The Nigerian Police has used a canine squad a canine squad to illegally disperse a group of protesting youth which embarked on a one-day hunger strike in protest of the planned removal of fuel subsidy.
The youths who gathered at the popular Unity Fountain in Abuja, beside the ever-busy five-star Transcorp Hilton Hotel, say President Goodluck Jonathan has soon forgotten that peaceful protests like this brought him to power.
It will be recalled that at the height of the illness of the late President Musa Yar’Adua, Nigerians from all works of life took to the street asking the National Assembly to obey the constitution and make President Goodluck Jonathan an Acting President. This was as charlatans had hijacked the nation under the name of President Yar’Adua’s inner caucus.
Some of these protests took place simultaneously in Lagos, the commercial city of Nigeria, and Abuja, the nation’s federal capital.
However, it seems President Goodluck Jonathan, and those in power, have soon forgotten that protests are legally part of the democratic process needed by Nigerians to express their displeasure over unfavorable government policies.
It will be recalled that a few months back when some youth groups protested the alleged sack of Justice Ayo Salami of the Court of Appeal and the subsequent swearing-in of an Acting Court of Appeal Judge by President Goodluck Jonathan, the police in their wisdom arrested leaders of the groups for daring to express their opinion openly.
One of the leaders of the group, Wole Badmus, went into hiding shortly after said the police had engaged in a manhunt for him and tried to intimidate him and his peers to put an end to the Ayo Salami saga. Shortly after, the youth leaders were released and the Commissioner for Police, Mike Ozuokumor, said on national television that it is not every issue Nigerians should protest about. Wole Badmus, in a separate interview disclosed that Mr. President had forgoteen the means by which he came into power, a means which was supported by millions of Nigerian youth. Mr. Badmus said this is shame of Nigerian democracy.
This was revealed again today on the much acclaimed Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month of the Year Two Thousand and Eleven. Residents in Abuja woke up to see major motor routes leading to the Unity Fountain cordoned off by policemen and men of the Nigerian Army. One of the youth described this as a rape of Nigeria’s nascent democracy.
Not only were the routes blocked by fierce-looking, heavily armed policemen, in a war-like mood. The was Unity Fountain was surrounded by policemen and men of the State Security Service, SSS
Police officers who first came to meet the youth ordered that they disperse as they had heard information of possible bomb threats. Soon after the FCT Police Commissioner, Mike Ozuokumor arrived the scene and did show any diplomacy as his junior colleagues but outrightly ordered the youth be driven away from the Unity Fountain. This was all the police needed as their dogs unleashed to effect the order of the ranking Police Commissioner. The youths were chased out of the Eagle Square and some of them even forgot their personal effects as they hurried out of the venue.
Wale Ajani, the President of the National Youth Council, who had earlier revealed that he was picked by the men of the SSS a couple of days ago, said that there had been immense pressure on him from government to call off the protests. He said as long as government did not consider Nigerian Youths who will be at the receiving end when subsidy is removed, they will stand by their demand. He said twenty-four hours hunger strike was also an opportunity to ask God to deliver Nigerians, from the hands of vampires like self-seeking politicians who are not in touch with the reality of Nigeria’s contemporary times.
Ajani said he had been accused of being sponsored by opposition politicians, but his persecutors forgot that during the elections, the youth supported President Jonathan. How ironical now that these same youths have now become the opposition in the views of the authorities. Ajani laments the sorry state of affairs in the country, and calls the government of President Goodluck Jonathan a big disappointment, who in so short a while has forgotten the benevolence he received from Nigerians, especially the youths.
He ends with the warning that “2015 is just by the corner”.
Written by Amadin Uyi, an Abuja-based journalist.