Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 19th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number four of the House of Commons Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Pursuant to the order of reference of October 27, the subcommittee is meeting for the continuation of the briefing on the current situation in Nigeria, as well as a briefing on the current situation in Zimbabwe.

We will then move in camera at the end of the meeting to discuss the work plan for our COVID study.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format and is also one of the first meetings as part of the House of Commons pilot project on webinar formats. This pilot project is for public committee meetings and is available only to members and their staff.

Members might have remarked that the entry to the meeting was much quicker and that they immediately entered as an active participant. All functionalities for active participants remain the same. Staff will be non-active participants only and can therefore only view the meeting in gallery view.

I also thank the witnesses for helping us with this pilot project. I trust that the experience will be a good one.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants to this meeting that taking screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted, and I will also highlight the fact that this was mentioned by Speaker Rota on September 29, 2020.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I'll outline a few rules to follow. I'm going to start with one that's not so much a rule, but when there's a minute left to your time, I'll hold a card up, and then maybe one when you have 30 seconds left, to help the members with their time allocation.

I thank Iqra for that. That's something she uses at her committees, and I guess it works very well.

Interpretation in this video conference will work very much as in regular committee meetings. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either “Floor”, “English” or “French”. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you're ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike.

As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

We will now begin with the current situation in Nigeria.

I welcome our witness, or possibly witnesses.

From the Nigerian Canadian Association here in Ottawa, we have the president, Mr. Imahiagbe.

Welcome. The floor is yours.

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe, President, Nigerian Canadian Association Ottawa]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for having me here and for giving me an opportunity to speak.

Good evening to the honourable members as well, and thanks for the time provided for me.

I want to acknowledge that my presentation today has contributions from a very wide consultation with #EndSARS Canada, the Canadian Association of Nigerian Physicians and Dentists, the National Association of Seadogs, the Nigerian-Canadian Association of Newfoundland and Labrador and with associations in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, the greater Toronto area, Hamilton, Vancouver and Calgary. My presentation is being offered after due consultation with all of these organizations.

My testimony today will focus mainly on helping to provide you a deeper insight into the root cause of the problems and the reasons that Nigerians, particularly the youth, have had enough and have started a protest that has gone all around the world.

The #EndSARS protest in Nigeria and around the world is in response to a government that has refused to pay attention to the needs of people. It's a government that has abandoned its key responsibilities to protect lives and property. The protests served to ignite and unmask many years of the negligence of the government to seriously address societal issues and reverse its undermining and weakening of the institutions of government.

SARS, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, is one of the institutions of government that is a product of a severely broken system. After many years of oppression and loss of trust in the government, the people of Nigeria have taken to the streets to protest against police brutality as perpetrated by SARS. Sadly, on the 20th of October, 2020, unarmed peaceful protesters were flagrantly shot by the military at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos and also in other parts of Nigeria. This has helped in exacerbating the situation.

This situation is due to insecurity, lack of jobs, poverty and the lack of a national agenda to promote action-based and equitable national development. There is a police structure system of government that honours and celebrates mediocrity. Along with injustice, there is a lack of confidence that the judicial system will be fair, as well as poorly funded education and health care and corrupt practices.

To make it worse, Boko Haram Islamic fundamentalists have moved into the area of the fully armed Fulani herdsmen occupying the forests of the Middle Belt and the south of Nigeria, extorting people and raping and killing children, women and men. The Nigerian security forces have responded with their showmanship efforts.

I'll provide examples of why these statements have been made. These are particularly from people who are in high authority.

I'll quote Ali Ndume, who is the chair of the Senate Committee on Army, and who, in a committee briefing, expressed great regret and said he is still calling on the Nigerian government to bring to book those involved with Boko Haram terrorist activities. He expressed his disagreement with the government's continuing with the deradicalization of terrorists program and the “resettling”, “reintegrating” and “pampering” of Boko Haram terrorists. He specifically cited the beheading of the mallams. Mallams are senior Muslims and spiritual leaders, and 75 of them were taken to an abattoir and slaughtered by Boko Haram terrorists. These terrorists now have been brought in by the Nigerian government as repentant terrorists, even with the evidence of their continuing activities.

Recently, after the shooting at the Lekki tollgate, the Nigerian government, instead of responding to cries from youth, has gone into a public campaign.

As revealed by Nima Elbagir, who is a CNN senior international correspondent, live ammunition was used on peaceful protesters at the Lekki tollgate shooting on October 20 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Ayoola Kassim, who's also a reporter on the popular TV channel Channels Television News, reported that the Nigeria Police College recruit in training is fed with a budget of only one around 150 naira, which is the equivalent of 45 Canadian cents per day. One cannot be trained to serve and to protect with a 45-cent daily meal budget.

The system has been programmed to produce officers who will brutalize and abuse human rights. My witnessing today is not to cast doubt on the men and women who serve within SARS, but to witness that SARS is also an element of a failed structure. The women and the men who work within SARS, who brutalize Nigerians, are also victims of the system. A complete systemic overhaul that includes not only just SARS but all other arms of the government is seriously needed.

Agnes Callamard, who is a United Nations special rapporteur, after a 12-day investigative tour of Nigeria that was done in September 2019, concluded that “Nigeria is a pressure cooker of internal conflicts and generalised violence that must be addressed urgently” and “The overall situation that I encountered in Nigeria gives rise to extreme concern”.

Her report concluded that:

Nigeria is confronting nationwide, regional and global pressures, such as population explosion, an increased number of people living in absolute poverty, climate change and desertification, and increasing proliferation of weapons. These are re-enforcing localised systems and country-wide patterns of violence, many of which are seemingly spinning out of control....

All of these come together to say that there's a loss of trust and confidence in public institutions that has prompted Nigerians to take matters of protection into their own hands, which is leading to a proliferation of vigilante groups and self-protecting armed militia, and cases of jungle justice have become really very common in Nigeria.

Instead of the government responding through dialogue and listening to the pains of Nigerians to reverse the state of hopelessness, the government has sadly chosen a dictatorship-style iron hand to hunt down and to arrest leaders of the peaceful protesters and charge them with acts of terrorism against the country, in some cases the freezing of their bank accounts, while pampering the actual terrorists who are still running on a rampage against innocent Nigerians.

This is exactly why the people are protesting. This is why there is the call for urgent help from international communities, certainly from Canada, to put pressure on the Nigerian government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you very much.

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

I hope that—

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Imahiagbe. I'm sure that members have many questions for you and you can elaborate on much of what you have said.

Starting off with our questions will be, from the Liberals, Ms. Anita Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much, and I want to thank you for being here, Mr. Imahiagbe. I understand that you are actually a teacher at a school in my riding of Ottawa West-Nepean at St. Paul's. I wanted to thank you again for the work you do there and also for being here as a witness.

I heard your testimony. You talked about systemic problems, about institutional overhaul. Our understanding from the previous witnesses is that there's been a real deterioration since the 20th of October, since the protesters were so violently repressed and we were starting to see more arrests.

Could you say that the situation is deteriorating at the moment in terms of freedom of expression, in terms of civil society and human rights defenders? If there's been a real deterioration recently, what can be done immediately to try to bring that public space back so that those institutions can then be, as you put it, overhauled?

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

Thank you very much for that question.

Yes, I'm a vice-principal at St. Paul, within your riding.

Since the incident of the shooting, there has been an escalated attempt to forcibly arrest and detain those who are seen as leaders of the protest, and in some places, as I said earlier, to freeze their bank accounts.

An atmosphere of fear has been created, and most of the leaders have gone into hiding. Some of them have fled the country in order to save themselves, because they need to be alive to be able to push for change to happen.

What can be done? An immediate response from peace-loving countries like Canada is urgently needed to put pressure on the Government of Nigeria. The response to peaceful protesters asking for change, asking for better governance, is not to perpetuate more violence against those who have put their lives at risk to call for change in the country.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

To what extent do social media play a role in this?

I know that there's an “end SARS” hashtag, and there are certain videos about what the government has done that have gone viral.

Is there a role for social media in amplifying those voices and for communicating, and to what extent is there freedom within Nigeria for people to be able to spread this information through social media?

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

As far as I know, social media have played a significant role in helping bring to light the reality of what is happening in Nigeria, but there have been TV news clips of the Minister of Information looking at how social media can be banned or gagged in Nigeria.

This is in line with what we have always seen when citizens call for better governance. There's always a clamp-down to create an atmosphere of fear so that when they get on their own, then the movement is squashed. That is the tactic that we're continuing to see, sadly. We hope that the international community can quickly put out strong statements and actions to remind the government of its commitment to human rights.

To add to that, Nigeria is a signatory of the African Charter on Human Rights and People's Rights, and also of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which places obligations on Nigeria to not only promote but protect human rights in Nigeria. A strong reminder and the consequences of not following through on those commitments, I think, would be a very good start.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much. That's one of the reasons our committee is doing these hearings today.

One of the things we heard about in the previous testimony is gender-based violence. We heard that some of the women protesters who are being arrested are actually being sexually assaulted, sexually abused in custody. There seems to be a particular gender-based violence against women human rights defenders and women who are journalists.

Could you tell us a little bit about what you're hearing about what's happening to women who are trying to stand up against these abuses?

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

Thank you for that question.

I do not have any specific examples to cite, but knowing the strength of the institutions of governments in Nigeria, if you are in custody in Nigeria, it's a very difficult place to be. I can also imagine that for a woman to be in custody under very difficult and harsh conditions.... I wouldn't want to be in that situation myself.

I definitely would buy into reports of situations where care and respect are not being given to women. They may be treated even more harshly just because they are women. It's harder for a woman to stand up for her rights.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Am I out of time, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, you are, Ms. Vandenbeld. Thank you very much.

Now we're going to the Conservatives and Mr. Chiu for seven minutes.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Imahiagbe, for coming to the subcommittee.

Through your speech I get a sense that you are trying to stick the blame to the system. You're trying not to blame it on SARS. You're saying that the SARS failure is an indication of a system that is actually failing. From what we have witnessed in history around the world, there's no such thing as system. Every individual in a society has to take up the responsibility and own up to it.

To that end, there is a Nigerian constitution. The Nigerian constitution grants an exception from the right to life for reasons such as suppression of riot, insurrection or mutiny.

Do you believe the army or the SARS—the police—are abusing this exception granted to them in the constitution? From the outside, it looks like evidence has presented itself. There are recent attacks on protesters, violating this exceptions. Therefore, they have to be taken to task for abusing their exception ability.

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

Thank you very much for that question.

My focus is on systemic failure because no good agency or arm of government can function under a system that cannot guarantee the proper channelling of complaints or in which rights are not guaranteed. If you go into the judicial system, you're not guaranteed your rights. If a SARS officer violently shoots or kills an individual, the rights of that individual are not guaranteed. There's no accountability. No one, as far as I know, has been found guilty when someone has been shot by SARS. There are hundreds of cases of innocent people, even bystanders, who have been shot down. There's just no evidence of an inquiry that has taken up a case involving SARS that has come to a conclusion and the officers were found guilty.

This is because of systemic failures from those institutions of government to the individuals. Sometimes we rely on individuals to be honest and true. However, in a system where nothing is guaranteed, it becomes very difficult.

For your question on the issue of an overreach by the army and the SARS, yes, there are provisions for these agencies to come in where the protesters are overreaching. However, what we saw from the #EndSARS protesters had been largely peaceful until the shootings and the killings started. There is clear evidence that the protesters were very organized and respectful. They cleaned up the streets after their protest. They were very well organized and they were respecting laws. They were not breaking laws.

The shooting and the killing, of course, led to gangs and mobs taking over the protest and looting, rioting and burning and all that. Before the shooting itself, the protest was a very well-coordinated, respectful and peaceful protest. The killings led to those with the wrong intentions taking it over.

I'm here to testify that the taking over of the protest by those with the wrong intentions is also evidence of systemic failure, because the killing and the rampaging over those with the right intentions led to the thugs and all those people with the wrong intentions coming to take over. The police found themselves not being able to control what happened in the aftermath.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

In the limited news reports we have received from outside of Nigeria, we have heard it is common for police to pressure victims to withdraw their reports of crimes and to take repercussive action against victims who proceed with filing those reports.

Would you be able to speak to the extremes of these repercussive actions and the types of reports the police would prevent from being filed?

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

Due to the brutal nature of responses when witnesses come forward or when innocent people are picked up as witnesses, they understand that the system cannot guarantee their release from the judicial system, they are left with nothing other than to play games, I would say, to free themselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Chiu.

We'll move to the Bloc and welcome Madame Larouche to our subcommittee. You have seven minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

This is indeed the first time I have attended one of this committee's meetings.

First of all, Mr. Imahiagbe, I'd like to recognize your courage. I have met with international rights activists on other occasions and I know how difficult it is to speak out about the situation in one's country. Everyone knows that violence begets violence. Thank you for being here to tell us about it today.

I'd also like to point out that today is International Men's Day. It seems that the victims of most of the violence and arbitrary arrests attributable to the squad known as SARS are apparently young men.

What other demographic factors typically characterize the victims of the police brutality exhibited by SARS?

Women and girls have been particularly targeted and affected by SARS violence. Can you tell us a little more about this?

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

As I said earlier, SARS was constituted for the right reasons. It's a special anti-robbery squad in response to issues of robbery in Nigeria. However, the SARS men and women are poorly paid and poorly trained. When they get out there, there's a tendency to take issue against the people they're supposed to serve and protect.

Adding this to the other societal issues that are happening in the country, the youth, the young people of Nigeria, had to come together to press for systemic change. Although it's named #EndSARS, the push is for a complete systemic change and to press for good governance whereby life expectancy can be improved and people can conduct business safely, without being harassed, without being killed in the streets, without being robbed.

The overall essence of #EndSARS was to push for systemic change. This was done not only by young men or young women but all young people of Nigeria. It was a collective effort by everyone coming together to push for change. Unfortunately, what we have seen and experienced in Nigeria is repression, to repress that push for change and good governance.

The government has come with an iron fist to squash that request. Unfortunately, the government has currently also gone into overdrive and is making it a public campaign about whether people were shot or not.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much.

I agree, that is a lot of very brutal acts.

You live in Canada. You are testifying before a House of Commons committee.

What can the Government of Canada do to better support the promotion of human rights in Nigeria? What can we do?

Let us recall that gross human rights violations contribute to the development of terrorism, as we see in Nigeria, among other places.

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

There are some very practical things the Government of Canada can do, such as press the Government of Nigeria to constitute credible, independent investigations, demand justice for all victims of police brutality and demand the restoration of fundamental human rights. This can be done by compensating the victims of SARS and by prosecuting perpetrators.

No one has ever been prosecuted for killing, maiming or even assaulting people. There is much evidence of this occurring, and we have not seen an independent inquiry that has successfully brought anyone to book. Also, put pressure for proper training and fair wages for police personnel so people who are well paid and well trained are out on the streets to serve and protect.

The people who are trained right now are not on the streets to serve and to protect. They are out every day looking out for their own livelihoods, and these are people who are armed. When armed people are on the streets looking for their livelihoods, that is like armed robbery.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

In one minute, could you tell me a little more about Boko Haram?

I am the status of women critic and I know what its members have done to too many young women and girls.

Can you tell us more about this terrorist movement in your country?

[Chukwuyem Imahiagbe]

The young people of Nigeria rose up not just because of SARS; they've had enough. One of the biggest issues the country faces is that fully armed Boko Haram, mocked up as Fulani herdsmen, have moved from the north of Nigeria all the way down south. They have covered the middle belt and the south of Nigeria and occupied the forests of Nigeria.

These are armed people who on a daily basis are kidnapping people, stalking people, raping women and children and asking for ransom. There have been cases when even some international—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Now we're moving to the NDP.

Monsieur Boulerice, welcome to our subcommittee for the first time.