2023: How We Ensured Nigerians Exercised Their Franchise During 2023 Elections – NHRC

The National Human Rights Commission(NHRC) has disclosed the role it played in ensuring that Nigerians exercised their franchise during the 2023 elections that produced President Bola Tinubu and others as winners.

The Project Coordinator of Mobilising Voters for Election (MOVE) of the NHRC, Hilary Ogbonna, revealed during the commission’s Post-Election Assessment and Review Forum on Wednesday that prior to the polls, the NHRC promoted participation because it noted the dwindling of voter participation.

Ogbonna explained that the Commission also promoted issue based campaigns as well as mainstreamed human rights into the electoral process.

NHRC organised monthly human review programmes ahead of the election, Ogbonna added.

He said the commission also played an oversight role on the operation of the police by providing a guideline for law enforcement agents to allow voter participation without intimidating anyone or violating people’s rights to freely choose their leaders.

In addition, Ogbonna said NHRC set up a hate speech register at national level which enabled the staff of the Commission to report issues of hate speeches happening at the political space.

“We are also setting up a mechanism that would hold hate speech defaulters accountable,” Ogbonna said, adding that on election day, the Commission deployed over 800 staff and established a human rights situation room.

“The NHRC received 450 election related complaints,” he said.

Ogbonna noted that while Nigerians looked forward to the implementation of the Electoral Act 2022, there were still issues of violence including attacks on security agencies and the Independent National Electoral Commission.

He said political violence, intolerance happened, citing, for example, Rivers state where some law enforcement agents connived to perpetuate violence.

The Commission said it saw voter suppression in Imo, Rivers states while election related killings happened in many states of the federation including Kano where three voters were killed for resisting thugs.

Ogbonna said it recieved reports of attacks on journalists and freedom of press during the elections.

Moreso, Ogbonna advised relevant stakeholders to note that killing a ballot box snatcher amounts to “extrajudicial killing”.

“We believe that killing someone who has snatched ballot box is extrajudicial Killing. The crime is not commensurate with the punishment,” Ogbonna said.

Moreso, he admitted that though elections has been concluded, its assessment showed that “the new threat to Nigeria’s election is loss of faith in the integrity of the Judiciary.”

Also speaking, the NHRC Executive Secretary, Tony Ojukwu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said following the conclusion of both the General and Off-cycle elections for 2023, the NHRC following its mandate to monitor and assess human rights in Nigeria had to conduct an assessment and stocktaking on the place of human rights in the elections, focusing on the multifarious dimensions of human rights violations before, during and after the elections.

He said the objective of the Forum with stakeholders is to review the 2023 General and Off-Cycle Elections from a human rights perspective and to assess the extent to which the outcomes reflect the realization of the rights of the citizens as well as proffer effective solutions for accountability for election-related human rights violations.

“Since the return to democracy in 1999, the Commission has been playing a fundamental role in advancing Nigeria’s democracy through the development of programmes aimed at integrating human rights into the electoral process and supporting democratic institutions and election management bodies to deliver on their mandates.

“The Commission’s role in this regard is founded on the recognition of the importance of the consolidation of democracy in the realization of all human rights in Nigeria,” Ojukwu said.