The National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, in Abia State said it received
1,238 written complaints on human rights abuses from January 2024 to date.
The state coordinator of NHRC, Mrs Uche Nwokocha, gave the figure on Monday in Umuahia during the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and beginning of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, GBV.
Nwokocha said that the number of the abused persons would have been more than 5,000, if those who walked into the commission’s office to complain or did so through phone calls were to be included.
NHRC, which in conjunction with National Orientation Agency, marched through major streets of Umuahia campaigning against GBV, said that the written complaints were mostly about civil liberties, such as abuses by security agents and GBV.
She said that the commission received five complaints on rape, but decried the bottlenecks faced in prosecuting the cases, including lack of more judges in Abia State Judiciary.
“Some cases of rape are first reported to the traditional rulers, and when negotiations between the suspects and survivors fail, they come to us,” she said.
Nwokocha, a lawyer, further disclosed that her office had seven GBV-related cases in court, but had yet to secure any convictions because of delays in the judicial processes.
“The judges in Abia judiciary are overworked and we need more judges to handle some of these cases.
“You go to court, you see about 30 cases on the case list assigned to one judge on a daily basis, whereas a judge, no matter how hard he tries, cannot handle more than five.
“It is not fair and this is delaying the process in the judiciary,” she said.