Community Members Learn Their Rights at SUSLIVA Capacity Building Workshop

On a Saturday morning in Uyo, over 80 community members gathered in a hall for a workshop most of them had never attended before — one focused entirely on their own rights.

The Workshop

SUSLIVA's Human Rights Awareness & Advocacy program organised a full-day capacity building workshop, bringing in facilitators to walk participants through the basics of Nigerian constitutional rights, international human rights standards, and how to access legal support when those rights are violated.

Who Attended

The room was a mix: market traders, farmers, community leaders, women from the WomenRise network, and young people still in secondary school. Many had never discussed human rights in a structured setting before.

"I didn't know I had the right to refuse an illegal search," one attendee noted during the open discussion segment. "I just always cooperated because I thought I had no choice."

The Conversation That Followed

The workshop's open discussion segment ran 45 minutes over schedule. Participants shared experiences of rights violations they had either witnessed or experienced personally — and facilitators helped them understand what recourse existed.

SUSLIVA plans to hold follow-up community sessions in three local government areas, taking this knowledge directly to where people live and work.