Section 31 of the 1979 Constitution provided that every individual was entitled to respect for the dignity of his person, and accordingly no person shall be subject to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment. Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act Cap A9 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 provides that “all forms of exploitation and degradation of man, particularly slavery, slave trade, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment shall be prohibited”

 In utter breach of the above provisions of the Constitution and the African Charter, the police and other security forces usually  subject lowly placed Nigerian citizens to torture in detention facilities, markets and other places. In Mogaji V. Board of Customs & Excise (1982) 3 NCLR 552,  the armed agents of the defendant invaded and raided markets in Lagos and seized contraband goods. In the process, some of the traders were brutalized. 

The victims sued the defendant for damages in the Lagos high court. Adefarasin CJ held that it was a violation of the constitutional prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment to organize a raid with the use of guns, horse-whips and tear gas in a market in the course of a purported search of contraband goods & to injure custodians of such goods. The judge opined that “Those in authority in customs and excise matters ought to intensify methods for apprehending offenders at the point of entry of goods into the country as it becomes more difficult to do so afterwards.”

Notwithstanding that section 34 of the 1999 Constitution equally guarantees the fundamental right of every citizen from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, the police and other security agencies continued to subject poor citizens to horrendous torture. In 2007, the Government of Nigeria was indicted in the report of the then United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Mr. Manfred Nowak. In his detailed report, Mr. Nowak, “ Police shoot prisoners, beat them and hung them from the ceiling for long periods… detainees in Nigerian police cells were frequently tortured to extract confessions

The Rapporteur also found that torture is an intrinsic part of how law enforcement services operate within the country. In particular, he confirmed that the  police engaged in “ flogging with whips, beatings with batons and machetes,  shooting suspects in the foot, threatening suspects with death and shooting them with power cartridges. . . as well as “suspension from the ceiling or metal rods in various positions and being denied food, water and medical treatment.”

Following such international embarrassment and indictment by local human rights bodies, Nigeria ratified the Anti Torture Convention of the United Nations in 2007 and the Optional Protocol in  n 2017, the National Assembly domesticated  and enacted the Anti Torture Act in 2017. Specifically, the Anti-torture Act 2017 has criminalised torture, cruel, inhuman and provided protection for victims and witnesses of torture.

Section 1 of the Act has imposes an obligation on government to ensure that the rights of all persons, including suspects, detainees and prisoners to freedom from torture are respected at all times and that no person under investigation or held in custody is subjected to any form of physical, mental or psychological torture.

Section 2 titled ‘Acts of Torture’ defines what amounts to torture thus:

In order to stop the practice of torturing lowly placed suspects to make confessional statements during the investigation of criminal offences, sections 15 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, the taking of the statement shall be in writing and may be recorded electronically on a compact disc or some other audio virtual means. Section 17 thereof further provides that  the statement may be taken in the presence of a legal practitioner or his choice, or where he has no legal practitioner of his choice, in the presence of an officer of the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria or an officer of a civil society organization or a Justice of the peace.

Even though the Administration of Criminal Justice Act became effective in May 2015, confessional statements are still obtained by force in the absence of lawyers, leading to trial within trial during the prosecution of criminal cases. However,  in Federal Republic of Nigeria.v. Akaeze [2024] 12 NWLR (Pt. 1951) 1 the Supreme Court held that it is mandatory for law enforcement agencies in Nigeria under sections 15(4) and 17(1) & (2) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 (“ACJA“) to record electronically confessional statement of suspect during criminal investigation in an audio-visual format.  See also Friday Charles v. The State of Lagos (2023) 13 NWLR (Pt. 1901) 213.

It is public knowledge that, in spite of the clear provisions of the Constitution and other local and international human rights instruments,  the fundamental right of children, indigent citizens and criminal suspects to freedom from torture, cruel and degrading treatment is routinely violated in all states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Dele Farotimi, a lawyer standing trial for criminal libel,  was subjected to the restraint of handcuffs in one of the court sessions.

Following the condemnation of the action of the prison management by lawyers and the media, Mr. Farotimi’s handcuffs were hurriedly discarded.

While I argued that Mr. Farotimi ought not to have been handcuffed as he was not proved to have exhibited any form of violence, I accused the lawyers who attacked the prison management of hypocrisy.I pointed out that “on a daily basis, lowly placed criminal suspects are handcuffed to and from the several High Courts and Magistrate Courts in all the states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. As if that is not enough, such suspects are regularly leg chained like slaves in sugar plantations in the Americas during the slave trade.

The dehumanisation of poor suspects is considered normal by the elite in our stratified society. For instance, a couple of months ago, a police command paraded a suspect before the electronic and print media for stealing five tubers of yam valued at less than N10,000 to feed himself and his family members. At about the same time, a public officer accused of stealing over N100 billion was neither handcuffed nor paraded before the media.”

Hence, it  has become necessary for the National Human Rights Commission, the Nigerian Bar Association and the human rights community to mobilise Nigerians to expose and report private individuals and public officers whenever they contravene the provisions of the Anti Torture Act 2017.