Nigeria’s national police force is committing widespread and systemic torture during interrogations and in prison cells, a U.N. expert said Monday.
U.N. anti-torture investigator Manfred Nowak said Nigerians in police custody are often flogged, beaten with sticks and machetes, shot in the foot or suspended from the ceiling.
“The conditions of detention in the police cells visited were appalling,” Nowak told the 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council.
The cells were mostly unsanitary and overcrowded, with prisoners forced to sleep on concrete floors, Nowak said, adding that prisoners often lack food and water.
Nigeria’s U.N. mission in Geneva said it could not immediately comment. Nigeria’s president has acknowledged problems with the prison system.
Nowak, one of the U.N.’s unpaid, independent human rights experts, visited Nigeria in March last year where he inspected prisons, interviewed detainees and talked to local authorities and rights groups.
He said authorities were packing far too many prisoners into centers designed for pretrial detention. Port Harcourt Prison, for example, is designed to hold 800 detainees, but had 2,420 detainees at the time of the visit.
Some have been waiting for trial for a decade, Nowak said.
Their wait is often marked by torture, which is an “intrinsic part” of Nigeria’s police system, he added in a 27-page report. “This unacceptable state of affairs must end,” he said.
Female detainees being held in much better conditions than men, Nowak said. Their prison sections are less crowded, and the women are sometimes allowed to sew or occupy themselves with other activities.
While Nigerian authorities recognize they have to improve, prison reform efforts have all been short-lived, Nowak said.