You have probably made a sentence such as “ I wouldn’t even wish that for my enemy”. The reason behind this sentence is most likely that there is an experience that you believe that no human being should go through, for no other reason than the fact that they are human beings. This example is a crude idea of what Human Rights are in Nigeria and around the world and one of the oldest, most sacred and most popular rights is the Right to Life.
Human rights are those rights inalienable that everyone has simply because they are human and without which he would not be able to fully function. In a sense, human rights are not the product of law but they are seen as rights imbued on every human from the moment they are born. These rights do not find their origins in law but in the natural order of life and good conscience.
Unfortunately, it is safe to say that though there are standards and laws to ensure basic human rights are guaranteed, every society has its fair share of struggles when trying to implement the whole scope of human rights and Nigeria is no exception.
The 1960 Independence constitution of Nigeria was the first constitution to fully entrench human rights. It was a testament to Nigeria joining the united nations as the 100th country in the same year.
There are quite a number of human rights, but out of them all, the most important is the right to life. It goes without saying that without life, all other rights are unenforceable and unnecessary.
The right to life simply means that a person has a right to live without and should not be killed by another person. Hence, no one should live in fear of being killed by another person.
The right to life is entrenched in Section 33 (1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and it states:
“Every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty in Nigeria.”
Though the right to life is entrenched in the Constitution, the question still remains whether the government really enforce the right to life seeing that this right imposes a duty/ obligation on the Government to provide security for its citizens. The right to life is two-fold.
In one sense the right to life commands a negative duty to prevent people and the government from taking lives with the exception of the “execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty in Nigeria” as postulated by section 33 (1).
In the other sense, it imposes a positive duty on the government to protect lives, which is primarily handled through the instrumentality of the law enforcement agencies.
The Constitution is the ground norm. It is supreme and any law that violates it, shall to the extent thereof be null, void and of no effect whatsoever,
Section 316 (1) – (6) and 317 of the Criminal Code criminalizes the infringement of this right in the form of murder and manslaughter respectively.
It goes without saying that the right to life is not just any human rights, it is fundamental to the existence of any person.