Democracy and Human Rights in Nigeria: A Critical Inquiry (Published)
Democracy has been generally acclaimed as the best protector of human rights amongst all forms of government. In many democratic nations of the world this is evidential, but in Nigeria the story is different. Democratic government of Nigeria, with regard to the issue of human rights protection is not too different from military dictatorship. It has been observed and rightly too, that government agencies are the worst violators of human rights and tacitly backed by the government. This paper challenges the Nigerian government that was democratically elected to uphold her statutory and definitional responsibility of respecting, protecting and enhancing human rights of her citizens and punish decisively any abuses of human rights. The citizens also should not be complacent about this, they should protest legitimately against such violations bearing in mind that violation of their rights dehumanizes them which should not be the case.
Keywords: Abuses, Democracy, Human Rights, Nigerian Government, Violations