Victims of torture and other inhuman treatments both at home and in public places such as offices, police cells as well as other detention facilities may soon heave a sigh of relief as succour may finally be on the way.

This is following consideration of a report and third reading of a Bill For an Act Penalising the Commission of Acts of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishments, Prescribing Penalties Thereof and for Other Purposes.

The Bill which is being sponsored by a returning lawmaker, Hon. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha (PDP, Abia) when passed into law will penalise every acts of high-handedness by individuals towards their subordinates, servants or people in custody in the case of criminal suspects under investigation.

Hon. Onyejeocha in her executive summary before the consideration process told her colleagues that the bill was necessitated for reasons such as:
“Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are strictly prohibited at all times under international laws, regardless of the person having committed such unlawful acts and what crimes the victim may be suspected of having committed.

“The enactment of a law against torture and ill-treatment would protect the rights of the potential victims of such ill-treatment and would enable the punishment of the responsible individual(s), thus, ensuring there will be no impunity.

“The proposed Bill underscores that freedom from torture is a non-derogable right. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture”, she noted.

Onyejeocha argued further that the aforesaid Bill is contemporaneous and seeks to among other things;

(i) “criminalize torture as an act by which sever pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposess as obtaining from him/her or a third person information or a profession; and

(ii)”punish him/her for an act he/she or a third person has committed or is suspected fo having committed”.

Section 1 (a)and (b) of the Bill makes it a State policy to:
Ensure that the rights of all persons, including suspects, detainees and prisoners are respected at all times; and that no person placed under investigation or held in custody of any person in authority shall be subjected to physical harm, force, violence, threat or intimidation or any act that impairs his free will; and

(b) to fully adhere to the principles ans standard on the absolute condemnation and prohibition of torture set by the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and various international instruments to which Nigeria is a State party.

Another Clause retained by the Committee of the Whole House is Clause 2 considered as fundamental to the description of acts constituting torture and punishable under the Act if passed.

According to the clause, acts of torture include:
Systematic beatings, head-bangings, punching, kicking, striking with rifle butts and jumping on the stomach;
Food deprivation or forcible feeding with spoilt food, animal or human excreta or other food not normally eaten; Electric shock; Cigarette burning, burning by electrically heated rods, hot oil, acid; by the rubbing of pepper or other chemical susbstances on mucous membranes, or acid or spices directly on the wound; Submersion of the head in water or water polluted with excrement, urine, vomit and/or blood until the brink of suffocation.

Being tied or forced to assume to fixed and stressful bodily position, sexual abuse ao any kind are among other acts considered as tortuous by the Bill.

The report was approved and passed through third reading – ready for harmonisation if necessary, for onward transmission to the President for assent.

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