THE OPUTA REPORTS: AN UNFINISHED JOB
By
It is a proposition too plain to be contested that one of the few most visible "dividends of democracy" in the country today is the establishment of the Commission on Human Rights Violations whose gargantuan terms of reference include, inter alia, the investigation of the massive human rights abuses that took place in Nigeria during the long years of military misrule with a view to terminating the resultant unfortunate phenomenon of man’s inhumanity to man in our land. It was a logical postmortem for a bygone era that was largely characterized by unrestrained brutality, oppression, institutional pillaging, fraud and the arrant irresponsibility of national leadership.
We must not be understood to be saying that what we have now is the ideal democracy. This is because it is still largely the same set of individuals who ruthlessly peppered our people while in uniforms yesterday that are now occupying political offices today as "democrats". The difference, which is quite significant for this piece, is that they no long have the "with immediate effect" or "lock ’em up" powers to brazenly harass, shoot and incarcerate innocent and defenseless people without any response from anywhere. It is within this little window of freedom that the essence of the Oputa Panel could be rationalized. Whatever might have been the intentions of those who set it up, no one can deny that it has given some signals to the common people of Nigeria that there is a democratic alternative to military dictatorships. Whether or not what is in place in the country now is true democracy is yet another matter.
Even though Commission was born in some confusion, it has since lived up to its billing. There was however the ineffectual attempt to liken it to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission under the chairmanship of the equally legendary Bishop Tutu. For those who know a little bit about the South African experiment in post-apartheid social engineering, it was difficult to find sufficient legal and conceptual similarities between the Oputa Panel and the Desmund Tutu led Truth Commission beyond the fuzzy object of finding the truth about those abuses and reconciling the people who have been hurt by the brutality of that time. On paper, the Commission was neither equipped to completely find the truth about what actually took place or reconcile the dramatis personae or anybody.
But contrary to the general skepticism that greeted its establishment, the Commission now popularly known as the "Oputa Panel" after its chairman, the retired Supreme Court Justice C. Oputa, has, for all intents and purposes, proved to be of some limited success. Those who initially doubted the effectiveness of the Oputa Panel, including yours sincerely, had very legitimate grounds to do so. First, the instruments setting it up were less than clear, a situation that created considerable doubt in the minds of the citizenry who had on many previous occasions been deceived by similar quasi-judicial bodies whose printed reports are now materials only good enough for the ubiquitous guguru street hawkers. Secondly, the Commission, unlike the South African original, was inadequately equipped and characteristically underfunded and understaffed.
It’s eventual strength and aura were drawn from the impeccable moral caliber of the men and women that sat on it and, of course, the palpable determination amongst Nigerians that never again would they be subjected to the political butchery of military dictatorship. And like a god that could not be attacked frontally, its spirits which in this case, consisted of ignorance and secrecy were to be assailed and done with, once and for all. In other words, the myth of a military salvation of the society has been laid to rest as the people now know for sure that nothing good can ever come out of military rule, no matter how benevolent or ‘popular’. A few of the cupboards stuffed full with the skeletons of the bloody dictatorships were exposed so that no one would ever be in doubt that dictatorship is a curse to the nation and an indelible reproach to the people. In many ways than one, the Commission was also to lay down the much-needed foundations for both the moral and ethical re-armament in the management of state affairs.
Of course, no one could deny that what happened in Nigeria during the period of military rule was a socio-political calamity of unimaginable proportions as the value of human life and those of the society were wantonly violated and rudely truncated by power drunk liliputs. Especially under the leadership of the evil relay team of Buhari, Babangida and the chief of them all, Abacha, the lives of most Nigerians were made unnecessarily nasty, brutish and short in the true Hobbesian sense.
What happened during the hearings of the Commission was a lesson to all of humanity. Yes, it was a huge entertainment for a people previously starved of fun for so many years. There were jeers, there were boos; and there were emotions as there were sophistry on free display. Never since the days of Alawada keri keri itinerant theater did the ordinary Nigerian witnessed such a mammoth circus for free. At the end of it all, the good, the bad and the ugly in the cloakrooms of our military leaders were brought out to the open for popular audition. Nigerians became aware of the horrible and disgusting foibles of their leaders. Who can forget the shame that former General Oladipo Diya and others openly heaped upon themselves in the vain hope to use the Commission to whitewash their tears and blood soaked uniforms as was facilitated by the lowly ranked Major El Mustapha? If there would not be coup d’etat in Nigeria again, it would just be due to the debilitating insight the public had acquired about the utter irresponsibility of military leadership through the Oputa hifi DVD.
The hilarious drama of the Panel’s open proceedings aside, we must concede that it also succeeded in collating and recording horrible and legendary instances of human rights abuses; how our leaders betrayed the trust reposed on them or the roles they chose to assume on their own by turning fellow Nigerians into torture objects and instruments for the practice of barbarism. While all that could just be the tip of the iceberg, one thing was clear: there were inespicable abuses coldly revealed and the nation was shocked to learn of the gory details of some of the horrendous criminality many officials committed in the name of the State.
As would be expected, few people, especially those who had something to hide or had aided and abetted the military in the unholy enterprise of corruption and human rights abuses did not agree with the mission and style of the Commission. The fact that the Commission was not a perfect institution gave credence to those who honestly opposed it on grounds of principle, but on balance, however, it was a much needed healing balm for a society thoroughly debilitated and it was, therefore, a welcome fact-seeking intervention into the moral depravity of the nation which the military had festered with reckless abandon.
And if the much-talked about reconciliation among the various individuals, communities and groups was ever to take place in Nigeria, people must be accorded the privilege and opportunity to decently vent their feelings and grievances to one another in a non-adversarial forum. As Africans, that type of conciliatory process suited our mentality: tell our neighbor our feelings about him openly and honestly and then strike the grudge off our minds and reconcile with him, rather than seeking for calculated vengeance and punitive or aggravated legal damages as the materialistic caucasian and vengeful oriental minds are wont to do. For that reason, the Oputa Panel was it.
Those who ought to have gone there to give their own sides of the story but contemptuously stayed away from it, for whatever reasons, might someday regret their absence for even the Devil himself wouldn’t want to be seen to have resisted truth and reconciliation in a land booming with unlimited goody goody religiosity.
So, the anxiety of the public for the release of the Reports containing the findings and recommendations of the Commission is therefore understandable. What will happen to those who unlawfully violated the rights of fellow citizens? More importantly, what will happen to those who suffered from their acts of brutality? What is the obligation of the government to the victims? Would there be amnesty for those whose conduct fell below the expectations of the Panel? The answers to these questions must be found inside the voluminous Reports.
Now that the Reports have finally been formally released, it is the turn of the Government that set up the Commission to make use of its contents and for the public, for whose benefit it was supposedly created, to accept and adopt the ‘new lease of life’ as prescribed by the Reports. Failure to do this would mean that we have again wasted an opportunity to make amends and change our evil ways and heal our past as a people. Happily, the President who too has also contributed to the violation of the human rights of Nigerians at different times and in different capacities has decided to apologize to Nigerians on "behalf of the State" whose instrumentality was deployed by a series of deranged leaders to torment the citizens. If Obasanjo were able to do this, as symbolic as it might seem, it would be a major positive development in the direction of the formulation of a truly humane and rights-conscious governance for a country that has not known official decorum for a long, long while.
Of all the issues that must come up in the aftermath of the Reports is that of compensation. Signs that it would be a contentious one was given by the honorable Chairman when he hinted that the Panel was not particular about the form of compensation rendered the victims as long as there is a semblance of it. President Obasanjo seems to have prematurely bought this argument as he was also quoted as saying that there would be no monetary compensation stemming from the Oputa Reports. I think there is a fundamental misconception here. Compensation in this context is not a "reward’ or a "prize" for going to jail and for enduring or surviving torture and humiliation but a moral gesture of our appreciation of the humanity of the victims that were denied in the process. For example, when we pay bride prize or dowry for marital transactions in Africa, we are not to be understood as buying or selling the bride. Rather, it is a gesture of the value that we attach to the process. In the same vein, it is not right, as the Panel Chairman and the President have insinuated that the compensation for victims of human rights abuses will not include monetary gestures.
President Obasanjo should soberly consider the fact that he has himself been amply compensated by the society for his ordeals in the Abacha kangaroo court that he was tried in and his subsequent painful time in jail as he was able to walk out of the jailhouse and headed straight for the State House in Aso Rock as President and Commander-in-Chief. It cannot be better than that. He must therefore not forget that many others left similar jailhouses for their ruined businesses, shattered homes and irretrievably diminished personalities. What is good of the goose should be good for the gander. While it is conceded, and as conceded it must be, that money is not everything, the point could still be made that there ought to be adequate, just and equitable compensation for those we know were wronged.
Our submission is that there must be real compensation because the maxim of the law ubi ujus ubi remedium (for every harm there must be a remedy) is a hallowed principle of our constitutional process. There is no doubt money alone cannot adequately satisfy the pains and anguish that victims of human rights abuses were made to go through. But as our basic measure of value, it is still very important, all the same.
There is no need to go into unnecessary jurisprudential or penological excursion before resolving what is intended by the concept of "compensation". Our constitution has already laid down some broad outline for soothing unlawfully frayed nerves, especially if the injury was inflicted in the name of the State as the military and their henchmen did. The guide, as provided in Section 35 (6) of the present Constitution, is that: "Any person who is unlawfully arrested or detained shall be entitled to compensation and public apology from the appropriate authority or person". For this purpose, "appropriate authority or person," means any authority or person specified by law.
We suggest that after the public apology must have been given, ostensibly in the official Gazette and in the media, a written official certificate confirming the text and spirit of that apology should be issued through the office of the Commission to all concerned. This suggestion is more than a mere exercise in bureaucracy. It is also about setting precedents in human rights protection and respects. This point I have already sufficiently made in my Sunday column in the Anchor newspaper available on the web at www.theanchoronline.com
Finally, we strongly recommend, in accordance with our traditional African reconciliatory practice, that some amount, even if token sums, be offered to those that were so brazenly wronged. We suggest that what would be given to the individual involved should, as much as possible, be able to contribute to the amelioration of the pecuniary losses that were occasioned by his arrest and detention because what happened was that a typical victim was illegally uprooted from his home, job, friends, and vocation and was unlawfully taken to the torture chamber while his dependants waited, starved and immiserated in his forced absence. Account must also be taken of the fact that due to the callousness of the torturers, inmates had suffered appreciable diminution in life expectancy and general health status as not a few of those that were brutally detained by the military have died quite prematurely after their release. And those who were thus tortured even if they survived suffered and continue to suffer incalculable inhuman and degrading pains, stress, distress and humiliation, which would need some pecuniary awards to assuage. Those who did not survive this torture should be reached posthumously through their surviving relations.
If the Jews that were tortured decades ago by the now extinct Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler still continue to insist and collect mouth-watering compensation packages, if the South Africans we are copying are paying some token, if it is a part of our culture to atone voluntarily, then, it is only proper that we do something to tell the victims that the society commiserates with them and that the State renounces the charges that were unfairly imposed on them in its name and more importantly, that this nation does not approve of torture and official brutality. Forgiveness and rapprochement are more meaningful when coupled with apology and compensation for even the Almighty God demands our repentance and symbolic sacrifices for our sins as a divine precondition for forgiveness. Why then must the Nigerian government think differently?
Compensation to us, is a minimal requirement for the bona fide fulfillment of the Constitution and the universal requirements of human rights as well as the laying of the foundations for a truly just and humane society where no one would be unnecessary oppressed again. This is one of the surest ways through which the ghosts of the past, which the Oputa Panel ably unearthed, for all to see, would be laid to rest. On this note, Obasanjo for once, has started well. He must, as the highest "appropriate authority" in the land, complete the healing process by offering equally appropriate compensation, financial or otherwise, to those known victims of human rights violations. Otherwise, it would mean that nothing to those who suffered under the military dictatorship would have changed, democracy and all the mutual backslapping or not. And it would, therefore, mean a veritable invitation to all men of goodwill to resume the inevitable and unfinished struggle for the evolution of a truly just, humane and equitable Nigeria. Consequently, for the victims, compensations there ought to be.
May 2002