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Nigeria’s Obligations under International Law

The Rights to Health and Education

The rights to health and education are enshrined in international human rights law, most notably the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). ³²⁰ The ICESCR recognizes that the ability of governments to realize those rights varies according to the resources they have at their disposal. Thus, as a party to the ICESCR, Nigeria is obligated to take steps “to the maximum of its available resources” to achieve the progressive realization of the rights to health and to education.³²¹  

The ICESCR along with other international instruments requires that primary education should be “compulsory and available free to all.”³²² In its general comment on the right to education, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the international body of experts that monitors compliance with the ICESCR, found that among other requirements primary education must meet certain minimum standards of “availability.”³²³ In explaining this it noted that:

[A]ll institutions and programmes are likely to require buildings or other protection from the elements, sanitation facilities for both sexes, safe drinking water, trained teachers receiving domestically competitive salaries, teaching materials, and so on; while some will also require facilities such as a library, computer facilities and information technology.³²⁴

Primary schools in Rivers State are generally without access to most or even all of these basic facilities, especially sanitation facilities, safe drinking water and teaching materials. Some even lack any physical structure to protect students from the weather or only possess classrooms that had been allowed to degrade into a severe state of physical decay.

The right to health is defined by the ICESCR as the “right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” with specific emphasis placed on efforts to create “conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness.”³²⁵ The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has articulated the content of this right in more specific terms, stating that states’ efforts to realize the right to health should include the provision of “functioning public health and health-care facilities, goods and services…” including:

…the underlying determinants of health, such as safe and potable drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities, hospitals, clinics and other health-relatedbuildings, trained medical and professional personnel receiving domestically competitive salaries,and essential drugs, as defined by the WHO Action Programme on Essential Drugs.³²⁶

The Committee has also stated that included in the right to health is “a core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum essential levels of each of the rights enunciated in the Covenant, including essential primary health care.”³²⁷ Such facilities do not exist in much of Rivers State.

Governmental Corruption and Waste and its Impact on Health and Education

As has been documented in this report, primary education and primary health care services throughout much of Rivers State have been grossly neglected by the local governments tasked with keeping them alive. At the same time, enormous sums have been lost to corruption or channeled into questionable and frivolous expenditures. In some cases even the limited funding that has been allocated to health and education has itself been improperly diverted and cannot be accounted for. Not only are local governments in Rivers failing to take steps “to achieving progressively the full realization” of their people’s rights to health and education, but in many respects government efforts appear to be heading in the opposite direction despite the recent huge increases in government budgets.

The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights has said that a “violation of the obligation to fulfill” regarding the right to health can occur when there is “insufficient expenditure or misallocation of public resources which results in the non-enjoyment of the right to health by individuals or groups.”³²⁸ The Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights interprets the ICESCR as being violated when a government engages in the “reduction or diversion of specific public expenditure, when such reduction or diversion results in the non-enjoyment of such rights and is not accompanied by adequate measures to ensure the minimum subsistence rights for everyone.”³²⁹

Nigeria has tasked its local governments with the front-line responsibility for providing both primary health care and primary education, but the responsibility for government’s failure to live up to its responsibilities does not rest with them alone. In Rivers, the state government has failed to exercise its oversight duties in a responsible manner and has allowed corrupt local government chairmen to run roughshod over the rights of their constituents.

Ultimately, Nigeria’s federal government cannot escape its responsibility to work towards realizing the rights to health and education. Nigeria’s constitution delegates much of that responsibility to the country’s local governments, but the federal government retains its ultimate responsibility to ensure the rights are realized.³³⁰

Right of Access to Official Information

The ability of citizens, the media and civil society to access official information, such as budgets and government contracts, is essential for combating corruption. The 1999 report of a Commonwealth expert group meeting on the right to know stated:

Freedom of information has many benefits. It facilitates public participation in public affairs…. It enhances the accountability of government, improves decision-making, provides better information to elected representatives, enhances government credibility with its citizens, and provides a powerful aid in the fight against corruption. It is also a key livelihood and development issue, especially in situations of poverty and powerlessness.³³¹

In Rivers State, the state and local governments have taken the opposite approach. The State government claims to publish its budget each year, but in practice both state and local government budgets are treated as closely guarded secrets. Local journalists have been harassed and intimidated for questioning government policies and actions. Federal government efforts have allowed citizens a rough idea of how much money is coming to their state and local governments, but they remain without any way of discovering how those administrations claim that they are spending the money they receive.

Legislation currently pending before the Nigerian parliament—the Freedom of Information, Fiscal Responsibility and Audit bills—would improve the access of Nigerians to government information. As of December 2006, none of these bills had been passed into law.³³²

Providing greater access to official information is consistent with Nigeria’s obligations to promote and respect the right to freedom of expression. Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that “[e]veryone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds.”³³³  

The UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression clarified the meaning of article 19 with respect to access to information:

[T]he right to seek and receive information is not simply a converse of the right to freedom of opinion and expression but a freedom on its own…. [T]he right to access to information held by the Government must be the rule rather than the exception. Furthermore, there must be a general right of access to certain types of information related to what may be called "State activity," for example, meetings and decision-making forums should be open to the public wherever possible.³³⁴

In 2000 the special rapporteur endorsed, and the Commission on Human Rights noted, principles on freedom of information legislation.³³⁵ These principles include:  a presumption that all information held by public bodies at all levels should be subject to disclosure and that this presumption may be overcome only in very limited circumstances; public bodies should publish and disseminate widely documents of significant public interest (including operational information about how the public body functions); and, a presumption that all meetings of governing bodies be open to the public.³³⁶

Similarly, the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights recognizes, in article 9, that “[e]very individual shall have the right to receive information.”³³⁷ In 2002, the African Union's African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights adopted a Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa. Part IV on the right to information provides that “[p]ublic bodies hold information not for themselves but as custodians of the public good.” Specifically, public bodies shall be required actively to publish important information of significant public interest; everyone has the right to access information held by public bodies; and, any refusal to disclose information shall be subject to appeal to an independent body or the courts.³³⁸