senate President Bukola Saraki

On Saturday, the media office of Senate President Bukola Saraki announced his appointment as Ambassador-At-Large by an organisation known as the ‘International Human Rights Commission’ (IHRC), painting the impression of global recognition. ‘Senate President Saraki gets international appointment’, one newspaper headline even screamed.

However, checks by SaharaReporters have confirmed the so-called IHRC as a paperweight organisation without any relationship with the United Nations.

Making the announcement in an undated press statement by Rafał Marcin Wasik, its General Secretary, the group had written, in part: “Under the visionary leadership of General Secretary Sir Rafal Marcin, IHRC is working to strengthen & support all Nations capacity to engage in sustainable development through educational access, relief programs, ecological & bioethical reflections & actions, while taking in to consideration the traditional, social & cultural values of each Nation. Promoting Human Rights Peace, Gender Equality, Health, Economic development, awareness regarding the rights of women, children & youth in developing nations & where ever needed.

“With our ongoing expansions in operations worldwide, we are pleased to inform that The President of Senate H.E Senator Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki has joined the International Human Rights commission as our Ambassador at Large”.

Friday Sani, the person who announced the appointment, is actually a relatively unknown Nigerian, though the agency recognised him as the ‘Diplomatic Head of the Commission to Nigeria and other African countries’ and also describes him as an ‘Ambassador-At-Large’ on the IHRC website.

Funded by donations via PayPal, IHRC is only two years old. It was established on March 29, 2017 when Rafal Marcin Wasik, a Polish, teamed up with Ladislav Tesarik, a Czechs, and Iurii Kiperman, a Ukranian. The so-called international organization has no office outside Czech Republic, where one of its founders hails from, and only has a liaison centre, which it creatively describes as a “representational office”, in Ukraine. Although it claims to have a presence in a few other countries, there are no records of real-time activity in those countries, for instance as can be seen with Belarus.

Also, IHRC claims it was an official observer of Nigeria’s 2019 general election, but there is no proof of that in public domain. Even the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) list of accredited domestic and foreign observers it circulated on its own website does not contain its name.

Finally, to give itself some semblance of a UN agency, IHRC’s logo is designed to resemble UN’s. The agency also lists the ‘United Nations’ as one of the sub-menus on its website. However, although the UN is umbrella to a total of 36 funds, programmes, and specialized agencies, IHRC is not one of them.