Following allegations of a secret alliance between Amnesty International Nigeria (AIN) and the Department of State Services (DSS), The ICIR digs deeper, reaching out to the current and old staff of the AIN, board of directors, activists, security agents, lawyers and victims of human rights violations in Nigeria.

Report by Ajibola AMZAT, Managing Editor; Gbenga ADANIKIN Head of Investigation and Lukman ABOLADE, Investigative Reporter.

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A CIVIL servant, Desmond Nunugwo, 50, was arrested by EFCC operatives on June 9, 2016, over a fraudulent business transaction allegation. The following day, the man died.

The deceased’s wife, Susan Nunugwo, said her husband was neither ill nor diagnosed with sickness before the EFCC took him away.

She then visited Amnesty International Nigeria, AIN, seeking help to get justice for her late husband.

The AIN interim Country Director, Makmid Kamara, a Sierra Leonean, instructed the staff to design a campaign plan since the Nigerian authorities had ignored calls to investigate Nunugwo’s death.

A renowned pathologist at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital was contacted, and he agreed to carry out an autopsy on the body.

Nunugwo’s family was happy with AIN’s plan and looking forward to getting justice.

Then a change of guard at Amnesty Nigeria brought Osai Ojigho as the new Country Director. And that was when things began to fall apart.

“Osai started playing games with the family, giving them excuses and stopped them from seeing her on several occasions. One day, she calmly advised Desmond’s widow to go home and bury her husband,” a former staff of AIN who knew about the case told The ICIR.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, in its decision dated November 10, 2019, also confirmed Amnesty’s curious withdrawal from the case.

Six years down the line, the family is yet to find closure to the mystery of Desmond’s death.

In May 2018, a human rights lawyer and activist, Frank Tietie, wrote a dispiriting letter to Kamara, who had returned to work at Amnesty International Secretariat in London as Deputy Director Global Issues and Head of ESCR Team.

In the letter, Tietie, Executive Director, Citizens Advocacy for Social and Economic Rights, expressed disappointment at the state of human rights observation and enforcement in Nigeria and blamed Ojigho’s management style at AIN.

“It is more worrisome to me that the Director of Amnesty International, Nigeria, Osai Ojigho is more eager to find justifications for neither responding nor interfering in the grave but trending human rights issues of serious national concern, in Nigeria, on the grounds that such issues are outside the set thematic areas of Amnesty International for 2018,” he wrote.

One of such cases Tietie complained about was that of married women sacked by GLOBACOM, a Nigerian telecom company. The women were fired because they were married and no longer looked “sexy” to be effective marketers. Globacom refuted the claim though.

Etitie believed such a decision by a corporate organisation is a gender-based human rights violation against the provision of Article 11 of CEDAW. The law forbids discrimination against women in the field of employment.

He wanted AIN to make a strong statement against such discrimination, but Ojigho was uninterested.

“She literally snapped at me saying Amnesty International had its set issues already for the year and did not include issues of such,” Tietie wrote in the mail.

An attempt for a meeting to explain why Amnesty should be interested in the case was rebuffed. Tietie said the incident rocked his relationship with Amnesty Nigeria.

Another human rights lawyer who severed a relationship with Amnesty Nigeria is Justus Ijeoma.

The lawyer reported to the AIN the case of Gift Oyinyechi, the widow of Collins Ezenwa. The latter was killed on the kidnapping allegation by the Intelligence Response Team, IRT, led by the disgraced police officer, Abba Kyari.

After Ezenwa’s death, Kyari and his team allegedly seized the deceased’s properties and began to deplete them after warning the wife to stay away.

The lawyer, Ijeoma, reported the case to National Human Right Commission and Amnesty, Nigeria.

“For two weeks, the widow was detained in Lagos, despite losing her husband. We reached out to Amnesty, and they promised to help. They asked the widow to come to their office in Abuja, and after the engagement, they promised to get back to us, they never did. We presented our case at the panel raised by Vice President Osinbajo, but Amnesty backed out without explanation.,” he told The ICIR during a phone conversation.

In a similar pattern, Ojigho allegedly turned a blind eye several times to the gross violation of human rights in northeast Nigeria.

In his letter of resignation, Malik Samuel, an AIN conflict researcher, noted that Amnesty International, despite all available information, kept silent as the Nigerian military forcibly displaced an entire Borno town of about 10,000 civilians on suspicion of aiding and abetting Boko Haram.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/how-amnesty-international-turns-blind-eye-to-human-rights-abuses-in-nigeria-bullies-staff/

Since they're deliberately turning blind eyes, on serious matters,Their eyes will soon go blind

This should be good news.
I thought Nigerians have agreed that human rights talk is western propaganda?
Are we no longer standing up to the western imperialist again?

Before, of what good can this country offer if not corruption and underground works, the one that is soo touchy is the Late Desmond's story, imagine the poor widow couldn't even be given good attention to, or seek for the justice of her husband, let alone the Globacom story, just because she got married and will not look attractive for the work then she was dismissed, rubbish country.

Guy, don't believe and of this story. They are all propaganda by a good for nothing lazy staff. Is chief mission is not to work but to get paid.

cherishmichael:
Before, of what good can this country offer if not corruption and underground works, the one that is soo touchy is the Late Desmond's story, imagine the poor widow couldn't even be given good attention to, or seek for the justice of her husband, let alone the Globacom story, just because she got married and will not look attractive for the work then she was dismissed, rubbish country.