Lagos lawyer, Femi Falana, has asked the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, to discard the bill seeking to regulate civil society and labour unions in the country.
Mr. Falana, a human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), made his feelings known in a statement on Wednesday.
The House of Representatives is holding a public hearing in Abuja from December 13 -14 in the bill that seeks to provide for the establishment of non-governmental organisations regulatory commission for the supervision, coordination and monitoring of non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, etc., in Nigeria and for related matters.
But Falana urged Mr. Dogara and his colleagues to “immediately drop the draft bill aiming to regulate and monitor the activities of all civil society organizations and labour unions in the country as the bill unequivocally threatens the very existence of a free and independent civil society in Nigeria.”
Ahead of the hearing, the lawyer argued that the planned law is the worst piece of legislation in the nation’s history.
“Under the bill, any civil society group advocating for human rights, basic freedoms and good governance can be shut down and criminalized,” Mr. Falana said.
“The bill if passed will ultimately have a disastrous impact on Nigerian citizens’ democratic participation in furthering the development of their own country.”
He, therefore, called on Mr. Dogara to reject the bill in its entirety because it violates entrenched rights of Nigerians.
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According to him, the draft legislation comes short of international human rights norms governing the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly, including Section 40 of the Constitution of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) and Articles 21 and 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Articles 10 and 11 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights to which Nigeria is a state party.
“The bill allows government authorities to de-register local and international associations and NGOs if they consider them as not working in the “national interest,” he continued.
“Government can similarly deny registration on the vague grounds that the purpose and goal of the associations or NGOs are inconsistent with the programmes of government.
“The excessively broad and vague provisions and administrative discretion given to the authorities in regulating the work of community associations, labour unions, NGOs and other civil society groups can be wielded as tools to intimidate, and even suppress, dissenting views and opinions in the country.
“The bill places undue restrictions on the right to freely associate, which is a fundamental freedom and essential component of democracy, as recognized by the UN Human Rights Council.”
Should the bill be passed into law, Mr. Falana vowed he would challenge it in the court on the grounds of its “unconstitutionality and incompatibility with Nigeria’s international and regional human rights obligations and commitments.”
