By Jude Opara, Abuja
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), on Tuesday revealed that it recorded a total of 3,724,822 cases of human rights abuses in 2025.
Executive Secretary of the Commission, Tony Ojukwu spoke on Tuesday in Abuja during the presentation of the 2025 Human Rights Dashboard and the 2026 Nigeria’s Human Rights Outlook.
Ojukwu said that the Commission decided to not only review trends and patterns from the past year, but also to identify priorities, risks, and opportunities for strengthening human rights protection in the country in the new year.
“In 2025 alone, the Commission received a total of 3,724,822 across its 38 offices. This figure is significant, not only in its size, but in what it represents. It reflects growing public awareness of the Commission and its mandate; increased citizen confidence in reporting violations; and persistent structural human rights challenges.
“The complaints received in 2025 spanned a wide range of rights, relating to livelihoods, housing, education, and healthcare; civil and political rights concerns, gender-based violence, child rights violations, and abuses against key and vulnerable populations; and the impact of insecurity, communal conflicts, banditry, and counter-insurgency operations on the enjoyment of human rights”.
According to Ojukwu, data from the NHRC Observatory further revealed that insecurity, poverty, weak service delivery, and governance deficits continued to intersect with human rights outcomes across different states of the country.
“From the January to December 2025 dashboards, we have learnt that human rights violations are deeply linked to systemic issues including inequality, unemployment, weak institutions, and limited access to justice.
“One thing that has also been highlighted is that collaboration remains essential. No single institution can address Nigeria’s human rights challenges alone. Progress in 2025 was most visible where government agencies, civil society, traditional institutions, and communities worked together”.
Presenting the data of the Dashboard, Senior Human Rights Adviser to the Executive Secretary, Hilary Ogbonna said the North Central and North West recorded the highest cases while the South West and South South posted the the least cases.
According to Ogbonna, in the thematic approach, the cases of law enforcement and human dignity topped the list, just d he revealed that there was also an upsurge of child abandonment with 669 cases, with Benue state topping the list with 498 cases
On the case of Police over high-handedness, the Commission issued 42 summons to the police with 84 visits to police stations.
The report further showed that in December, there was 246 cases of killings while kidnapping recorded 390 with bandits responsible for 149 cases of killings.
Other cases of rights violations include the Gender-based violence which was reported to be in large numbers, including domestic and sexual violence like rape and abandonment and highlighted persistent violations of women’s and girl’s rights.
The NHRC Dashboard is a monthly review where the Commission makes public the number of rights abuses and complaints it recorded.
