Abstract

It is in the light of the foregoing that we intend in this thesis to examine the state of human rights in Africa. It would be the province of the thesis to find out how far the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights has enhanced the independence of the various African countries and improved on the quality of the rights enjoyed by the citizenry. While Chapter 2 deals with human rights in precolonial Africa, human rights in "modern day" Africa, i.e. from the colonial era, are dealt with in Chapter 5. Treating human rights under colonial rule and human rights since independence in the same chapter is to allow us to compare the situations under foreign rule and under African leaders, especially since the coming into force of the African Charter. The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and other regional human rights instruments are considered in Chapters 3 and 4 to enable us to know the standard against which modern human rights practices are to be judged. It is necessary to point out that, this writer being a Nigerian, a lot of references are made to Nigeria in the thesis. In fact, the word, "ominira", which appears in the title of the thesis, is a Yoruba (a Nigerian language) word which means freedom or independence as "uhuru" in Oginga Odinga's "Not Yet Uhuru."

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