The Federal Government needed no one to tell it that its deregulation of the petroleum sector and the increase in electricity tariff announced last week would arouse the anger of the people and they would take up the most potent weapon available to citizens in all democracies: protests.
The police were ready. Order, I am sure, must have been given from above to all the police commands in the country to watch out and meet the unarmed protesters, regarded as trouble-makers, with force.
No one was surprised that when the protesters came out in Lagos September 10, they met the police kitted out in battle gear, ready to take them on. In protesting, the protesters had morphed into enemies of the government. You do not sup with your enemies; you zap them to silence them. Some of the protesters were arrested; some journalists covering the protest as a matter of professional duty, were also arrested. They too were treated as enemies of the government. After all, without the reporters, neither the nation nor the rest of the world would ever know that the people are unhappy with a policy that would make life more difficult for all of us in a very difficult situation, no thanks to Covid-19.
Our policemen tend to exceed themselves in their response to peaceful protests. Often their overzealousness turns such protests violent; heads are broken and the correctional centres welcome new admissions. I often wonder if the police in their zeal to please ever realise that their uniform does not make them immune, in this case, to the higher cost of petroleum and electricity. Peaceful protests threaten no governments; their panic reactions through the high-handedness of the police is quite often the problem.
The right of the people to disagree with government policies considered anti-people, is constitutionally guaranteed. So is their right to make their disagreement public in public protests. This country has a very poor record of respecting that basic right. During the long years of military rule, our human rights were put under lock and key. All public protests were instantly seen as the handiwork of the disgruntled politicians – and duly punished with the protest leaders put out of circulation. People put their lives on the line to have a say in how we were governed.
Arguably, it should be better in a democracy but we have not fared any better under our democratic leaders because the same mindset is still in place, to wit, protesters are the enemies of government. Every government would rather have a cowed or silenced citizenry because the less a government hears from the people the more it is convinced they are well-governed and contented. It is an outrageous fallacy.
Every attempt by groups to register disagreements either with government policies or the insecurity in the land under this government has met with the same response: stop them; disband them and keep them away from the seat of power. In a democracy, dialogue between the governors and the governed is carried on in different ways. A peaceful public protest is one of them. It permits the governed to exercise their right of dissent; it forces the government to listen to the people and perhaps re-examine its own wisdom in respect of the particular policy that invites a public protest.
No government in a democracy can afford to isolate itself from the people or pretend that there is some virtue in being hard of hearing. And no government should be comfortable with a cowed or silenced citizenry. If the citizens go about with their lips padlocked for fear of being tagged enemies of government, there is a problem. If there is no dialogue between the people and their leaders, good governance, always a huge challenge in all climes, suffers.
I think the Buhari administration should relax and embrace dialogue with the people. A peaceful protest does not threaten it. It is the exercise of a fundament human right enshrined in the constitution. He has much to gain by allowing the people to have their say over his policies. In electing him president the people did not elect him for his omniscience. He should free the public space and allow the people to register their disagreements with government policies they believe, rightly or wrongly, to be anti-people. If the people choose to air their grievances over whatever irks them as citizens, let them. They are not enemies; only citizens itching to have a say in how they are governed. It is better for the people to be allowed to ventilate their anger rather than bottle it up. It is safer too for the government.
The orientation of the police is critical to peaceful protests in the country. While it is their duty to carry out orders from above, nothing stops them from using their discretion in carrying out such orders. To come against unarmed protests with guns and batons is neither in the interest of the oga at the top nor of the country itself. Elsewhere, when there is a peaceful protest, the police take strategic positions to ensure that the protesters are protected and elements intent on causing chaos and mayhem are prevented from infiltrating the protests. It is the duty of the police too to ensure the full flowering of the people’s right to speak out, even against the government and its policies. After all, they are citizens too; they go to the market with the rest of us and suffer the vagaries of the untamed behaviour of market forces.
I have written elsewhere (See The Guardian of September 11) in support of the deregulation but I would be the last person to disagree with those who do not see it my way, and because they do not have a platform such as this, choose a public protest to register their disagreement. If the labour unions and a coalition of NGOs carry out their threat this week for nation-wide protests, we may be in for rough times in these rough times. Any such protests require tact on the part of the government to ensure they remain peaceful. The protests would not necessarily force the government to change its mind over its new policy, but they would hue to the cardinal principle that a democracy being a government of the people, the people must be allowed to have their say and the government its way. It is a win-win for the government.
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