We were already at the NHRC, we had started singing protest songs, we were waiting to be received by the leadership of the NHRC, when thugs carrying placards praising PMB, and rowdily chanting 'Sai Baba" began to menacingly march towards us. They came to the venue in El-Rufai buses; they were openly smoking hemp, and it was clear they were high on drugs.
Exactly 14 days ago on December 9 - the International Anti-corruption Day, and the eve of the World Human Rights Day, an emerging and emergent alliance of citizen's organisations had come together to address a press conference on the deteriorating state of our nation.
Our focus and the issues we addressed were around the shrinking civic space, the increasingly brazen nature of the concerted efforts to undermine the rule of law, the relentless march towards ever more brazen violations of the human rights of citizens, the attack on the justice sector exemplified by the refusal to obey court orders, and the invasion of the courts by armed security agents, the continuing random arrest and wanton illegal detentions of innocent citizens in undisclosed and hidden security detention facilities, and the holding in jails across the country of political prisoners.
We had called for immediate steps to be taken to reverse the ominous trend, for the immediate release of all illegally detained compatriots, the unconditional release of political prisoners, and a commitment publicly stated in an open address by the President and C-in-C to restoration of the rule of law.
We gave a 14-day ultimatum, which expired on Monday. In giving the ultimatum, we had promised that we would commence a series of public and mass actions from today until our demands were met.
On Monday, we took the first steps to underscore our determination and commitment to uphold the human rights of our people, and to hold our political leaders to account.
Towards this end, we prepared to hold Freedom Rallies to deliver our demands publicly to the National Human Rights Commission at its offices in Abuja and Lagos.
Hence in Abuja and in Lagos we led citizens in these Freedom Rallies.
In Abuja however, we became the victims of a growing despotism, that is unrestrained in baring its fangs.
We were already at the NHRC, we had started singing protest songs, we were waiting to be received by the leadership of the NHRC, when thugs carrying placards praising PMB, and rowdily chanting 'Sai Baba" began to menacingly march towards us. They came to the venue in El-Rufai buses; they were openly smoking hemp, and it was clear they were high on drugs.
They stopped in front of us, and began to make threatening gestures towards us, even as they continued their drug induced chants.
As they continued to threaten us, acting with impunity in the presence of security personnel who simply stood aside watching, my compatriot - Rafsanjani and I along with two other compatriots crossed the road and approached the security men who were idly watching us.
We approached them, we explained to them the threat to us and to public peace represented by this confrontational and openly aggressive crowd. We requested that they approach this crowd, talk to them, but more importantly, that they should place their personnel between these two groups to avoid physical confrontation and ensure the security of everyone.
We told them that every group had a right to protest, but no group had the right to attack and confront violently other groups.
It was as if we were talking to ourselves. We had to leave them and go back to give leadership to our people.
In fairness to the police, two of their personnel did take their own initiative, and tried to act as a wall to prevent this menacingly aggressive, drug driven, intoxicated, and obviously hired crowd of thugs from attacking us.
But of course two of them were no match, and we were not prepared to be bullied and scared into dispersing. We were determined to stand our ground.
And so it was that the leader of the rented thugs, also high on drugs, approached RAF and I, and collected and tore our placards, pushed us around and roughed us up a bit, and then instructed his rented crowd, who were also armed with sticks, knives etc, to begin to attack our rally. Every placard was collected and torn, people were beaten up and pushed around, journalists were not left behind - and all of this was unfolding live in front of the security officers, in front of the journalists, as the show of shame was being filmed and broadcast to the world.
By this time, the NHRC security personnel had locked their gates, our backs were to the wall, and still the attacks continued.
Inevitably, our ranks broke, some started running to find refuge.
It was at this point that the crowd set upon Deji Adeyanju, and chased him. He had to run, the media ran and followed. It was after realising that someone could actually get killed that the Commanding Officer of the police gave instructions for his team to intervene.
Eventually Deji was saved, but before being beaten up badly and sustaining injuries. He had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.
Back at the NHRC we held our ground, the police led the unruly rented militia away, we resumed our rally, we addressed the media, and we eventually met with the representative of the ES of NHRC to formally present our demands.
As I said to the citizens that we led, and to the media, "In the face of crushing poverty, made was by corruption, there will be resistance; and with resistance comes repression. We have been here before in our history. We saw off the military dictatorship, we shall also put an end to a y emergent despotism. We maybe brutalised or threatened, but we are not scared, we are not afraid. We Are Survivors. We survived the dictatorship of the 80s and 90s, we shall survive this present onslaught. We are in a marathon not a sprint. And we're prepared for the long haul".
Those who adamantly refuse to listen to the cries of the people they are governing, should look over their shoulders at Hong Kong, at Lebanon, at Sudan, at Chile, even as they look back to our own January Uprising of 2012!