On the first of January 2021, comrades sowore , Juwon and 3 others who decided to stage a peaceful protest in Abuja to bring to the notice of the general public the issues of human rights violations and other issues affecting the Nigeria people as they entered into the new year under the Buhari regime.
To the chagrin of every right thinking person, the protesting comrades were rounded up in a commando- style manner and bundled in to the notorious cell of the SARS where they were brutalized and dehumanized for just exercising their right to protest and dissent! They spent over 75 hours before they were taking to a magistrate court where they were charged on the most laughable issues of incitement and other ridiculous charges and later remanded in Kuje prisons. I wept last night when I listened to the prosecutor made statements on their arrest and arraignment on channels TV. You can’t help but simply see the degenerate state we are in as a country!
Again, looking critically at the reasons behind their arrest and brutal treatment they were given in the cell of the police/SARS and the eventual charges laid against them, the immortal words of Aesop came live into my mind when he said; “ Any excuse will serve a tyrant”.
From the enormous evidence available to the public on illegal arrest and detention of innocent Nigerians on trivial accusations of wanting to overthrown and or breach of public peace anytime the citizens exercise their rights to disagree with government through protest, as lucidly shown that the president and the cartels in charge of this government want and seek to gag and suppress the rights of citizens for demanding a responsible and a responsible government. The resultant effects of the suppression the citizens are made to go through is the moribund government, depressed economy, insurgency , banditry and kidnappings that now bedevils our dear country!
For me, there are many agonising issues that are calling for government attention far more than trying to suppress the rights and voice of citizens. Today the security situation in Nigeria is at its abysmal level and everyone seems to now seek for self-help! The emerging issues surrounding the formation of Omoteku in the south west, the Hishbal in the North and the recent recruitment and parades of his soldiers by the Biafran agitators coupled with the second recession during the tenureship of the same government should be the issues that should occupy the mind of a serious government!
I think if there is anything disturbing the government, it should be how to remove the country from the current depression we are in now, revamp the security arrangements by removing the failed leadership that’s now even obvious to the blind that the service chiefs have to go and allow for fresh air in that sector!
Secondly, the issues of massive unemployment which as indirectly feed the recruitment gap for banditry and the kidnapping trade should be of top priority to government than that of arresting citizens who hold different views from the ruling opinion of those in government!
Clearly the suppression of the rights of citizens to freely expressed themselves will do more harm to the already battered image of the country under the Buhari government than it will help them cow the citizens from holding a dissenting voice! The country is bleeding already the government should not further put shit on it!
Again to Nigerians, we must rise up and call this government to order and from further drifting into absolute dictatorship and unguided exercise of crass impunity. We must heed to the warnings of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s warning never to allow people particularly the ones in power exceed their rights as they will soon began to have unlimited rights! We must all stand up against injustice. In the words of Martin Luther King; ‘ injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’!