The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, through its Registered Trustees, has dragged the Federal Government before the ECOWAS Community Court in Abuja, over what the group called “immense suffering of Internally Displaced Persons across the country.”
The Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, Mr Mohammed Adoke was joined as a defendant.
The group, in a statement released by its Executive Director, Mr Adetokunbo Mumuni, disclosed that the Plaintiff asked the court among other reliefs, a declaration that the conditions faced by IDPs in Nigeria were inhumane, degrading and unlawful.
SERAP is also requesting for an order to hold the Nigerian government responsible for these human rights violations. It is equally requesting for an order directing the defendants and/or their agents individually and/or collectively to pay adequate monetary compensation of $300 million to the IDPs for the violation of their human rights, the subject matter of the suit, and to provide other form of reparation, which may take the form of restitution, satisfaction or guarantees of non-repetition and other forms of reparation that the Court may deem fit to grant.
In the suit, marked No ECW/CCJ/APP/15/15 and filed last week by Solicitor to SERAP, Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, the Plaintiff alleged “serious violations by the Defendants of the human rights of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to life, to health, to adequate housing, to personal integrity, to privacy, to fair trial, to freedom of movement and residence, to judicial guarantees, to private property and child rights guaranteed by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa; and Principles 1-30 of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.”
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