No peace without food, jobs, healthcare — Falana

Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, has informed Nigerian lawyers that the country cannot achieve lasting peace or national security unless socio-economic rights—such as access to food, education, healthcare, and housing—are made enforceable.

Falana made this statement in Enugu while presenting a paper titled “Citizens’ Rights and Security Concerns” at the 2025 Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).

The prominent Senior Advocate, known for his long-standing advocacy for constitutional and human rights reforms, argued that Nigerians are faced with a paradox: freedoms that exist only on paper while citizens remain trapped in hunger, unemployment, and insecurity.

“A nation that is free from bullets but not from hunger, disease, joblessness, squalor, or illiteracy is not secure. It is merely quiet,” he told the gathering of lawyers.

Falana said Nigeria operates what he described as a two-tier constitution: one that protects civil and political rights such as freedom of speech, fair hearing, and association, mainly accessible to the elite, and another that relegates socio-economic guarantees to mere promises, unenforceable in courts.

According to him, the ruling class has weaponised the doctrine of non-justiciability of socio-economic rights in Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution, thereby disenfranchising the poor from enjoying meaningful access to life, dignity, and equality.

“Without education, income, health, housing, and social security, political and civil rights become formally equal but materially unequal, usable mainly by the well-off. That inequality is itself a security risk,” he declared.

Falana also criticised the government’s handling of internal security, saying the armed forces have, in many instances, undermined democracy by intimidating voters despite court rulings restricting their role in elections.

While praising soldiers’ sacrifices in counter-insurgency operations, he urged the Federal Government to channel more resources into acquiring modern military equipment rather than spending the bulk of the defence budget on recurrent costs.

He further lamented the worsening wave of kidnappings and killings across the country, noting that security votes are often misapplied instead of being used to procure equipment to combat bandits and criminal gangs.

“It is a shame that the security architecture of the country cannot address kidnapping and abduction by bandits and the killing of citizens and foreigners alike,” Falana said.

He urged lawyers to challenge both extrajudicial killings by state actors and the government’s failure to protect lives, citing landmark ECOWAS Court rulings where Nigeria and Ghana were found negligent in their duty to safeguard citizens.

Highlighting systemic police abuses, Falana reminded the NBA that lawyers have historically fought for and won protections for criminal suspects.

These include the rights to be informed of arrest grounds, remain silent, access legal representation, humane treatment, presumption of innocence, and bail.

He warned against unlawful practices such as arresting relatives of suspects, detaining people for civil disputes, or parading suspects before trial.

He noted that various laws, including the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, Police Act 2020, and the Anti-Torture Act 2017, provide clear safeguards.

Falana emphasised that effective monitoring mechanisms, such as magistrates’ monthly visits to police stations, must be enforced to prevent arbitrary detention and abuses.

Contrary to claims that socio-economic rights cannot be enforced, Falana pointed out several existing legal avenues.

These include the domestication of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, ECOWAS Court jurisdiction, and specific laws such as the Child Rights Act and the Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act.

He urged Nigerian courts to embrace purposive interpretations that link socio-economic guarantees with enforceable civil rights, for example, treating denial of education as a violation of human dignity or environmental pollution as a breach of the right to life.

Falana challenged the NBA to spearhead a nationwide campaign for socio-economic justice.

He suggested that the association’s human rights committees and its Section on Public Interest and Development Law (SPIDEL) should file strategic cases compelling government compliance with welfare laws.

He further called on the NBA’s 130 branches to take up cases of rights abuses against the poor and vulnerable while pressing the National Assembly to fund mechanisms that ensure compliance with human rights provisions, particularly in police operations.

“The realisation of socio-economic rights in Nigeria ultimately depends on the courage, creativity, and commitment of legal actors,” Falana told delegates.

Beyond the courts, Falana called for mass mobilisation of citizens to see socio-economic rights as integral to their dignity and security.

“Strategic litigation combined with grassroots advocacy can create the political momentum necessary for reform.

“By linking socio-economic justice to daily struggles, food, jobs, healthcare, and education, lawyers can translate abstract rights into lived realities for ordinary Nigerians,” he said.

Closing his presentation, Falana declared that Nigeria has one of the best human rights regimes on paper, but poor enforcement has left millions unprotected.

He urged the NBA to position itself as the defender of all victims of rights violations, insisting that sustainable national security cannot exist in a society marked by hunger, poverty, and inequality.

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