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Amnesty
International has urged the Nigerian government to check the rising tide of
political, ethnic and religious violence threatening the April general election.

In a
statement issued on Thursday, Amnesty International said that so far, more than
50 people have also been killed since July 2010 in conflicts directly related
to elections.

According
to the statement, Human rights defenders, who will play a key role in
monitoring the April election, are facing increased threats and violence with
no adequate protection from the security forces.

The group
urged political parties and candidates to put justice, security and human
rights at the heart of the election campaign, in order to break Nigeria’s
nationwide cycle of violence.

Impunity

The human
rights group said Nigerian authorities have failed to bring suspected
perpetrators to justice, or to prevent further human rights abuses.
Investigations, it said, are infrequent and often inadequate and hardly anyone
has been convicted for the killings.

“The
Nigerian authorities must act to protect people’s lives and all political
candidates should denounce violence and tell their supporters to campaign
peacefully,” Tawanda Hondora Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Africa
said.

“Candidates
should tell voters what they will do to stop the senseless killings and improve
security and justice in Nigeria. The Presidential Debate on Friday 18 March is
an excellent opportunity to make such a commitment,” he added.

The
statement added that despite these deaths, there have been no national
campaigns against election violence, and very few arrests.

Mr. Hondora warned that “When no-one is
brought to justice for violence, this sends the message that you can get away
with murder.”

Poor investigation

“The
authorities have also failed to competently prosecute those responsible for the
Jos and Plateau State violence, and the results of previous government
investigations into reasons behind the violence have never been made public.

“The
security forces have reacted with wide ranging abuses such as enforced
disappearance, extrajudicial execution, and sweeping arbitrary detention,”
Amnesty International added.

In Borno
state, where Boko Haram has been blamed for attacks on security forces,
government officials and religious leaders a local resident told Amnesty
International that “After the killings [by Boko Haram]… they come and arrest
all those people around [the area]… Now, if an incident happened in an area you
will see most of the neighbours packing out of the area.”

“We were
taken to SARS [Special Anti-Robbery Squad], Abuja. It’s known as the abattoir… we were not
alive. We had no food, no water… One
cell held about 45 of us… There were five small children there too,” another
resident described his detention as a Boko Haram suspect to Amnesty
international.

The human
rights group is of the view that poor police investigation is undermining
efforts to bring suspected perpetrators to justice.

Meanwhile, the international organisation will
today launch a website, Eyes on Nigeria. The website,
http://www.eyesonnigeria.org, “employs new monitoring tools and technologies to
expose and visualise human rights abuses and situations in which human rights
are at risk throughout Nigeria, including through active monitoring of harmful
gas flaring in the Niger Delta region.”