I saw images of military and police motorcades in Abuja. This ‘show of force’ should have been against Boko Haram and the other terrorists we are dealing with, but no. I also saw images of our compatriots forced to sit or lie on the bare ground. For doing what? For exercising their rights to protest? It upsets me, makes me sick to my stomach.
The hypocrisy, lack of shame or any sense of irony of Muhammadu Buhari has no part two.
In 2003, he was the All Nigeria People's Party presidential candidate but lost in the heavily compromised election. On 22 September 2003, the party held protests across the country. Buhari himself was at the protest in Kano along with his running mate, Chuba Okadigbo, and others.
It was at this protest that the vicious police under the inspector-general of police, Tafa Balogun, violently disrupted an otherwise peaceful rally by shooting tear gas canisters at the protesters. Their official excuse was that the protest was illegal, the protesters having not obtained a police permit for the rally. They had applied for it 4 months prior but were denied.
The police deliberately aimed the tear gas at Okadigbo, who was asthmatic, and this led to his death. In other words, the regime of Olusegun Obasanjo through IGP Tafa Balogun killed Chuba Okadigbo, for protesting peacefully.
An angry Buhari promised to do something about it, and his party sued the IGP. Eleven others joined the suit. What they sought to do was to challenge the anachronistic, anti-democratic provision of the Public Order Act, which required citizens to seek and obtain police permits before holding rallies of any kind. They won at the Federal High Court, Abuja on 24 June 2005.
The IGP appealed that judgment. In the matter of IGP v ANPP, and in the judgment delivered on 11 December 2007, the Court of Appeal finally nailed the coffin on the issue of a police permit. Justice Olufunlola Oyelola Adekeye said, ‘Any placard-carrying demonstration has become a form of expression on issues affecting the government and the governed in a sovereign state...It will not only be primitive but also retrogressive if Nigeria continues to require a pass to hold a rally.’
Justice Rabiu Danlami Muhammad said, ‘Certainly, in a democracy it is the right of citizens to conduct peaceful processions, rallies, and demonstrations without seeking or obtaining permission from anybody. It is a right guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution, and any law that attempts to curtail such right is null and void and of no consequence.’
The court reinforced the fundamental rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of movement, etc enshrined in the Constitution.
Who on earth would've imagined that years later, yesterday's victims who strove to obtain this landmark judgement would today turn around to deploy and abuse all the forces at their disposal to curtail the right of others to protest peacefully?
I saw images of military and police motorcades in Abuja. This ‘show of force’ should have been against Boko Haram and the other terrorists we are dealing with, but no. I also saw images of our compatriots forced to sit or lie on the bare ground. For doing what? For exercising their rights to protest? It upsets me, makes me sick to my stomach.
It will never be well with any hypocrite and anyone who sees nothing wrong with this, or who mocked the protesters with words, or even silently in their hearts.
Sesugh Akume, a public policy analyst writes from Abuja. He tweets @sesugh_akume, and can be reached via [email protected]