The Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED) has urged the National Assembly to use the ongoing Constitutional Amendment exercise to address the protracted grievances of the FCT Original Inhabitants.
The Executive Director, CHRICED, Dr. Ibrahim M. Zikirullahi, made the plea on Monday in Abuja at a stakeholders’ meeting and media conference on the matter.
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He recalled that there was a consultative session to strategize for effective engagement of relevant constitutional and governance processes, before, during and after the Public Hearing organized by the Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution.
“Notwithstanding these apparent limitations and severe contradictions caused by the abysmal failure of the political class, the review of the 1999 Constitution still present veritable opportunities to canvass the core issues aimed at redressing the marginalization, as well as the entrenched violation of the political, civil, economic and cultural rights of FCT Original Inhabitants, within the context of the Nigerian federation.
“It is a paradox of the Nigerian condition that Original Inhabitants who owns the land, and on whose ancestral lands Nigeria built its Federal Capital City, have been over the years treated unjustly and unfairly in many respects,” Zikirullahi said.
According to him, these injustices are antithetical to spirit and letters of all known human rights instruments to which Nigeria is a signatory, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on Thursday, 13 September 2007.
He said that the relocation of the nation’s capital from Lagos to Abuja has taken serious toll on the livelihoods, economic opportunities and cultural repositories of the original inhabitant people of the FCT.
He said, “Because of the denial of their basic rights, and the expropriation of their resources, most especially prime lands, with little or no commensurate compensation, the Original Inhabitants in the FCT have seen their fortunes take a turn for the worse.
“Being landless after the takeover of their ancestral homelands, the indigenes suffer higher rates of poverty, homelessness, insecurity, and malnutrition. The lack of access to basic services such as health and education has further contributed to the decline in the quality of their lives.
“CHRICED is therefore committed to the task of amplifying the voices of original inhabitant communities to influence key governance processes, beginning with the Public Hearing organized by the Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution on May 26 and 27, 2021,” he said.
He, however, said that CHRICED is not coming to take over the struggle of the original inhabitants of the FCT, but to play its part in even national development.
“CHRICED role in this process is to support local campaigns and initiatives by FCT Original Inhabitants particularly those relevant to the fulfilment of the political, economic and cultural rights of FCT Original Inhabitants,” he added.
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