Explaining Human Rights Attitudes

Having described the status quo of human rights in Nigeria, particularly in relation to the human rights issues examined here, what is next? We intend to further investigate the human rights attitudes of Nigerians. The reason is simple. Upon closer inspection of the above reports, there tends to be a certain pattern of observance of human rights among Nigerians. Some rights are generally recognised and respected, while others are explicitly rejected and abused, and in some cases the abuse even appears to be ‘state sponsored’, that is, they are sanctioned or supported by the State through the instrumentality of its laws, for example, discrimination based on sexual orientation and the right to life issue of the death penalty, among others. For this reason, we feel it is necessary to investigate the human rights attitudes of the Nigerian people, especially from below, to see the emerging tendencies in relation to the selected rights and to try to identify the determinants of the possible tendencies.