Public defenders’ office, avenue for justice – Rights commission

By Bashir Mohammed Kano

North-west Zonal Coordinator, National Human Rights Commission (NHCR), Hajiya Hauwa Salihu Jauro, has described the establishment of the Public Defenders’ Offi ce as “an avenue for ensuring justice for the less-privileged.” Speaking at a one-day sensitisation workshop organised for Kano indigenes by the offi ce at the Islamic Centre in Tarauni local government area of the state yesterday, Jauro said the offi ce was purposefully established to serve as a leeway for defending the rights of the less-privileged whose rights were trampled upon with impunity.

Jauro said the less-privileged ones were being made to face every form of persecution in the absence of no one to fi ght for their rights by way of seeking legal redress to their advantage, lamenting that the “less-privileged ones in the society have now been provided with the opportunity to access free legal services through the assistance of prominent professional lawyers.”

She said the National Human Rights Commission had been up and doing in standing fi rm to defend the rights of every citizen and that the issue of citizen’s fundamental human rights was sacrosanct under the law, adding that assisting the down-trodden to access free legal services would help in decongesting the nation’s prisons.

She said “every Nigerian citizen has the right to quality education, health and security which must be guaranteed under every circumstance,” stressing that the enforcement of the law by those saddled with such responsibility must not be handled “by instilling fear, intimidation or beating a suspect under police interrogation.” Speaking in the same vein, the administration offi cer, Public Defenders Offi ce in Kano, Mrs. Rotkang H. Kyunni, said off ering free legal services to the lessprivileged indigenes of Kano was a great responsibility of the offi ce which had been occupied and run by competent legal practitioners who were engaged to shoulder such a herculean responsibility.

Leave a Reply