Know Your Rights (KYR)

In our Nigeria today, injuries and deaths caused by gunshots are rampant occurrences. Embarrassingly, some of these unfortunate instances involve trigger-happy law enforcement agents who decide to use their weapons without lawful justification but that is a story for another day. On this premise, our topic today will address the right of gunshots victims to adequate medical care. This right is now enshrined in the Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Act 2017. By virtue of the above law, all hospitals in Nigeria shall accept and treat without a police clearance any person with a gunshot wound. All security agencies are also mandated to render the necessary assistance to gunshot victims and ensure that they are taken promptly to a hospital for treatment. Furthermore, this law provides that all victims with gunshot wounds shall be treated without a request for initial monetary deposits and such persons shall not be victims of any inhuman or degrading treatment. ...

Today let's talk about our right to privacy.  As the Constitution puts it;  "The privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications is hereby guaranteed and protected." In my opinion, this right is one of the most important rights in human existence because it goes a long way to guarantee our independence and liberty as individuals. From the wordings of the Constitution, it clearly forbids spying and intrusions of any kind (or what we fondly call "busy body") by the government or security agencies or your employer or your educational institution or your bank or by anyone else at all. Your life, your home, your properties and your communications are all protected and the law is basically saying that everyone should just mind their own business. However, they are exceptions to this right. In other words they are instances when your privacy can be lawfully interfered with and these are: 1) in the in...

#Know_Your_Rights KYR has been absent for a bit because we have been working on some upgrades which are meant to make our blog bigger & better. As part of the upgrades, KYR is now accepting scholarly short articles from learned minds on legal analysis of trending societal issues. So if you wish to be published on our blog & other media outlets, kindly drop a message & I'll get back to you. Now to our gist today, we will be briefly discussing your right to peaceful assembly & association. Basically the break down of this right are: 1) You have the right to freely organize or partake in an assembly of your choice. This means a physical and voluntary meeting between persons. In view of advances in modern technology, this right to peaceful assembly now includes non-physical meetings such as webinars, social media groups etc. 2) You have the right to associate with any person or persons of your choice. 3) You have the right to form or belong to any politic...