By Daniel Nduka Okonkwo
For decades, Femi Falana, SAN, has stood at the intersection of law, human rights and the Nigerian struggle for accountability, one of the country’s most formidable legal minds and intellectually forceful human-rights advocates, whose interventions have repeatedly challenged institutions to confront the uncomfortable distance between the rights guaranteed on paper and the justice citizens experience in reality. Now, in a striking intervention that places the Nigerian Bar Association itself under scrutiny, Falana is demanding that the nation’s premier professional body for lawyers move beyond declarations of commitment to human rights and deploy the legal powers already available to it against arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention and the systemic neglect of some of Nigeria’s most vulnerable citizens.
Nigeria has laws designed to protect citizens from arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention, but the existence of those safeguards does not necessarily mean they are being effectively implemented. Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana SAN, is challenging the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to help close that gap.
In a statement titled “TIME FOR NBA TO STOP ILLEGAL ARREST AND DETENTION OF NIGERIAN CITIZENS” and sent to Daniel Nduka Okonkwo of Profiles International Human Rights Advocate, Falana identified several statutory mechanisms for monitoring police stations, detention facilities and correctional centres, and called on the new NBA leadership, headed by Mrs Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, to ensure that those mechanisms are actively deployed to protect Nigerians from illegal arrest and detention.
By the combined effect of Section 34 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 and Section 70 of the Nigeria Police Force Establishment Act 2020, Chief Magistrates are mandated to conduct monthly visits to police stations within their magisterial districts. During these visits, the Chief Magistrates are empowered to inspect the station’s record of arrests, direct that detained suspects be brought before a court for trial or formal arraignment in appropriate cases, or grant bail to suspects in deserving cases. For a suspect who may have no lawyer, financial resources, or influence to challenge an unlawful detention, such oversight can be critical.
Both laws have equally empowered judges of the Federal High Court to visit all other detention facilities within their areas of jurisdiction, for the purpose of ensuring that suspects are not detained beyond the period stipulated by the Constitution. However, Falana notes that the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court has not designated judges to conduct such visits as contemplated by law.
Falana is calling on the NBA leadership to ensure that members of the Human Rights Committees of all 145 branches of the Association make it a point of duty to accompany magistrates during their monthly visits and inspections of police stations in each state of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. He is also urging the NBA leadership to mount pressure on the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court to designate judges to conduct monthly visits to all detention facilities other than police stations.
Furthermore, by virtue of Section 21 of the Nigerian Correctional Service Act 2019, the President and National Officers of the NBA are official visitors to all correctional centres in the country. Falana is urging the new NBA leadership to mobilise its national officers to carry out these statutory duties without further delay.
In the case of The Incorporated Trustees of the Nigerian Bar Association v. Police Service Commission & Ors (Suit No. NICN/ABJ/264/2025), the National Industrial Court, per Justice O. Y. Anuwe, declared that the police authorities have a mandatory duty to deploy police officers who are legal practitioners to every Police Division in Nigeria, to assist with the enforcement of human rights in policing, as mandated by Section 66(3) of the Nigeria Police Act 2020.
In line with the terms of this judgment, the new NBA leadership should ensure that police officers who are legal practitioners are assigned to every police station to monitor the observance of the human rights of suspects. In particular, Falana is calling on the NBA to invoke the relevant provisions of Nigerian law to bring an end to the illegal arrest and detention of indigent citizens by the police and other law enforcement agencies.
His intervention challenges the new leadership of the NBA to determine whether the profession’s commitment to human rights will remain largely declaratory, or be translated into sustained monitoring and intervention at the points where violations allegedly occur.
Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is an investigative journalist, human rights advocate, and publisher, and the founder of Profiles International Human Rights Advocate, PIHRA. His work focuses on governance, accountability, and the protection of fundamental rights across Nigeria and Africa. His reporting has appeared in Vanguard, Daily Trust, Sahara Reporters, African Defence Forum, Opinion Nigeria, and Daily Intel, among others.
Read more of his work on the PIHRA blog: https://profilesinternationalhumanrightsadv.blogspot.com
For tips, feedback, or collaboration, reach him at dan.okonkwo.73@gmail.com
