Nigeria: Shifting Goals Versus Human Rights

Nigeria, like many developing nations is caught in the web of popular slogans. This time, it is the slogan of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are portrayed as holding the promise of eradicating extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women and reducing child mortality. Other promises of the MDGs include improving maternal health, combating HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development. These promises are to be realized on or before the magic year, 2015.

But wait a minute, have we not travelled on this road before? As a young man in the university in the early 80's, I knew of previous slogans; health for all, housing for all, education for all, water and sanitation for all, etc, all by a previous magic year, which was the year 2000. The year 2000 was portrayed as a miracle year and all things were supposed to fall in line by that year; indeed impecunious bachelors were supposed to get wives and spinsters were automatically entitled to husbands of their dreams by the year 2000. And the year came to pass and nothing changed. But shortly before that magic year, world leaders quickly gathered to shift the goal post to 2015 thinking that the year will never come or at least to give them a breathing space to continue playing on the hopes and aspirations of the people. Nigerian governments enjoyed all this goal and goal shifting business because it suited and still suits their idea of governance.

About three years to the terminal date of 2015, what is Nigeria's score on the MDGs? The story is still the same as the country occupies unenviable positions with statistics that put it at par with war ravaged nations. Life expectancy from birth is put at 48.4 years and we account for 10% of worldwide maternal mortality; expenditure on public health is just a paltry 1.7% of the GDP; over ten million children are out of school and still roam the streets, etc. It is indeed a litany of woes.

Before we could digest the continuous shifting of the goal post and the poor performance, the Abacha administration produced Vision 2010 and the Obasanjo administration further shifted the goal post to 2020. In thinking of 2020, it appeared to the leadership that it was a far away time and would give them some elbow room to continue playing games. However, it dawning on every discerning and reasonable person that the 2020 dream is either a malaria induced dream or one based on insane delusions. So, where do we go from here?

Roll back to the year 1948 and the days of the development of the jurisprudence of human rights by the United Nations and its agencies. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a common standard of achievement for all humanity had proclaimed the right to an adequate standard of living including food, clothing, housing and health, education, social security, the right to work and the full development of the human personality, etc. Fast forward to 1966, the United Nations adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Covenant expanded and expounded the rights in the Universal Declaration including the rights to adequate housing, enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; education, food, social security, protection for the family and the continuous improvement of living conditions. Nigeria is a state party to the Covenant and as such is expected to take steps to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively, the full realization of these rights.

The foregoing brings to the fore the central poser for this discourse; which vehicle provides the best protection for the beneficiaries - rights or goals? It appears to me that the idea of goals was invented to water down the language of human rights in these days of government denying its obligations and seeking to transfer them to an imaginary market. Governments do not want citizens to know about their rights and to make claims for the realisation of those rights. A goal is just an aspiration, something you hope to achieve, a mere target. The rights proclaimed in the Covenant and reaffirmed in Chapter 2 of our Constitution and under various laws including the Child Rights Act, the Universal Basic Education Act, etc, on the other hand are inherent in the human person; they are entitlements and claims that should be made on government by citizens. They form the basis of the social contract between government and the people.

The fundamental problem is that the state is attempting to force the basic needs approach on issues of human rights in situations where the only feasible alternative is the human rights paradigm. This is the justification for the sudden international interest and rush to designate many economic and social rights as MDGs. For purposes of clarity, the basic needs approach and the human rights paradigm differs in a number of ways. A human rights approach introduces a normative basis, which binds the state implying that beneficiaries of development are active "subjects" and "claim holders" and stipulates the duties and obligations of those against whom such claims can be made. Such approach introduces the accountability dimension not present in the MDGs approach. Further, not all human needs are recognized as rights; rights are indivisible, equal rights necessitate the elimination of inequalities and all human rights embody individual freedom. The human rights approach moves away from human development indicators premised on or oriented towards goals, not towards rights. Goals are something you reach for while human rights are inalienable, intrinsic. In short, they are our birth rights.

I therefore believe that these so called MDGs should be treated as the human rights of the people and the entitlements of the beneficiaries should be properly defined and articulated. Government need not provide everything free of charge as that is impossible because of limited resources but it can pick up a limited package of interventions in education, health, housing, water, electricity, roads, etc and these will be deemed the minimum entitlements of citizens which translate to the minimum core obligations of government. The rights based approach will ensure that budgets will be prepared and implemented with a focus on meeting these minimum core obligations. For instance, if there is a right of access to free maternal and child health, the government will calculate the cost of implementation and make it a priority in budget formulation and implementation. The funding of such rights would come from the Consolidated Revenue Fund as first line charges. They will take precedence over padded votes to non performing offices and MDAs of government.

The rights based approach also envisages duties for the people. If governments begin to deliver on these rights, the willingness of citizens to pay taxes and support government will improve. Accountability will improve and government will have a higher moral ground to demand fiscal and other support from the citizens. This raises the final challenge for the federal and state governments, to come forward with entitlements and claims of citizens and the implementation mechanisms for new funds they intend to free from the proposal to remove fuel subsidy. Insisting on committing over 70 per cent of the budget to recurrent expenditure after the hardship imposed on citizens by the subsidy withdrawal will attract a national outrage.

Onyekpere is the Lead Director, Centre for Social Justice

Email: censoj@gmail.com

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