Ikenna Emewu
5 March 2003
Lagos — Some Nigerians who petitioned the Human Right Violations Investigation Commission (HRVIC) popularly known as Oputa Panel over human rights abuses have blamed the present spate of political violence on the Non-implementation of the panel's report.
This outcry is coming about one year after the celebrated panel submitted its reports after over one year of consistent sitting.
Spokesman for the petitioners, and Lagos-based lawyer, Mr. Chuks Nwana, who appeared before the panel during its sitting in Lagos regretted that the "hope of the Nigerian masses in getting redress from rights abuses has been dashed once again".
Nwana with other petitioners warned that "if no action is taken to put the recommendation of the Oputa Panel into work and give redress to victims of rights violations, the country should expect worse abuses in the future mainly as politicians have already started resorting to violence in the present dispensation".
"The new trend of violence meted on people is another regime of grave human rights abuses made possible because the powerful people of this society who were put in fear by the shocking revelations at the panel now feel nothing has changed", they lamented.
The group said it had lost confidence in the reports of the panel, saying the people, who appared before the commission went with high hopes of getting justice but now reaped woes instead.
He said "although nobody expected the panel sitting and report to be just another typical Nigerian panel report, but the hope has been betrayed".
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