, CIVIL CENTRE FOR DEVELOP PEACE MM R. OKOTIE-MEBAG-HANDU ESQ HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, PROGRAMMS DIRECTOR CIVIL CENTRE FOR PEACE JUSTICE AND DEVELOPMENT. CONSULTANT/RESOURCE PERSON Tel: +234(0)8037982628 Thank you Mr. President I put forward the case of Ethnic discrimination of ethnic minorities women of Delta State Nigeria in the criminal justice system. . Nigerian criminal justice system is not gender friendly in the delivery of its mandate, and often negating to adhere to the principle of upholding the fundamental rights to freedom and equality. • During the crises in Delta Nigeria October 1997, September 2003 and July 2013 police and millitary forces arbitrarily arrested people wihout granting bail; most of them are women they were used as sex tools and held in sex slavery for days. The soldiers sent by the Federal Government to calm the crisis invade their homes, at night beating and raping women and girls. One victim, Grace, an Ogoni human rights defender in her 40s, described how soldiers had gang-raped her. She was raped by three uniformed army men with guns. 11 years old Onome, who was raped by five policemen, she later discovered she was pregnant after two months. Being an orphan, she went through the suffering of pregnancy and childbearing all alone. She gave birth through caesarian section. Those in prison are technically denied bail.Nigeria constitution envisages quick dispensation of justice when it provides in Section 36 (4) However many accused persons are kept in custody without bail by the police, and in many instances they are not brought before a court within the prescribed limit of 24 or 48 hours. When they are finally taken to court they take them to a lower court that has no jusitiction to the alledge crime as such they have to take them back to prison: This is called a 'holding charge'. no criminal case gets decided within a year or more in spite of this provision. Neither the constitution nor criminal law legislation provides for such a charge. But the police tend to flock to the court of summary jurisdiction, that is, a. magistrate's court, which in law is not competent to handle a capital crime.