The Nigerian government is increasingly responding to protests against corruption, human rights violations and governance failures as subversion, treason and even terrorism. This behaviour is much worse than what we have seen under military rule. Protest has been redefined as a concerted effort at unconstitutional change of government and the result is that the government is deliberately keeping narratives of subversion and coup d’état permanently on the table. Why would any government behave this way is the real question for which I have no answer? Why has this government remained in panic mode for over one year? Why are they so frightened of the right of the people to express their voices?
Last month, there were nationwide protests organised against bad governance and the extreme hunger and cost of living crisis we are in and the protesters have threatened to resume their action if the cost of fuel and food does not go down. What does the government do? It raises the cost of fuel on the day the Dangote Refinery started producing petrol and Nigerians were expecting the cost to go down as internal Nigerian production resumes after decades. It is as if the government is determined to fan the embers of protest and rebellion. I simply do not understand what government thinks it is doing.
Does it make sense to increasingly criminalise peaceful protests, portraying them as attempts to undermine state authority. Why should activists and protesters be facing charges of treason, sedition, or terrorism for simply participating in anti-hunger demonstrations. Why should laws such as the Terrorism Prevention Act, Cyber Crime Act and the Public Order Act be deployed to clamp down on public gatherings and expressions of dissent? If government thinking is that framing of protests as treasonable would produce a culture of fear among the populace, it means they have not followed Nigerian history. Did Generals Babangida and Abacha not try very hard to intimidate Nigerians into silence and inaction but failed woefully?
The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has been “well behaved” and refused to join the nationwide protests in August. What does the government do? It sends a huge detachment of heavily armed security personnel to invade Labour House, close down a bookshop selling radical literature and declare the President of the NLC wanted for subversion. No one understands why the NLC was targeted for extreme harassment after it had accepted government solicitation not to participate in the end bad governance protests. By punishing them for not protesting, I guess the NLC has now understood what the government really wants them to do.
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To ensure the NLC has really got the message, the government has just raised the price of fuel this week from about 600 to 900 naira. The NLC, in a statement by its president, Joe Ajaero, explained that one of the reasons for accepting N70,000 as national minimum wage was the understanding that the pump price of petrol would not be increased so that inflation could be kept down. Mr Ajaero added that President Bola Tinubu, during negotiations for the minimum wage, had given the NLC two options: “either N250,000 as minimum wage (subject to the rise of pump price between N1,500 and N2,000) and N70,000 (at old pms rate).” The NLC has publicly declared government action to be a betrayal. Meanwhile, no official reason for the increase has been given, but the state-owned oil firm recently lamented that it could no longer sustain the price of petrol.
One month after the agreement on the new minimum wage, the new rate has not yet been implemented and unfortunately, a new significant escalation of the cost-of-living crisis is occurring that would create more trauma and misery for the working class. The NLC has demanded the immediate reversal of the fuel price increase, the release of all those arrested during recent protests, and called on the government to put a halt to the indiscriminate detention of citizens. The NLC also demanded an end to policies that engender hunger and insecurity, electricity tariff hikes, and an end to what it described as the government’s “culture of terror, fear, and lying.” I doubt that this government is ready to listen to reason.
What they are ready to do is demonstrate a good sense of drama by declaring a Briton wanted on Monday, the same day they arraigned 10 #EndBadGovernance protesters accused of working with him to topple President Bola Tinubu’s administration. The Federal High Court in Abuja issued a warrant for the arrest of a British citizen, Andrew Wynne, and two Nigerians earlier declared wanted by the Nigerian police for allegedly plotting an insurrection against Nigeria. The Nigerians also ordered to be arrested by the court are Lucky Obiyan and Abdullahi Musa. The judge, Emeka Nwite, issued the order on Tuesday following an ex-parte application by the police. Mr Wynne and the two others have become key targets in President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s sweeping crackdown on activists and others allegedly linked to the recent #EndBadGovernance protests. The police accused Mr Wynne (also known as Andrew Povich or Drew Povey), in a statement on Monday, of building “a network of sleeper cells to topple” the Bola Tinubu administration “and plunge the nation into chaos.” His crime is that he “rented a space at Labour House, Abuja, for an ‘Iva Valley Bookshop’ and established ‘STARS of Nations Schools’ as a cover for his subversive activities.”
Also, on Monday, the government arraigned 10 Nigerians who participated in the #EndBadGovernance protest in Abuja, Kano, Kaduna and other states. Part of the charges against them was that they collaborated with the 70-year-old Briton “with intent to destabilise Nigeria” and that they “called on the military to take over the government from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.” They were also accused of conspiring with Mr Wynee to plot a war against the Nigerian state. The lawyers defending the activists have however pointed out that these activists do not know each other and had never heard of Mr Wynee so there could have been no basis for a conspiracy. Nonetheless, the judge has ordered the remand of the 10 defendants in prison till September 11 when he will deliver a ruling on their bail application.
My advice to the government is that they need to put on their thinking cap of enlightened self-interest and start reducing rather than increasing suffering in the land. Government should stop amplifying anger through provocative acts. They should prioritise policy measures that reduce hunger and misery. May they see the light.
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