When this writer had nearly concluded that the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration was marble-hearted and that it was deaf and mute, it turned out to have some vestiges of fellow-feeling, even if feigned, after all.
Following the arraignment of gaunt, holocaust-like minors before an Abuja High Court penultimate Friday, Nigerians and members of the international community were outraged and aghast by the footage they beheld.
Not only were these minors – 119 of them – unshielded as demanded by law and convention, they were procured, not from Borstal Homes, but from the Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja!
According to their Lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), many other minors were to have been procured to Abuja from some northern states for trial for alleged treason over the August 1, 2024 #EndBadGovernance protests but for the presidential reprieve.
Certainly, some of these minors went over the top. They overreached themselves by going on vandalising and looting sprees. But do these excesses amount to alleged treason, punishable by death? Even Draco in his glory would have been more lenient.
Let me say, without equivocation, or mincing of words, that even this feigned show of compassion, calibrated to elicit undeserved popularity by the president, must be qualified. It must be modulated by the facts as we know them.
The first poser to raise is: Was the government, all this while, oblivious of the status of these minors? Was the government not informed by the relevant security agencies and the Attorney-General’s Office of the status of the protesters arrested?
Second, assuming it was not informed, were these minors supposed to be incarcerated, for a record three months, and without trial, in a correctional centre?
Third, why did they look so emaciated and malnourished, as if they had been liberated from some Nazi, World War II Camp? Does their malnourishment speak to what obtains in our correctional centres across the board?
Fourth, when did protests, provided for in our laws, and enshrined as part of the democratic process, assume the unseemly status of a crime? If it was, why was the president and many others, who protested in the recent past, and under our democratic dispensation, not arrested and arraigned before our courts?
Sixth, by allowing these protesters to be arrested, and to be detained for three solid months, was the president not undermining and scuppering his credentials as a pro-democracy activist? Or are we to assume that all along, he was a closet dictator masquerading as a democrat?
Seventh, why did the Judge, before whom these hapless minors were arraigned, wash his hands off, only to allow the executive branch to weigh in, and in a manner as to effect a cheap popularity stunt? In short, why did he not use his hallowed court to condemn this manifest breach of the law and the travails visited on these minors?
Ninth, if vile insurgents, and mendacious members of Boko Haram, who have killed with glee and recklessness, could be de-radicalised, pardoned and re-integrated into society, why should these minors, who only, allegedly, protested hardship in the land, be subjected to such harrowing treatment?
Tenth, why were these children not tried in the states where they allegedly perpetrated these “crimes” , for which they were charged, as demanded by law?
Eleventh, why did they have to be tried in a High Court, rather than juvenile or magistrate courts?
Twelfth, why were they subjected to stringent and ludicrous bail terms, to wit: that each of them must pay N10 million, procure a civil servant as surety and a sibling to boot? If these minors represented the hoi polloi, and were protesting against poverty and hunger, how were they expected to meet these impossible bail terms?
These posers certainly bring to the upper reaches of discussion our justice system and how things have fallen apart.
It is not enough to bandy and lament the huge sum of N300 billion, allegedly lost in the cause of the protests. These protests could have been averted if the government had engaged with the organisers. After all, they gave an ultimatum of one month, after they had duly harvested the grievances of their peers, and those of hundreds of millions of Nigerians, who were (and are still) hurting, on account of this government’s ill-thought out policies.
Worse, instead of the government to protect these youths, as is done in other climes, it proceeded to use security agencies to hijack these protests.
True, some of these minors exceeded themselves and behaved badly. But the government was ham handed. It did not protect locations that were either vulnerable or susceptible to looting binges.
I subscribe, wholeheartedly, to Mr. Falana’s submission that these minors should be rehabilitated and that they should be enrolled in schools. We should also refrain from criminalising protests simply because they do not suit our whims. What was good for the goose, in the past, should surely be good for the gander when this government is holding sway. We should deploy the same measures.
Never again should we abuse and ill-treat our children, whom we have failed with distinction. Never should our children be abused so shabbily and by delinquent grandees.
Nick Dazang is a former director at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
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