arrest Bal Mohammed, Abbas, no demonstrators – HURIWA
The Nigerian Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) condemned the crackdown and arrests of peaceful protesters at the controversial Lekki toll gate in Lagos state.
The national coordinator of the human rights group, Comrade Emmanuel Onvubiko, said on Saturday in Abuja that the conspiratorial silence of the Nigerian police and State Department services openly supported the armed pastors by Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed. and the demand for arms by Abdullahi Abbas, President of the Kano State of the All-Progressive Congress (APC), is condemnable, especially since the federal government demonstrates double standards and gross violations of human rights to protest, law abiding and which peacefully threaten constitutional democracy.
HURIWA, which has opposed bloody attacks from the current administration by peaceful protesters at Lekki Toll Gates Lagos and in nearly all peaceful civilian marches over the past six years towards the military junta in Myanmar, said the administration, led by President Muhammad Bukhari, is becoming more and more dictatorial and totalitarian, which runs counter to the constitution of Nigeria, according to which they were elected by the Nigerians who hold the sovereignty of Nigeria.
Public demonstrations are a democratic way of communicating existing complaints to elected leaders of the nation-state, he said, just as the group argued that any attempt to suppress democratic freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly is a coup against democracy and the constitution.
“The crackdown on peaceful demonstrators at Lekki Toll Gates Lagos this weekend is a grave affront to the fundamental principles and values of constitutionalism and democracy,” Onvubiko said.
He says the arrest could spark massive protests across the country.
He warned that the actions of the Lagos State Police could encourage activists across the country to take to the streets for solidarity marches.
He said the brutal arrests of these activists by the police under the command and control of Mohammed Adamu are offensive to all known international human rights conventions, treaties endorsed by the Nigerian state and recognized by domestic law and Grund regulations in Nigeria.
The human rights group argued that the Nigerian police, which are not a legislature under Section 4 of the Constitution, have no power or legal authority to stop the exercise of these protected and guaranteed fundamental freedoms of citizens, which in any event cannot even be legally prohibited except another decision by a competent court in accordance with section 6 or during periods of a state of emergency in the country declared by the legislative process.
He said that the DSS and police consistently harassed economist and former CBN deputy governor Dr. Mailafia Obadia for his comments on the unsafe situation in the country, while Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed supported the terrorist actions of armed shepherds, but security forces did not work.
He also said that the same thing happened with the President of the State of Kano APC, who called on his supporters to fight hard against any person or group of people who try to participate in any form of election fraud on Election Day 2023.
Source: – Daily Trust
