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Feature Nigeria


In 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government set up a commission to investigate the human rights violations in the country – including assassinations and attempted killings – that occurred between January 1966 and May 1999. But the commission’s findings were never published. Now, as Mercy Eze reports, one of the commission’s members, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, has published a book on the commission’s work. And what a fascinating book it is!


B


Nigeria The ghost of Oputa’s Commission returns


ISHOP MATTHEW HASSAN Kukah’s book contains highly sensitive, compelling and, as some would say, infuriating and controversial material. Witness


to Justice: An Insider’s Account of Nigeria’s Truth Commission is a masterpiece. The 500-page book is his personal account of how he sees Nigeria. He draws extensively from the confes-


sions, complaints, and disturbing testimo- nies gathered by the Judicial Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations, set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government in May 1999 to investigate human rights and other abuses that happened in the country between Janu- ary 1966 and May 1999. Te Commission was headed by a retired


Supreme Court judge, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, and thus became known as the Oputa Panel. Its remit included identifying


individual perpetrators, institutions or state actors behind the atrocities. Te aim was to prevent future abuses, but the government never published the Commission’s findings. Now, using human rights violations as a backdrop to his book, Bishop Kukah (who also chairs the Ogoni-Shell Reconciliation Commission) examines the implications of military rule and its attendant culture of impunity, wanton killings, disappearances, corruption, and other ills. Te civilian class is, however, not spared as it had a good hand in the chaos. On the vexing issue of Ogoniland in the


Niger Delta, which is globally regarded as a huge scar on the conscience of Nigeria, Kukah explores the troubles stirred by the execution of the writer and campaign- er Ken Saro Wiwa, and nine others by General Sani Abacha’s military government. He also delves into the mystery shroud-


ing the assassination of the editor and co- publisher of the Newswatch magazine, Dele Giwa, who was killed by a parcel bomb on 19 October 1986. At the recent launch of the


book in London, the veteran journalist, Peter Cunliffe- Jones (a former editor of the French news agency, AFP) asked: “Is there a way


to avoid what brought about the human rights panel from happen- ing again?” Cunliffe-Jones, an old Nigerian hand, has written


extensively about Nigeria, includ- ing a book entitled My Niger: Five Decades of Independence. Te general answer to his ques-


tion was that the Oputa Com- mission may not be the last in Nigeria, because occurrences that necessitated the rights violation panel “still hap- pen” in the country. The London-based


Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, pictured at his ordination as bishop of Sokoto on 8 September 2011


Nigerian barrister, Dele Ogun, who was one of the panellists at the launch of Kukah’s book (and who is himself the author of several books on Nigeria) noted that recent incidents such as the killing of gradu- ates on national service in northern Nigeria, just


18 | October 2011 | New African


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