Compromised NHRC collaborating with Amnesty International to destabilize Nigeria – Group

The Save Humanity Advocacy Centre (SHAC) has fingered the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) as a puppet in the hands of Amnesty International in its well-orchestrated plot to destabilize Nigeria.

Following the international non-governmental organisation’s (NGO) recent alliance with the RevolutionNow group, several Nigerians began a seven-day protest to demand its eviction from the country.

According to these Patriots, the London-based NGO have long-overstayed its welcome in the country, sponsoring different agendas to portray President Muhammadu Buhari’s government in a bad light in the international space.

Instead of investigating the claim of these Nigerians, the NHRC unsurprisingly jumped in defence of Amnesty, a move which has become synonymous with the agency.

In a statement signed by Executive Secretary Ibrahim Abubakar on Wednesday, the SHAC reckoned that the clearly compromised NHRC has derailed from its core mandate with a recent history of sympathising with terrorist organisations.

The group, therefore, called on the Federal Government to investigate the NHRC and its leadership with a view to establishing the extent of its complicity in the destabilization agenda that Amnesty International is running.

Read full statement below:

Recent days have seen genuinely patriotic civil society organizations occupying the premises of Amnesty International to demand that the so called international human rights NGO leaves Nigeria. The call for the organization to leave Nigeria is not arbitrary as it arose out of the subversive activities that Amnesty International continues to engage in. These subversive activities, as the CSOs have pointed out, are aimed at destabilizing Nigeria to satisfy the objectives of the NGOs clients locally and internationally.

We realize that Amnesty International has been condemning the occupation of its offices by these CSOs that are resolute on saving Nigeria from its grip. It has been blowing hot about how it would not be intimidated while also doing what it knows how to do best: lying that those protesting against its criminal activities in Nigeria are pro-government or are being sponsored to decry the crimes it is committing in Nigeria. Several ineffective groups have been conscripted to join Amnesty International’s lying train.

The follow-follow syndrome of some compromised NGOs that have joined Amnesty International in echoing its lies appears understandable to some extent. Some of them are sub-contractors to Amnesty International in delivering projects and assignments aimed at destabilizing Nigeria – some of the NGO’s staffers actually owned such groups. Others are participating in helping it to destabilize Nigeria because of the money they are getting from the same circuit of sponsors and financiers for which Amnesty International is running errands. Some others are doing what they do out of ignorance – these are those that have the ridiculous belief that anything foreign or international is naturally superior or better than the indigenous content.

The Save Humanity Advocacy Centre (SHAC) has been at a loss as to where it should place the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which has abandoned its core mandates to run errand for Amnesty International. We understand that the Executive Secretary of NHRC, Anthony Ojukwu, through a statement he caused the Director (Corporate Affairs and External Linkages), Lambert Oparah to issue, was saying “nobody or institution has the right to oust any lawful organisation from exercising its freedom of association and expression in Nigeria without an order of a court of competent jurisdiction.”

This position, be it Ojukwu’s personal view or NHRC’s official position, is ridiculous to the extent that it should cause the Commission to be overhauled in order to redirect its focus to its thematic areas as advertised on its own website. The behaviour of NHRC and its leadership also calls for certain past developments to be reassessed in retrospect since it has heightened the possibility that the Commission is in bed with Amnesty International in the plot to destabilize Nigeria. We shall mention a few instances that now look too suspicious to be mere coincidences.

The two recently proscribed terrorist organizations, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) always use NHRC office for their protests, which means that people in that Commission encourage them and such decision could have only come from the leadership. Even more curious is how the NHRC was always spared each time IMN took its violent protests to the Commission’s premises while neighboring government offices get vandalized.

It is of concern that NHRC has failed in the few instances it bothered to investigate issues around these groups (IMN and IPOB) especially when it has to do with the human rights abuses, they inflict on other Nigerians. This is even when the accusations raised against these groups touch on “Freedom of Religion & Belief” and “Torture, Extra-Judicial, Summary & Arbitrary Executions,” which are thematic focus for the Commission.

The Commission’s Executive Secretary, Anthony Ojukwu, is in the same circle with the decision makers in Amnesty International. These are the people that have instructed Ojukwu to issue the statement in support of their organization, which raises the question of what other instructions the leadership of NHRC has received from and executed on behalf of the foreign NGO.

NHRC is deliberately failing in its statutory responsibilities to create room for Amnesty International, in order for it to have the locus to issue its frivolous reports on the state of human rights in Nigeria. If the Commission tasked with monitoring human rights issues in Nigeria has decided to outsource its responsibility to a foreign entity, which has an agenda against the interest of Nigeria. It is disheartening that the NHRC leadership continues to defend Amnesty International even when it has full knowledge of the destabilization agenda being implemented against Nigeria.

Gentlemen of the press, you can now appreciate from the above that NHRC is a failed institution where rights abuses start and stop. It is an organization in need of urgent help that the Federal Government must urgently provide. It appears that it is now more beholden to Amnesty International and its affiliated donor agencies.

We like the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), its Executive Secretary – Anthony Ojukwu and their NGO client that the occupation of Amnesty International’s offices will continue and possibly exceed the promised advertised 7-days until it leaves Nigeria. Perhaps the only saving grace would be an undertaken from the group to discontinue all aspects of its subversive activities in Nigeria. The combined threats from NHRC, the NGO and its partners would do nothing to stop patriotic Nigerians from defending their country.

The Save Humanity Advocacy Centre (SHAC) urges the Federal Government to investigate the NHRC and its leadership with a view to establishing the extent of its complicity in the destabilization agenda that Amnesty International is running in Nigeria. Any official of the Commission found to have aided this crime against Nigeria should be properly sanctioned and made to face the law.