in Rivers state, on election day, soldiers
shot at residents, killing an unknown number of people. They also carried out
sweeping arrests and arbitrarily detained several people.”
“The soldiers were on a rampage,
shooting at anyone around,” said a 37-year-old man who witnessed the episode.
“As I made my way to flee, I saw people dive into the river, many with gunshot
wounds. The next day I saw three dead bodies riddled with bullets floating in
the water… I heard many more bodies were later recovered from that river.”
HRW noted that “Banditry and the
recurring cycles of deadly violence between herdsmen and farmers appear to have
taken the lives of thousands. According to civil society reports, over 3,641
people have died from deadly clashes between herdsmen and farmers since 2015
and at least 262 people have been killed by bandits since the beginning of 2019
in Zamfara State alone. The government deployed 1,000 military troops to the
state in response, but few of those responsible for the violence have been
arrested or held to account.
“The northeast conflict with Boko
Haram and its splinter groups also remains one of Buhari’s pressing challenges.
Although Boko Haram’s territorial control has shrunk to small pockets of
villages around Lake Chad as a result of sustained government military action
since 2015, the group continues to carry out attacks against civilian and
military targets in the region and in neighboring Niger, Cameroon, and Chad.
“In recent months, renewed
fighting between Nigerian government forces and a faction of Boko Haram, known
as Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), has led to secondary
displacement of civilians.
“Security forces have been
implicated in serious abuses, including arbitrary arrests, prolonged detention
without trial, torture, extrajudicial killings, rape and sexual violence
against women and girls in camps for displaced people. According to the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than
27,000 civilians have died and about 1.8 million people have been displaced
since the beginning of the conflict in 2009.
“Authorities have also failed to
address impunity for killings by security forces elsewhere in the country. The
authorities have yet to publish the report of the Presidential Judicial Panel
set up in August 2017 to investigate the military’s compliance with human
rights obligations, allegations of war crimes, and other abuses by the
military.
“Nigerian voters have entrusted
Buhari with another opportunity to address the nation’s serious human rights problems,
including political violence,” Ewang said. “He should start by reforming the
security forces to ensure strict compliance with human rights standards, and
prompt investigation and prosecution of those credibly implicated in abuses.”
On the 2019 election violence,
HRW said: “Nigeria’s elections have historically been fraught with controversy,
violence, and other abuses, with the 2015 elections, widely believed to have
been largely free of violence, bucking this trend. There were reports of voter
intimidation and violence around the 2019 elections at both the federal and
state levels, including by armed men hired by candidates and political parties
and by security forces, including the national police.
“Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Sokoto,
Plateau, and Rivers states were particularly affected by violence during the
March 9 gubernatorial elections. The Independent National Electoral Commission
canceled elections in places where the elections were disrupted and held
supplementary elections later. Kano state had supplementary elections on March
23, and Rivers state on April 13.
“Kano and Rivers states were
probably the worst hit of the six states. They were identified by both local
and international analysts ahead of the elections as holding great potential
for electoral violence. Both are major political strongholds for the two
leading political parties, Buhari’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and
the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Abdullahi Ganduje of the APC
won the 2019 election in Kano, and Nyesom Wike of the PDP won in Rivers state.”
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