A COMMISSION to investigate human rights abuses in Nigeria dating back to the country’s civil war will start public hearings on October 23. The panel has spent a year sifting through thousands of petitions detailing alleged human rights abuses. Among the cases put to the commission are the extrajudicial killings of prominent opposition leaders under late military ruler Sani Abacha, the 1995 execution of delta minority rights leader Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the pogroms carried out against ethnic Igbos in the build-up to the 1967-70 civil war. – AFP