Newly released data by the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, HRMI has raised serious concerns about Nigeria’s progress in upholding basic human rights, with the country scoring poorly across several key indicators in the global Rights Tracker 2025 report.
According to the data, Nigeria’s Safety from the State score, an aggregate measure of protection from arbitrary arrest, forced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, the death penalty, and torture sits at a troubling 3.2 out of 10.
The lowest-rated component is protection from arbitrary arrest, which scored just 2.5, placing Nigeria near the bottom of the international ranking alongside countries like Mexico and Venezuela.
Out of the eight African nations measured in this category, Nigeria ranked third-lowest, ahead only of Kenya and Mozambique.
The country’s Empowerment score, which reflects the extent to which citizens enjoy civil and political freedoms such as freedom of speech, assembly, association, and religion, also drew concern. With an overall score of 4.5 out of 10, HRMI noted that only freedom of religion and belief performed outside the “bad” range.
“Nigeria still has a long way to go in protecting the basic rights of its people,” said Nkosi Sibanda, HRMI’s East and Southern Africa Lead. “This is the first time we’ve produced civil and political rights data for Nigeria, and the evidence already paints a worrying picture.”
Human rights advocates, peaceful protesters, Indigenous communities, and labour rights activists were identified by HRMI’s expert respondents as being most at risk of rights violations. Specific mention was made of demonstrators involved in last year’s End Bad Governance, #EndSARS, #EndHunger, and Ebi np awa (“We are hungry”) protest movements.
In addition to civil and political rights, the report also assessed Nigeria’s performance in economic and social rights—including health, housing, food, and work—under the Quality of Life index. All of these rights fell into HRMI’s “very bad” category, with access to clean water and sanitation scoring critically low at 38.25% and 46.6%, respectively.
HRMI’s Nigeria Ambassador and Executive Director of the Human Rights Journalists Network Nigeria, Kehinde Adegboyega, pointed to a worsening housing crisis as an example of how systemic economic pressures are eroding quality of life.
“In many parts of Nigeria, rent has more than doubled while wages have stagnated,” Adegboyega said. “People are being forced out of decent housing, depleting savings, and even selling personal belongings just to stay afloat. The government must treat affordable housing not as charity, but as a human right.”
HRMI Co-Executive Director Thalia Kehoe Rowden emphasized that Nigeria already has the resources to do better.“Our data show that Nigeria has all it needs to significantly improve the lives of its people,” Rowden said.
“What’s needed is the political will to keep human rights promises and invest maximum available resources into food, education, and healthcare.”
The HRMI Rights Tracker, which includes data on over 200 countries using robust and peer-reviewed methodologies, is used globally by institutions including the United Nations, World Bank, and Amnesty International.
The full dataset is available to the public at rightstracker.org.