Thursday, May 2, 2024

Nigeria

Labour Party And The Future Of Radical Politics In Nigeria

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Labour Party And The Future Of Radical Politics In Nigeria

Needless to say, the 2023 elections happened amid overwhelming disillusionment with the system and popular discontent with the major establishment political parties—the ruling All Progressives Congress and the People’s Democratic Party.

This mass disillusionment peaked with the resurgence of the secessionist movements, which resonated with a very significant base in the southeast and southwest regions of Nigeria. It also coincided with the RevolutionNow campaign, which swept across 24 states of the federation. Google recorded that on August 5, 2019, no less than 5 million Nigerians searched the internet for the meaning of “revolution.” The endSARS revolt in October 2020, largely staged by young people who subsequently suffered bloody repression, was the last straw that broke the Camel’s back.

The 2023 general elections will later come to manifest these discontentments in the form of increased politicization of young people; a significant portion of these later described themselves as Obidients.

Having been lured into the candidacy of a former Anambra state governor, Peter Obi, by the so-called “more progressive layer” of the elites, what followed was a process of de-radicalization of a radical mood that had great revolutionary potential. This process continued on a rather exponential scale when Peter Obi, a billionaire, adopted the platform of the Labour Party after losing out to the People’s Democratic Party, where he had spent a whopping sum of 140 million naira purchasing the presidential nomination form.

After securing the presidential ticket of the Labour Party after he had paid 30 million naira as the cost of the nomination form, he became the nominal candidate of the trade unions, their allies – layers of the civil society movements, and many change-seeking elements.

Despite contesting on the platform that was established by workers and endorsed by the trade unions, Peter Obi clung to his neoliberal agenda. His campaign heavily emphasized the removal of oil subsidies, complete deregulation of the oil sector, and policies of privatization and commercialization. However, he showed no commitment to ensuring decent wages for workers or ending the neoliberal assault on public education, an issue of great importance to his youthful base, many of whom hail from working-class backgrounds. Unfortunately, the trade unions remained silent, turning a blind eye to his vigorously anti-worker policies as he campaigned.

The silence of the trade unions was so loud that Festus Keyamo, a serving minister under the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, challenged why the unions kept quiet over the campaign rhetoric of Peter Obi, calling for the removal of fuel subsidy, and total deregulation of the oil sector after fighting successive governments that had tried to do the same thing. In light of the foregoing, many have asked if the Labour Party can indeed serve as the vehicle for the liberation of the working people of Nigeria.

Whereas, the fate of the Labour Party was sealed at birth as reactionary at the conference of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) held at Calabar and Lagos in 1989, which founded the party on petite bourgeois ideas and not the core values that had been associated with the Nigeria Labour Congress in the mid-80s: socialism, anti-imperialism, anti-privatization, national sovereignty, and a commitment to a national economy whose commanding heights are under state and popular control. This is largely because by 1989, a different generation of trade union leaders like Pascal Bafyau had dispensed with these values after the Babangida administration moved against the NLC, harassed, intimidated, and subsequently purged out radical elements from the union.

While the Labour Party’s revolutionary potential was greatly undermined at its 1989 founding conference, the conference of the NLC and TUC held in September 2002 did nothing to address the ideological challenges of the party. It was at this conference that the party was renamed and officially registered as the “Party for Social Democracy.”

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the “Party for Social Democracy” and the Trade Unions maintained a detached and quiet stance while radical parties like Gani Fawehinmi’s National Conscience Party, Democratic Alternative, and the People’s Redemption Party battled the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to expand the political space for party registration. Notably, the “Party for Social Democracy” later rebranded itself as the Labour Party at its inaugural Congress in 2004. Since then, however, the Labour Party has failed to support or advocate for the Nigerian people, instead devolving into a purely electoral vehicle that includes elements of the ruling class that the established ruling class parties, such as the PDP and the APC, left out.

It is for this reason that figures like Olusegun Mimiko and Dele Momodu were able to run under the Labour Party. Olusegun Mimiko served as governor under the Labour Party in 2009, overseeing a neoliberal economy for two terms. He later returned to the PDP in the later part of his second term as governor. The party also provided support to President Jonathan in 2015 by endorsing his bid for a second term, and in 2019, it rendered similar services to President Buhari by endorsing his aspiration for a second term in office.

In the early months of 2022, the leadership of the two Labour centers held separate conferences where, in each case, both unions reasserted ownership and membership of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, these were just words. The leadership of the trade unions did nothing to mobilize their members into the party. Many of them, like the state councils of the NLC and TUC in Lagos, mobilized support for the ruling parties. Sadly, this has been the attitude of the trade unions toward the Labour Party since 2004—abandoning the party to the whims and caprices of establishment politicians. It is no wonder the nomination form of the so-called workers’ party sells for as much as 30 million naira. The implication of this is that only establishment politicians can run under the party, not workers. Moves like this consolidate the hold of establishment politicians on the party, effectively closing off any possibility of revolutionary working-class-based politicking.

Today, the Labour Party has become a political platform that loudly re-echoes neoliberal and IMF policies far above those of established bourgeoisie parties like the ruling All Progressives Congress and the People’s Democratic Party. The Labour Party, through Peter Obi and its Obidient base, amplified policies of subsidy removal and many neoliberal reforms that President Tinubu has implemented over the past six months.

The Labour Party today boasts thirty-five members in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate. None have spoken in support of the Nigerian people; rather, they simply joined their colleagues in the national assembly, endorsing Tinubu’s wasteful use of taxpayers’ money, plundering public wealth, offering support for the regime’s neoliberal programs, including the removal of fuel subsidy, and renewed attacks on public education.

In addition, the Labour Party and its Obidient base had spent the last year demobilizing every attempt at mobilizing mass resistance against the neoliberal programs of the All Progressives Congress. Near the end of 2022, towards the general elections, it supported the Naira redesign policy, which imposed unfathomable hardship on ordinary people occasioned by the artificial scarcity of cash.

After Bola Tinubu was returned as President of Nigeria through a shabbily conducted (s)election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Labor Party and its Obidient base actively demobilized mass resistance against fuel subsidy removal, wave of fee hikes, and many other neoliberal programs of the government of Tinubu. It embarked on a massive social media campaign targeted at de-radicalizing and demobilizing young people from taking street actions and subsequently encouraged them to focus instead on reclaiming Peter Obi’s mandate at the election tribunal.

As to the immediate and direct question of how to engage with the Labour Party as presently constituted, there are two divergent views within the broad Labour Movement. Some believe the Labour Party can still be rescued from the tight grip of powerful neoliberal and anti-worker interests.

However, their experiences, like those of many revolutionary activists who have made similar efforts over the last 20 years, have been like that of a man trying to flog a dead horse back to life. Many of these people, especially radicals, soon came back with disappointments after they were purged out and isolated when Peter Obi and his Obidient Movement took over the party. Ayo Ademiluyi, a socialist who had been given a House of Representatives ticket to represent the Eti Osa constituency in Lagos, was dispossessed of his ticket, and the ticket was handed over to a different candidate who had not participated in the primaries but had been committed to the neoliberal interests in the party.

The Lagos State Chairperson, who had been sympathetic towards left-leaning elements, was also removed abruptly. It was this coup at the center that made it easy to purge and isolate socialists and radicals within the party, the bulk of whom were organized in Lagos.

Sowore Addressing the people Of Akure in a town hall
Omoyele Sowore addressed supporters at a December 2023 town hall engagement in Akure. Credit: Rock

Since the Benin Declaration in 2002, which finally sealed the fate of the Labour Party and ultimately beheaded its revolutionary potential, various civil society elements of the broader Labour Movement have floated political parties, espousing ideas that were synonymous with the core values of the Nigerian Labour Congress of the mid-80s. These efforts, like the National Conscience Party in 2003 and the Socialist Party of Nigeria floated by the Democratic Socialist Movement, had mimicked past initiatives like those of the Socialist Workers and Farmers Party and the Socialist Working People’s Party. The most recent of these efforts, and perhaps the most impactful, is the establishment of the African Action Congress (AAC) by the Take It Back Movement and leading revolutionary activist Omoyele Sowore, who ran under the platform as President in 2019 and 2023 respectively, campaigning strictly on revolutionary programs. Like the past endeavors, this too was not sufficient to dislodge the hegemony of Nigeria’s rapacious ruling class.

But the fact remains that the Labour Movement, workers, and change-seeking elements should and must be organized under one political party. Such a political party must be unequivocally committed to the core values that the Nigerian workers and the Labour Movement had previously sworn to socialism, anti-imperialism, anti-privatization, national sovereignty, internal democracy, and commitment to a national economy that is under democratic and popular control. The party must be rooted within the rank and file of workers, ordinary Nigerians, communities, workplaces, and campuses. If the oppressed and working people of Nigeria must look up to the trade unions to lead this initiative, then the trade unions must be made to recommit themselves to the values of the Nigerian Labour Congress as they were in the mid-80s.

How The Lagos State Government Demolished Houses Of Low-Income Earners In Mosafejo-Oworonshoki, Forced Over Seven Thousand People Into Homelessness

Sanyaolu Juwon
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How The Lagos State Government Demolished Houses Of Low-Income Earners In Mosafejo-Oworonshoki, Forced Over Seven Thousand People Into Homelessness

In a sudden turn of events, piles of wreckage became the only remnants of what used to be homes to over 7,000 people, women, and children. Places of worship, churches, mosques, including schools, and businesses were not spared.

After the state government unexpectedly carried out repeated building demolitions in June without prior notice, the residents of Mosafejo-Oworonshoki, a low-income residential community, were forcibly displaced and left to endure immense hardship.

Oworonshoki, located in the Kosofe region of Lagos in southwest Nigeria, predominantly consists of low-income residential properties and is home to over 170,000 people.

Over the past two decades, the Lagos government has torn down various shanties located near the lagoon in order to make space for the rich to construct lavish residences. Low-income communities in Otodogbame, Ilubirin, and Makoko had been earlier victims. However, poor residents of Mosafejo-Oworonshoki became the newest victims of the prevalent forced evictions in Lagos.

Worthy of note is that the affected communities neither received warnings nor prior notice from any government ministry pre-informing them of a possible demolition or that their houses were erected on illegal sites. Many of these people had been residing in these communities for more than four decades.

Since the unfortunate incident occurred, many residents have been forced to live in open shelters and makeshift accommodations, leaving them at the mercy of dangerous animals, harsh weather conditions, and death. No less than five infant deaths have been recorded. Women and girls forced to live under these abject conditions do so at the risk of physical attacks, abuse, and rape.

Picture of demolished site at the Mosafejo-Oworonshoki community
The demolished low-income community in Mosafejo-Oworonshoki, Lagos. Credit: Durotimi Dawodu

Needless to say, the provision of security, welfare, and shelter is integral to the fundamental aims and objectives of government. For many years now, the Lagos State government has failed woefully to meet these objectives.

According to a report by Business Day newspaper, Lagos accounts for about 5 million out of a total of 18 million housing deficits in Nigeria. This implies that the so-called commercial center of the country accounts for more than 31% of the total housing deficit in the country. Rather than increasing the already embarrassing statistics of homelessness in the state through thoughtless demolitions, the state should be massively investing in low-cost housing projects.

Unfortunately, the regime is deliberately throwing more than seven thousand of its citizens to the street at a time the country is grappling with an unprecedented level of hardship occasioned by the astronomical increase in the price of energy, including fuel and gas.

The inflation rate is at over 27%, and the cost of food and commodities has increased astronomically, with a wave of fee hikes hitting our various tertiary institutions, forcing thousands of young people out of school. These challenges in themselves are more than bad, as they have forced millions of Nigerians out of social existence; forcing them out of their houses into the streets should not be the priority of the government.

Notably, the affected communities and civil society organizations have organized campaigns and protest actions, calling on the Babajide Sanwoolu-led government to put an end to the ongoing demolition exercise and award compensations, including resettlement of the thousands that have been unjustly displaced, made homeless, and without property. This sharp reaction from the people is apt and must be widely supported by people of good conscience.

We refuse to be the lamb that is sacrificed on the altar of the insatiable greed of an elite minority.

Operation Dudula

Vitalio Angula
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Operation Dudula

There is no direct translation for the word Dudula in the English language, but the president of the organization that started off as a ‘clean-up campaign’ to directly confront the scourge of crime and drugs by ‘illegal immigrants’ in South Africa says it means ‘push-out’ or ‘more force’.

Zandile Dabula is the President of Dudula, a movement that came into the mainstream of South African politics for its unorthodox stance against ‘illegal immigrants’ in South Africa.

During the 2021 July uprisings, Dudula was led by Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini, a 37-year-old activist who has since distanced himself from the group.

Speaking to Ubuntu Times, President of Operation Dudula, Zandile Dabula, said the civic organization resolved at a consultative conference held on May 17, 2022, to transform itself into a political party and contest the country’s presidential and national assembly elections slated for next year.

She accuses the mainstream media of portraying the party in a negative light following a story by the BBC that has garnered thousands of views since it aired on September 19, 2023.

“We know mainstream media is biased; they do not cover everything we do. We placed South African citizens back into RDP houses; we have placed South Africans in jobs. We have our in-house media; we have people in Africa who want to have operation Dudula’s,” Dabula informed Ubuntu Times.

Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was a South African socio-economic framework implemented by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to deal with the country’s most pressing challenges just after the 1994 elections.

The program built houses for citizens (referred to as RDP houses) in the low-income strata; however, these citizens are said to have sold the houses to foreigners (at give-away prices), and Dudula is helping to get them back. However, the group is known more for its “anti-foreigners stance” and “vigilante” antics. Dabula says those who label the party as anti-foreigner vigilantes are not looking at the party’s activities in their entirety.

Zandile Dabula, President of Operation Dudula in South Africa.
Zandile Dabula is the President of Operation Dudula, which is a grassroots movement that morphed into a political party when it became prominent with its anti-immigration rhetoric and citizen arrests. Credit: Zandile Dabula

“South Africa is a welcoming country, but I need to have a passport or a visa to enter, and because our home affairs ministry officials are bribed at the borders, anybody can come in, and this has led to all sorts of crimes which we’re not used to seeing before,” she told Ubuntu Times.

“Nigerians specialize in drugs and body parts; Zimbabweans are robbers and steal jobs. They will kill you! Malawians, they are human traffickers, and they are also being trafficked, being used as slaves by the Pakistanis. They also kill; to be honest, we always see them coming without documents,” Dabula said.

Nhlanhla ‘Lux’ Dlamini came to prominence in the international media landscape as a leader of Operation Dudula during a period of looting and violence that was sparked by the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma on a contempt of court conviction. These protests were similar in veracity and magnitude to the George Floyd protests in the United States of America a year earlier.

“When South Africa went through the July unrest, I was the leading commander that stopped the looting when the police failed. I was engaged to say, you must come, and we protected the malls,” Dlamini explained.

Unbeknownst to many, Dlamini has been the President of the Soweto Parliament for the past ten years and has dedicated his early adulthood to civic engagement in the township, which has an estimated population of 1.8 million inhabitants.

The Soweto Parliament is a community leadership structure that seeks to address issues affecting Soweto residents, such as unemployment, crime, and lack of access to basic services such as electricity.

Dlamini told Ubuntu Times that he has distanced himself from the activities of Operation Dudula due to ideological differences and the organization’s way of doing things. He said he has dissociated himself from Operation Dudula because the movement had deviated from its objective of addressing the issue of undocumented workers who were competing for economic spaces with South Africans in areas deemed not to be needing skills, such as the restaurant business.

“The law states that only foreigners with special skills should be absorbed in the economy where we need them, and the low-entry jobs on the lower part of the economy that do not require special skills should be reserved for the citizens that need jobs… We are talking about the country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, and so we were addressing that, and I was happy to associate myself with that cause, but when it started to be out of control…, I had to leave,” Dlamini explained.

“When they (Dudula) publicly came out and said all foreigners, I said nonsense. I can never fight all foreigners; I am fighting the foreigners who are undermining the laws of the country. I had to leave them when they began fighting all foreigners,” Dlamini elaborated.

On the issue of the role South Africa can play on the continent to address the issues that push migrants from their home countries to South Africa Ndlamini said the problems of South Africa’s neighbors are the problems of South Africa and urged the South African government to play a greater role in addressing peace and security on the continent.

“The problem is that governments might be on a certain level of communication, but the average person in the country does not understand or comprehend that level of communication.” The former leader of Operation Dudula before it transformed into a political party noted to Ubuntu Times that governments should be able to communicate and work together with other countries to follow the laws of migration to South Africa.

Regarding the negative stereotypes Zandile Dabula, the President of Operation Dudula, attributed to nationals from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, Ndlamini said he does not agree with such stereotypes because crime cannot be generalized.

“Crime is crime; you must deal with crime. Once you start generalizing crime and making it a nationality, that means you do not understand policing and you do not understand crime because most Nigerians don’t sell drugs; you’ve got a minority of Nigerians that sell drugs,” Ndlamini warned.

“We fight when white people say black people are thieves. We want to fight! We want to fight, but when black people in South Africa say Africans are WHAT! WHAT! Then it’s not a problem. We can’t be two-faced; we must be fair all the time. We can’t say Nigerians sell drugs because not all Nigerians sell drugs. That is why I cannot agree with Zandi, Dudula, or anyone when they say that Mozambiquens do this and Zimbabweans do that. Criminal do 1, 2, 3, you can’t say entire nationals like that, you can’t,” Dlamini vehemently cautioned.

South Africa is Africa’s second-largest economy, with an estimated GDP of US$399 billion, based on a 2023 World Bank report.

According to the 2022 South Africa Department of Statistics census report, the country has an estimated population of 55.7 million people.

However, the country also has a significant number of illegal migrants, which then places the number of immigrants higher, and this is a concern for activists and politicians like Dabula and Dlamini.

Zandile Dabula, the President of Operation Dudula, with members of the police during one of their many operations in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Operation Dudula movement has registered as a political party and will be contesting the 2024 South African elections. Credit: Zandile Dabula

A South African journalist who chose to be anonymous informed Ubuntu Times that many people migrate to South Africa looking for the ‘dream’ but the reality is that resources are few and migrants are sometimes forced into a life of crime in order to be able to fend for themselves.

“Everybody is fighting for space, a slice of the pie. If the economy can grow and the pie can become larger, there will be more for everyone to share,” the journalist stated to Ubuntu Times.

The journalist further informed Ubuntu that some of the solutions to South Africa’s problem of illegal immigrants include tighter border control and South Africa playing a greater role on the continent in exercising its power to facilitate peace and security on the continent.

“South Africa’s policy is peace through negotiation, and like our President Cyril Ramaphosa said, the billions spent on wars can be used on development, but I also think South Africa has to focus more inwards when it comes to making lives better for South Africans,” the journalist emphasized.

Although they differ ideologically, Zandile Dabula and Nhlanla ‘Lux’ Dlamini seem to hold similar views on mainstream media, which they accuse of being biased and misrepresenting Operation Dudula in a negative light to fit the narrative they are trying to sell to their audiences.

“We know mainstream media is biased, and they do not cover everything we do,” Dabula lamented. Dlamini mentioned that the media does not uphold the ethics it should and has intentionally distorted his image in public by portraying him as a xenophobic vigilante when that is not who he is.

“I am well-traveled and have worked with Africans from all over the continent. I once asked a journalist what the word vigilante means, and they could not explain the meaning of the word, but that same time, the journalist was referring to me as a vigilante.

“Everything I did during my time with Operation Dudula has been within the confines of the law. The South African constitution allows citizens’ arrest, and that is what we were doing: arresting people for crimes and bringing them to the police so they can be dealt with. I am no longer with Operation Dudula, so I cannot speak on their behalf, but I do not agree with some of the things they are currently doing,” Nhlanla Dlamini concluded.

Tinubu’s Inauguration: End Of An Error, The Dawn Of Calamity

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Tinubu’s Inauguration: End Of An Error, The Dawn Of Calamity

“I am confident that I am leaving office with Nigeria better in 2023 than in 2015.” President Buhari ended his farewell speech with this remark on the 28th of May, 2023. Some of us could not help but wonder if perhaps we had been living in an alternate universe for the past eight years. Not surprisingly, the former president supported this fallacious vituperation with a body of argument that attempted to whitewash the disturbing and horrible fact that the Buhari regime is an epic fail; incompetent, despotic, lawless, and very anti-poor.

Many parts of the speech were fraught with boastful remarks, and needless self-adulation that misrepresented many unpalatable facts about the horrible administration. But one of his many lies that particularly stood out was the part that read “to ensure that our democracy remains resilient and our elected representatives remain accountable to the people, I am leaving behind an electoral process which guarantees that votes count, results are credible, elections are fair and transparent and the influence of money in politics reduced to the barest minimum. And Nigerians can elect leaders of their choice.” Former President Buhari better not be speaking about the 2023 elections especially — the same election that was fraught with massive vote buying, voter suppression, violence, result falsification, and mass disenfranchisement. Polling units became transactional centers and a theatre of war. Punch newspaper in fact dismissed the 2023 election as a show of shame, concluding that Buhari and INEC brought nothing other than disgrace and embarrassment to Nigeria with such an unfortunate sham.

How can the former president claim that he left Nigeria better than he met it in 2015 when evidence abound suggest otherwise? According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the unemployment rate in the second quarter of 2015 when Buhari took over was at 14.9 percent, representing a population of 6.1 million people who were without jobs. Sadly in 2023, the unemployment rate peaked at 33.3 percent representing about 23 million people, the highest in thirteen years. This is almost four times higher than what it was before Buhari took over.

In addition to leaving behind a country that now ranks as the poverty capital of the world, the administration left behind a huge population of over 133 million people who statistics show are living in multidimensional poverty.

Whereas in 2015 when Buhari assumed office, the inflation rate was at 9 percent. Fast forward to 2023, the regime is leaving behind a very high inflation rate at 22.22 percent, and a debt profile of 77 trillion naira: a very significant and highly exponential increase from its initial value of 12.22 trillion naira in 2015. It is unfortunate that Nigerians have nothing to show for the borrowing spree the regime embarked upon — no schools, hospitals, or any meaningful infrastructural development that may justify the humongous debt burden.

Needless to say, the problem of insecurity also worsened under the past administration. It is on record that the Buhari campaign in 2015 had been very vocal about ending insecurity and bloodletting that had taken the lives of about 18,260 Nigerians, and also displaced many more. Sadly, the Buhari regime worsened the situation. More than 53,000 Nigerians had been gruesomely murdered by bandits, killer herdsmen, and Boko Haram insurgents between 2015 when Buhari took power, and October 2022. This is in addition to numerous others that have become IDPs. States like Kaduna, Zamfara, Borno, Benue, and Plateau states became killing fields for bandits, killer herdsmen, and numerous insurgents; hunting their victims like games, kidnapping many more.

In addition to the utter lack of respect for the judiciary, and serial violation of court orders, Buhari also presided over a country where the armed forces, police especially act with impunity, lawlessness, and are responsible for many extrajudicial murders. It was indeed an administration that from its first tenure had expunged the concept of human rights from its dictionary of governance.

No doubt, the previous administration was not only incompetent, inefficient, and anti-poor, but also it was a government that left behind a tragic legacy of sorrow, tears, and blood.

As though determined to commit the people of Nigeria to eternal damnation, Buhari, and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), superintended over a very shabby and highly fraudulent electoral process that imposed one of the worst political characters in Nigeria’s history — Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Unlike most candidates in the race, Tinubu in the course of his campaign said very few words and made limited promises to electorates. He had relied largely on vote buying, intimidation, voter suppression, hooliganism, violence, and his vast access to state institutions to manipulate electoral outcomes right from the polling units.

Bola Tinubu despite making little or no campaign promises was however very clear and loud about his plans to attack the welfare and livelihood of his electorates once he emerges.

Tinubu’s declaration of war and hardship against the Nigerian people didn’t happen on May 29, 2023, the date of inauguration. He didn’t do anything that he had not said to our faces during the course of his campaign. The man dared us to our faces, and boldly said during campaigns that he would remove fuel subsidy, and that not even our protests will change this. And with a kind of courage that derives unusual confidence from impunity, he declared his victory before the date of the election.

With the above, it is crystal clear that the Bola Tinubu Presidency is coming with planned and premeditated attacks against the Nigerian people. Removing fuel subsidy is only the beginning, the coming days will not be any easier. Tinubu’s inaugural speech was very clear on this. And just like he bullied his way to power, the president’s major strategy will be to bully the entire country into total submission.

Although Buhari may have come off as the worst in Nigeria’s history, Tinubu’s May 29 inaugural speech however gave us an unforgettable omen. The sufferings endured under Buhari’s eight years of horrific rule might be nothing compared to the challenges ahead.

The government of Tinubu has openly declared itself to be a regime of bullies. Less than one hour in office, it has taken decisive action to attack the living conditions of Nigerians majority of whom are living in multidimensional poverty. The regime had by its action declared war on the Nigerian people. Fighting back remains the only decision available to the millions of poor and suffering majority who will be victims of these attacks.

2023 Elections: A Street Robbery

Sanyaolu Juwon
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2023 Elections: A Street Robbery

If you can relate with the kind of mood you’d meet when on a visit to a street that had just experienced a robbery of a very violent dimension, then you may be able to connect with the atmosphere of gloom that descended on the country at the pronouncement of Mr. Bola Tinubu as (s)elected president of the country. The Nigerian people felt cheated, and robbed.

But needless to say, the street was indeed robbed — it was violently dispossessed of its hard-earned democratic right to choose for itself, a leader: votes were stolen at polling units and collation centers, ballot boxes were snatched, voters were intimidated, electorates and electoral officials were bought, the polling units did not only become a theater of war, it was equally drowned in blood: votes generally did not count. The street had been robbed of the right to free and fair elections.

The 2023 elections were no doubt the usual tales of sorrow, tears, and blood: the sad triumph of impunity and money politics over the democratic will of over 200 million people.

Whereas voters turnout at every election cycle since 2003 has decreased progressively, the recent polls had an unprecedented number of first-time voters who are largely very young people — those you will categorize as the children of Democracy aka Gen Zs. It was a generation that had been forged in the furnace of one of the biggest youth rebellions in recent history: the EndSARS rebellion.

Sadly, the EndSARS generation may be the last generation of Nigerians who will hold any manner of confidence in Nigeria’s electoral system due to the inability of the electoral umpire to manage the high expectations ignorantly reposed on it by the millions of this young, and highly enthusiastic voters. Whatsoever illusions anyone may have left in Nigeria’s so-called democracy, the charade conducted in 2023 may have successfully shattered such illusions.

While Bola Tinubu’s party, the ruling APC used money, and all instrumentalities of the state to suppress voters, and steal votes, the so-called front-runners — Atiku Abubakar’s PDP, and Peter Obi’s Labour Party weren’t any different. The duo equally stole votes, and repressed voters at their respective strongholds. Sadly, this is how Nigeria’s ruling class have conducted themselves every election year. This accounts for the steady decline of voter turnout at every election cycle. The loss of confidence in the system continues to increase exponentially.

At the just concluded Presidential polls, only 27% of the over 87 million eligible voters — voters with PVCs, turned out to vote. Also instructive is the fact that the supposed winner of the (s)election, Bola Tinubu, was able to secure only about 8.2 million votes, representing a very small percentage of 10.08% of the total number of eligible voters.

In all, a huge population of over 63.1 million eligible voters completely boycotted the elections. This is in addition to over 100 million Nigerians who did not even register to vote at all. Generally, Bola Tinubu’s government will be presiding over a country where over 170 million people have handed his administration a vote of no confidence even before it began.

And for such infamous administration starting off on a note of illegitimacy, and mass rejection even in the midst of daunting economic crises capable of pitching even a relatively popular Government against its people, he will in the coming period be left with the option of two extreme choices if he must hold onto his Government which by the way may have failed even before it began: an option of granting huge political and economic concession to the already discontented and disillusioned majority, or the use of brute force to suppress dissent and keep his unpopular regime in power. This in fact is the fate that awaits any government that emerges from the 2023 charade. For Bola Tinubu of the APC, which will it be? Your guess is as good as mine.

The coming days will no doubt be challenging and highly tumultuous. As such, we must do away with all manner of needless divisive narratives targeted at dividing us along ethnic lines. It is in the interest of the ruling class of all political divides to keep us isolated from one another through religion and ethnicity. We must not allow for these distractions. Only as a united front can we pose a formidable challenge to the looming danger the Presidency of Bola Tinubu and APC represents to the ordinary and suffering people of Nigeria.

Students’ Loan: We Can’t Pay, We Won’t Pay

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Students’ Loan: We Can’t Pay, We Won’t Pay

On November 22nd, 2022, Nigeria’s 9th National Assembly successfully passed a Students’ Loan Bill, a move that has now incited reactions along varying interests and ideological lines. The bill, sponsored by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila purportedly seeks to ease access to public education by providing tuition loans to students whose family’s annual income is less than five hundred thousand naira – over 133 million Nigerians are in this category.

Students who are eligible for this tuition loan are expected to apply through their respective tertiary institutions, and the tuition will forthwith be paid directly into the account of the applicant’s institution of learning.

Beneficiaries of this student loan are expected to begin repayment two years after National Youth Service Corps.

While the speaker of the house had argued that the bill is in the interest of the students and the people of Nigeria, critical analysis of the loan bill reveals the contrary. Aside from the fact that experiences from other countries have persistently shown how a student loan program has turned out to be synonymous with offering a poisoned chalice to the “beneficiaries” of such a program, we also note that this bill is a deliberate ploy by the irresponsible Nigerian state to distract the public from the real issues of education underfunding.

Against the background of numerous attempt to institutionalize the commercialization of public education in Nigeria, the government in different instances have developed various initiatives targeted at placing the burden of education funding on the shoulders of Nigerian students and their poor parents. One of the most recent of such attempts is a Steve Oransaye Committee inaugurated in 2012 by the administration of former President, Goodluck Jonathan. The committee recommended the introduction of very high tuition to the tune of 450- 525 thousand naira in Nigerian tertiary institutions, starting with the first Generation Universities. The committee argued that tuition of such magnitude is a necessity if our universities must stand a chance to compete minimally with the rest of the world. In short, the committee’s recommendation was that government hands off education funding and allow students to bear the burden of the stupendous resources needed to fund tertiary education.

In 2014, it was reported that the Jonathan administration had issued a white paper on the report of this committee.

Upon emergence in 2015, the Buhari regime continued on these neoliberal foundations of the Jonathan administration by inaugurating a committee of 16 headed by the former University of Lagos Pro-Chancellor, Professor Wale Babalakin. This committee, like Oransaye, proposed an astronomical increment in tuition, this time to the tune of One million naira. In addition to very high tuition, Babalakin also argued for the establishment of an education bank that will grant loans to students for the purpose of paying for this high tuition. Commendably, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) rejected this recommendation, describing it as an attempt to hand over public universities to private interests.

Recall that in 2009, ASUU, again made a case for increased funding of public education starting with the immediate injection of 1.3 trillion naira into public Universities. It proposed in its 2009 agreement with the federal government that this funding should be paid to the universities in three tranches. It took the Union to go into another six months of strike action in 2013 to compel the government to release the first tranche of 220 billion naira in the latter part of 2014. This is close to five years since the agreement was signed.

Meanwhile, just two years before the 2009 agreement, the Nigerian government bailed out their friends in the banking system with a whopping sum of 3 trillion naira. The same government will later find it difficult to bail out public education with 1.3 trillion naira two years after.

No doubt, the Students’ Loan Bill represents the institutionalization of education commercialization with an overall aim to effectively consolidate an ongoing neoliberal siege against public education in Nigeria.

It is on record that in places like the United States of America, where this policy may have been adopted, beneficiaries of such loans spend their entire adult life repaying loans. In fact, President Obama couldn’t complete his repayment until he became America’s President. Millions of American citizens are living in heavy debt accrued from this sort of draconian policy. The implications in Nigeria are bound to be much worse.

In addition to the problem of mass unemployment and massive de-industrialization, Nigeria also struggles with increasing poverty with over 133 million Nigerians living in abject poverty.

Whereas the bill states that beneficiaries of this loan must begin repayment two years after completion of Youth Service, it fails to put into consideration the obvious reality that most Nigerian graduates are unable to find jobs years after leaving school. And those with the initiative to start small businesses aren’t availed with an enabling environment for a thriving business.

It is rather unfortunate that of many western education policies, Nigerian leaders have always opted for the ones that have proven to be a monumental disaster. It remains a wonder that they have chosen to ignore great examples of other Western countries like Germany, Switzerland, Finland, and many Scandinavian countries that have a culture of giving free and qualitative education to its citizens.

The problem we face isn’t the fact that the Nigerian state is incapable of funding free and qualitative education, it is that Nigerian leaders are unwilling to commit to massive investment into education. Monies that should have been committed to funding public education are either looted or committed to white elephant projects. It was in this same country that Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were unable to account for a whopping sum of 1.2 trillion naira. We have seen how the accountant general of the federation stole 150 billion naira. These are just a few of many cases of mindless looting in the country. This is in addition to unremitted taxes from big corporations running to several billions of dollars.

While we continue to commend the education unions, especially the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for rejecting this Greek gift, and insisting that the Nigerian government must abandon this distraction and genuinely commit to funding education, it becomes very imperative to call public attention to the urgency of resisting the cruel attempt to place an unfair burden of eternal debt on the strained shoulders of over 133 million poor Nigerians who already are finding it difficult to even afford to eat.

Uganda Oil Companies Shrug Off Environmental Concerns To Advance $10 Billion Oil Project

Diana Taremwa Karakire
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Uganda Oil Companies Shrug Off Environmental Concerns To Advance $10 Billion Oil Project

KAMPALA, Uganda — The Ugandan government, backed by French and Chinese investors recently announced a final investment decision to kick start the long-delayed development of Uganda’s vast crude oil reserves, opening the way for the East African nation to become an oil exporter. But the planned development of the $10 billion projects, along the shores of Lake Albert, poses new threats in the ecologically sensitive area.

French oil giant TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Corporation say they will start pumping as much as 230,000 barrels-a-day of crude from the region by 2025, which will be shipped for export through a $3.5 billion heated pipeline linking the oil fields along Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga in Tanzania. The 900-mile pipeline will pass through Uganda’s lush green hilly farmlands, vast areas of marshlands, before snaking around Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest freshwater lake.

Fanfare and military parades marked the event to sign the agreements, a firm commitment that the country’s 6.5 billion barrels of crude, discovered more than a decade ago will be commercialized. President Yoweri Museveni and the Vice President of Tanzania Phillip Mpago were among the key figures that witnessed the event.

“It is a masterpiece of a project and will be achieved at low cost and with a low carbon footprint,” said TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné, adding that the Ugandan project comes at a time when the world is facing increased demand for fossil fuel.

Patrick Pouyanné the CEO of TotalEnergies makes remarks at the event to mark the signing of the final investment decision that will kick start the development of Uganda’s vast crude oil reserves
Patrick Pouyanné, the CEO of TotalEnergies makes remarks at the event to mark the signing of the final investment decision where he said that Total was committed to developing the crude reserves in a sustainable manner. Credit: Petroleum Authority of Uganda

But local and international campaigners remain concerned about the environmental impact of the new fossil fuel projects and their carbon footprint. In particular, activists are concerned about the pipeline’s potential impact on water resources for millions of people in Tanzania and Uganda, vulnerable ecosystems, and the climate crisis.

Days after the signing, an oil production ship exploded off the Nigerian coast of Escravos, Delta State in what is considered to be the nation’s second major environmental disaster in three months. It’s yet another oil disaster that has resulted in huge amounts of toxic oil being released into the ocean, a stark reminder of the reality of risks involved in fossil fuels production.

Major funders for the pipeline project have also continued to pull out. Four out of five of South Africa’s largest lenders recently confirmed that they will not be involved in the financing of the pipeline project.

According to data from the World Bank, Uganda accounts for only 0.01% of the total global carbon emissions while its per capita CO2 emissions are also low at 0.13 tonnes. But, that is expected to change when oil production starts. Experts say, oil transported by the pipeline will emit at least 33 million tonnes of CO2 every year.

But Ugandan officials sought to allay the fears, pleading to safeguard the environment and social protection in the development of the projects.

“This project comes with a very big responsibility on the work of all stakeholders involved in the management and development of the country’s oil and gas sector,” said Jane N.Mulemwa, Board Chairperson of the state energy regulator Petroleum Authority of Uganda.

Patrick Pouyanné, the CEO of TotalEnergies leads the other joint venture partners -CNOOCUgandaLtd, TPDCTZ, and UNOC in announcing the final investment decision
Uganda’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa Ssentamu claps after the announcement of the final investment decision that will unlock the development of Uganda’s vast crude oil reserves. Credit: Petroleum Authority of Uganda

Local civil society actors have also expressed concern about the gross rights violations meted on local oil projects host communities that oil companies and government have failed to address. Locals complain of being intimidated and threatened by local authorities to accept the inadequate compensation for their land. In 2019 a group of NGOs filed a lawsuit against Total in France over human rights violations and environmental harm in relation to planned oil exploitation in the heart of a protected natural area in Uganda. The organizations accuse Total of failure to adhere to its duty of vigilance “Total’s social responsibility.” The case is still in court.

“Oil Companies should walk the talk and comply with social and environmental safeguards, and international best practices on the path to first oil in 2025,” said James Muhindo, the coordinator of the civil society coalition on oil and gas.

The preliminary work to set the stage for the construction of these projects has progressed. The environment and social impact assessments, as well as the front-end engineering design studies for the Kingfisher, Tilenga projects, and the pipeline, were successfully concluded. All the land required for these projects has been identified and surveyed.  The processes of compensation and relocation of the project-affected persons are ongoing. These had stalled for years, amid a litany of disagreements such as tax disputes, funding challenges, and opposition from climate activists.

“This milestone puts us on the path to first oil in 2025,” Uganda’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa Ssentamu said in a speech adding that close to 160,000 jobs are expected to be created during the project’s development.

1984

Sanyaolu Juwon
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1984

Written by George Orwell in 1949, 1984 detailed the imperative of resisting oppression and tyranny, offering great insight into a twisted and very cruel future if nations are allowed to fall to the rule of totalitarianism.

The book helped put in proper perspective, how totalitarian regimes attempt to control our thoughts and lives through surveillance and by seizing control of the mass media, most times, violently. In this brilliantly articulated piece of work, we see a “party” that deploys enormous resources into eliminating dissent to the extent of establishing edicts that criminalize holding anti-government thoughts and opinions. Do these methods sound familiar to you? If so, then I welcome you dear reader to 1984

In an event described as the “Nigerian Drama” by The New York Times in 1984, the regime of Buhari, violating human rights and international laws, staged a kidnap of a former Minister of Transport, Umaru Dikko, after he was ambushed at his London base. This is the same junta that had just overthrown an elected government of Shagari under whom Dikko served as Minister.

IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu
Biafra agitator, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Credit: MNK

Fast forward to 2021, close to four decades after, the same serial law offender staged a similar attack on Human Rights and International laws in the abduction of the IPOB leader and British Citizen, Nnamdi Kanu, in Kenya. This is after he returned in 2015 in a disguised democratic toga.

Shortly after the abduction of Kanu, barely 24 hours to a July 3rd protest declared by Yoruba secessionist group, the regime sent in masked DSS operatives after the Yoruba secessionist agitator and leader, Sunday Igboho, stormed his Ibadan residence at the dead of the night like armed assassins, arrested thirteen persons and in a public statement released by its PRO, Peter Afunnaya, boasted to have extra-judicially murdered two of Igboho’s allies.

Yoruba Nation agitator, Sunday Igboho
Yoruba Nation agitator, Sunday Igboho. Credit: Jide

On the day of the protest, however, the regime deployed combined forces of the police and military. The security forces shot violently and sporadically against the peaceful agitators and protesters, killing Jumoke, a 14-year-old female trader.

It should be recalled that as far back as 2015, there have been renewed calls for the secession of the Igbo people from Nigeria by the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB. The secession campaigns attained a threshold of popularity upon the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu on the 20th of October, 2015. And as the agitation grew bigger and larger, no thanks to increasing insecurity and socio-economic injustice in the country that has pauperized millions of Nigerians and made the country totally unsafe for habitation. This is also complicated by the manner in which the government protects and funds terrorists and bandits while deploying enormous resources into hunting, arresting, and killing protesters and all who maintain dissent against the regime.

But the secessionists were not the only group or persons to fall victim to the tyranny and brazen human rights violations of the Buhari regime. Recall that on August 3rd, 2019, at about 1 AM, Omoyele Sowore, leading investigative journalist and revolutionary activist was abducted in the middle of the night by masked men of the DSS who stormed his Lagos temporary residence like assassins.

Revolutionary activist, Omoyele Sowore
RevolutionNow convener, Omoyele Sowore. Credit: Jide

For calling a RevolutionNow Protest against misgovernance and crass incompetence of the regime, Sowore spent five months in unjust detention after the regime violated two court orders for his release. Worst still, the regime in desperation to rearrest Sowore after it reluctantly obeyed the order to release the latter on bail, the DSS stormed the courtroom, violating the sanctity of the court right in front of the presiding judge who had to escape the violent scene instigated by the gun-wielding DSS operatives. The regime created an unfathomable precedent of judicial impunity when it turned Justice Ijeoma’s court into a war zone.

There is also El-Zakzaky whom the regime continues to hold hostage despite court orders that have mandated it to release him on bail. Aside from murdering his children extrajudicially, the regime has murdered scores of his followers for asking the government to comply with court orders granting bail to the Sheik.

The manner in which the regime drowned the endSARS protest in blood still remains very fresh in our memories. But the government did not stop at that, it went further to intimidating and arresting young persons who they perceive as conspicuous during the two weeks of youth uprising.

The regime for the past six years of administration had equally devoted time to arresting, intimidating, and harassing journalists. According to media reports, no less than eight journalists have been killed on duty under the regime with over 500 falling victims to harassment, intimidation, torture, and unjust detentions. Today, it has become a norm to see journalists who have come to cover protests dressed in bulletproofs as though covering a war zone. No doubt, the regime had turned protest grounds into a theatre of war.

When the regime appeared not to be satisfied with simply attacking and gagging the press, it went straight for the social media, prescribing death by hanging for “hate speech’’; a deliberate attempt to gag Nigerians and violate their constitutional right to free speech. The regime did not want a free press, it frowned against citizen’s right to free speech and protests. It does not want Nigerians to protest offline and also against them expressing their frustrations on social media, especially Twitter. It was this gross hostility to free speech that forced the regime into banning over 200 million Nigerians from using Twitter.

No regime in history, military and civilian, has treated the judiciary and the rule of law with such disdain and brazen impunity. No regime in the history of the country has been so hostile to its citizens without any modicum of regard for their lives or constitutional rights. No regime in history had ever treated the press and the Nigerian people with so much hate and utter contempt.

The only regime that ever measured close to Buhari’s despotism is the military junta of 1984; the only Junta to have ever dethroned an elected government. Buhari’s capacity for lawlessness and impunity is second to none, such that only Buhari could have surpassed the record of his own lawlessness over three decades after.

Buhari may not only be classified as a despot with the unique ability to harness the powers of Nigeria’s systemic impunity to muster a social, political, and economic siege against the Nigerian people, he is the only Nigerian leader fit to be described as a serial law offender, ever to occupy Nigeria’s political space.

The Dot Nation

Sanyaolu Juwon
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The Dot Nation

Several weeks back, Muhammadu Buhari in an Arise TV interview on the 11th of June, 2021, twenty-four hours before the commemoration of Democracy day, described an entire region in the country as “dot in a circle’’. This was days after he threatened to deal with the members of IPOB “in the language they understand’’. Instinctively and quite commendably, the Nigerian tweeps mobilized to report such wicked, unconscionable and thoughtless tweet that threatens genocide against a section of a country and a deliberate attempt to torment our memories with the ugly and horrific development of the Nigerian civil war; an event that has left unforgettable memories of sorrow, tears, and blood.

This is a government that rarely speaks to terrorists and bandits in the language they understand. On the contrary, it has continued to romance and reward them handsomely in ransoms, overseas scholarships, and social empowerment. But a government that begged bandits and terrorists with CBN loans a month before is shamelessly threatening genocide against a group of people agitating for self-determination and disdainfully described an entire region as “dot in a circle’’; a fascist statement that captures an intention and justification for genocide.

As is the character of Dictators, the regime reacted by suspending the use of Twitter in Nigeria. In order to massage its ego and desperate urge for impunity, the regime was willing to murder and completely bury the rights of its two hundred million citizens to social media rights, the same way it had consistently attacked all rights.

When it couldn’t achieve this with Twitter ban thanks to a generation that is not only defiant but also far above the regime’s backwardness, the government began seeking ways to negotiate with Twitter by using as a bargaining chip, millions of Nigerians who now have to rely on VPN to tweet. In the end, it was the Nigerian people that ended up suspending the regime from Twitter.

Although the “dot in the circle” statement as used by Buhari may have rightfully suggested a threat against agitation for self-determination, it also connotes a much deeper phenomenon upon paying close attention to the President’s interview, the disposition of the regime to other forms of rights and its general approach to governance.

What we see is a regime that has subjected free speech to persistent attacks, handled protests with utmost disdain and government critics have been treated far worse than terrorists. Everyone, groups, and ordinary Nigerians who oppose the regime’s anti-people policies have become victims of violent repression, incarceration and in some instances, extrajudicially murdered as in the case of endSARS and countless Shiite protesters whom the regime continues to kill like games.

The President in the Arise TV interview could not disguise his grudge and immense hatred for Nigerians, especially young people. You could see a President that was embittered when he said, “endSARS” protesters wanted to remove him. He made this statement as if to justify the Lekki massacre and the violent crackdown on the endSARS protest. Hence, the “dot in the circle” statement falls into a general pattern of a regime that has always handled dissent with state violence and is overtly hostile to democratic rights.

If anyone is still in doubt of the tribe Buhari’s ideology refers to as “dot in a circle”, then we need also to pay attention to how the government shot at protesters on democracy day, twenty-four hours after the Arise TV interview. The government on democracy day officially described Nigerians as terrorists by unleashing the counter-terrorism unit against protesters, who in turn, fired repeatedly at our Ojota protest ground.

Under Buhari’s regime, the “dot” people are the most endangered tribe in the entire country. They are the tribe whose social-economic, constitutional, and political rights are subjected to relentless attacks.

These are the tribes that were murdered in cold blood on October 20, 2020. This tribe is consistently murdered through overwhelming poverty, insecurity, lack of access to healthcare, housing, clean water, and basic welfare. This tribe does not only constitute a category of people demanding rights to self-determination, nor does it consist only of those being persecuted, arrested, shot at, brutalized, killed for fighting for socio-economic and political rights, the “dot” nation comprises also of all who are victims of government failings. This is the tribe of the 99% that has been subjected to years of neoliberal siege by a system of greed and power.

The Buhari administration has no doubt shown that it is hostile to all forms of rights. This is why it is important for the “dot” nation, organized across the length and breadth of the country, to unite in a struggle to put a permanent end to this regime of death and destruction.

Buhari’s Pantamism

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Buhari’s Pantamism

In Nigeria of today, under the clueless leadership of Buhari, Pantamism has come to join the ranks of notorious ”Isms” that deals particularly in the Affliction of the Nigerian people with the virulent disease of terrorism.

Just like how the regime deodorized corruption, Buhari’s recent endorsement of Pantami is nothing short of the institutionalization of terrorism and religious extremism. it translates to the legitimization of the ongoing terrorism in the north and unfair vilification of thousands of those who have fallen victim, some in fatal dimension, of religious extremism that has assumed the shape of insurgency.

Under Buhari’s regime, citizens are described as being anti-north simply for calling for the sack of a minister with concrete records of affiliation and support for Islamic terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda. Nigerians are regarded anti-Islam for calling for the need to protect the nation’s data from terrorists whom we can confirm have a sympathizer in a minister who handles the national data.

This government has not only justified our most ”esteemed” position as the third most terrorized country in the world; it has also assisted the narrative of ”fulanization” and ”Islamization” of Nigeria.

Meanwhile, this agenda in the real sense, have in the best scenario benefited elites of all ethnoreligious background, in a worse situation, profited their rich Muslim friends from across the North and South and in the worst circumstance, empowered their rich/powerful Northern cronies.

In the administration of Buhari, all government institutions have become institutions of terror against the Nigerian people.

Our security agencies terrorize and kill young people on daily basis, the ministry of Labor and employment terrorize workers in addition to being incapable of providing employment, the Ministry of power terrorizes the entire country with the darkness that is purchased at an expensive and unregulated rate.

The Ministry of housing terrorizes Nigerians with homelessness that has condemned millions of people to under-bridge settlers and street urchins that have now become child or teenage cultists and “hoodlums” that are available as government tools to foment election violence. 

The regime on a frequent basis dispenses policies of terror that have rendered the naira useless, sustained Nigeria as the poverty capital of the World, reduced our nation to a situation where the law courts are shut down for weeks over issues that border on financial autonomy and independence of the judiciary. It has descended the country to where we have now resorted to the printing of money as opposed to policies that mobilize social wealth.

With Buhari’s Pantamism, we have lost our country to the rule of bandits and terrorists. But these beastly insurgents are not only organized in bushes, they have a full presence and adequate representation in government offices and sectors. They have now become emboldened by government patronage and empowerment to advance their nefarious activities from the highways to the schools and campuses.

And now, public opinion has it that they are now courageous enough to go after the national assembly; an institution built and sustained by taxpayers’ money but occupied by characters who have ensnared Nigerians in the webs of poverty and hardship complicated by the institutionalization of insecurity and total anarchy.

There is no getting out of this unimaginable mess if we fail as a people to put an end to a regime of terror and institutionalized poverty. There is no better time than now for the oppressed people of Nigeria, North, South, and across all religious divides, to come together in unison to chant the songs of BuhariMustGo and clench their fists for a people’s revolution.

Opinion: Between The Drums Of Secession And Call For A Revolution

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Opinion: Between The Drums Of Secession And Call For A Revolution

Over the past few weeks, there has been an intensified publicity of the campaign for the breakaway of the Yoruba people from Nigeria. The proponents of this agitation want an independent republic of the Yoruba nation or as they put it — Oduduwa Republic. And over a week ago, the agitation has taken a step further with a recent press conference led by Sunday Igboho and Professor Banji Akintoye. At the press conference, the duo had pronounced into existence the Yoruba nation and forthwith, advised all persons of Yoruba descent living in the Northern region of Nigeria to return to the South-West, even as the duo warned of a looming ethnic war. In a show of seriousness for their agitation, a proposed currency for the Oduduwa Republic was afterward circulated on social media and publicized by the mainstream media. The currency was named “Fadaka” — a Yoruba word for Silver.

It should be noted that the demand for an independent nation of the Yoruba people did not just start this year. Such demands and agitations had been like a song on the lips of quite a number of persons over the past years.

An earlier call for Oduduwa Republic precipitated the announcement of a march which was scheduled for October 1, 2020. While the Nigerian government’s supposed ban on protests forced the Oduduwa Republic agitators into a cowardly capitulation, it was however impossible for the government to put a halt to the agitation due to the increasing socio-economic injustice within the country.

Needless to say, the renewed and intensified calls for a republic of the Yoruba people began with the rising cases of kidnappings and banditry in South-West Nigeria. While Northern Nigeria had suffered the worst cases of insecurity, terrorism, kidnappings, and banditry, most parts of the South-West, especially Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, and Ekiti states were also beginning to deal with similar threats but of lesser magnitude when compared to the horrors in the northern region, where women, men, girls, and boys have become easy prey in the fiery dens of bandits and terrorists. The fact that schools in Kaduna had to be closed by the state government is a testament to how much the insecurity in the North has taken a ridiculous turn of very embarrassing magnitude.

Of much deeper embarrassment is how powerless and utterly incapacitated the Nigerian government appears in the face of such insecurity that has consumed thousands of lives, rendered thousands homeless, made many fatherless, scores motherless, and more innocent children orphans. It is conditions such as this that gave rise to Sunday Igboho and his team who volunteered themselves to rid Yorubaland of insecurity by raising arms against the forces of banditry. While their aim expressed an intention to fight kidnappings and banditry, their methods of engagement and slogans are that of unfair ethnoreligious stereotyping against the Fulani people who are known for herding cattle.

Although the majority of the cattle herders are Fulani, it is evident that not all Fulani cattle herders are criminals, and definitely, not all Fulanis are bandits. Worthy of note is the fact that despite producing more Nigerian Presidents and Heads of State, Northern Nigeria ranks worse in the regional economic indices of the country. The Fulani people however are at the top of that ladder, with millions of poor people who could barely afford chickens, let alone cattle. While there may be a handful of Fulanis who own cattle in the South-West, most of the cattle being herded by poor Fulani herders are owned by some Southern elites who are into animal husbandry. In the event that some Fulani herders protect cattle with Ak-47 rifles, one can almost be certain that those weapons were provided by the Southern and Northern elites who own those cattle herded and protected by the poor Fulanis in the South-West. This makes it clear that the “ethnicization” of insecurity within the South-Western region of Nigeria is as unnecessary as ethnicizing terrorism in the Northern region of Nigeria. Ritual killings in Ijebu-Ode, child/street cultism in Lagos and street/campus cultism, and the age-long kidnapping in the South-South region of the country are pointers to the fact that insecurity is not synonymous with a particular ethnic group.

Furthermore, the regime of General Muhammadu Buhari in talks, actions, and inactions has not only proven to be completely incompetent, clueless, and largely anti-people, its demeanor, nepotism, and ethnoreligious favoritism have also helped water the seeds of ethnic strife within the country. It is in the light of these that what begun as a Sunday Igboho-led resistance against killer herdsmen had suddenly metamorphosed into a Yoruba self-determination agitation.

However, what most ethnic agitators fail to understand is that despite Buhari’s nepotism and ethnocentric politics or “Fulanization agenda” as some secessionists would call it, the millions of the average Fulani people have not benefited from this so-called “Fulanization agenda”, they have in fact become worse of, much further than they ever were even under regimes headed by Nigerians from the Southern region like Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. On the contrary, the “Fulanization agenda” has only benefited and further empowered Buhari’s rich and powerful friends. In like manner, a “Southernization agenda” would most likely not be of any benefit to the average Southerner but for the rich and powerful Southern elites. Just the same way Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan’s led governments have only benefited their Southern friends and Northern cronies. The same way our respective state governors and legislators from the Southern region have only represented the interests of their rich friends and not the average  Southerner.

Before the recent calls for an independent State of the Yoruba people, there had been more serious calls for secession by other regions in Nigeria. And in each case, the Nigerian state has met such agitations with untoward violence and repression. The first of which happened during the administration of Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo Man from South-East Nigeria and the Nigerian Head of State as he then was. During the regime of Ironsi, Isaac Boro led several agitations and campaigns for the secession of the people of the Niger Delta majorly domiciled in what is now known as South-South region of Nigeria. The Aguiyi-Ironsi regime crushed the movement with maximum force and subsequently executed Isaac Boro.

The story of Biafra is a more popular one. The Biafran struggle for secession from Nigeria precipitated into over three years of war which led to the death of millions of Nigerians. The Nigerian state did not only crush the Biafra agitation with maximum force, but it also committed one of the worst genocide in the history of mankind. Interestingly, the shadows of the 20th century Biafra war are now upon us in the 21st century with a renewed call for Biafra Republic led by Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB. This is because the socio-economic conditions that led to the struggle for Biafra in 1967 are still prevalent in 2021, but in the worst dimension and in a way that has now attracted an additional campaign for the exit of the Yoruba people.

While the right to self-determination remains a right guaranteed by Local and International Laws of Man and Nature, do we actually need to go the ethnic route in pursuit of freedom and socio-economic justice? Does our problem as a people have anything to do with the ethnicity of persons in power? Already, South-West governors and a number of Monarchs who have done nothing other than stealing from the poor people of Western Nigeria have stated their opposition to the Igboho-led agitation for Oduduwa Republic. It was South-East governors that unanimously announced the proscription of IPOB and have on several occasions supported the killing of IPOB members and innocent Igbo bystanders by the Nigerian Army. Sanwo-Olu, a Yoruba man, was the one who invited the Nigerian Army to shoot at peaceful protesters at Lekki Tollgate during the #EndSARS protest in October 2020.

As President, Obasanjo, a Yoruba man from Ota, Ogun state, could not even erect a decent road in his hometown, Ota, let alone deliver quality governance to the people of Nigeria. Aside from the Legendary corruption, maladministration, and gross ineptitude of President Jonathan, his Hometown, Otuoke, in Bayelsa State, boasts only flooded roads and streets. And as I have previously enumerated, more Presidents and Heads of State had come from Northern Nigeria, but the North is the worst in all socio-economic indices with the highest rate of insecurity, illiteracy, poverty, mortality, poor hygiene, lack of accessibility to clean water and least infrastructure. To be clear, while southern elites have had their fair share in exploiting the poor people of the South and the Nigerian people at large, the North, however, parades the worst of the Nigerian elites. These people enslave their Northern poor counterparts and also prevent them from resistance by denying them education and imposing slavish religious indoctrinations. If the thoughts of objectivity are given a chance, then it’ll be clearer that the poor people across all ethnic groups are exploited by the rich and powerful elites organized across all ethnoreligious clusters across the country.

It is audible to the deaf and visible to the blind that the enemies of the Southern people are first the rich and powerful elites in the South, and then their rich and powerful Northern colleagues. All the governors, House of Representatives members, Senators, and Local government officials of the South are Southerners. They are directly responsible for the oppression and impoverishment of the Southern people before their Northern counterparts. Hence, does it not make sense for the poor people across all ethnoreligious groupings to bond themselves in a revolution against their common oppressors who are also organized and united irrespective of their ethnoreligious differences than to ensnare themselves in a civil war occasioned by ethnic agitations?

Meanwhile, history has proven that a civil war is always inevitable with secessionist agitations. A civil war is a war, funded by rich people but consumes the lives of poor people and destroys their properties and heritage. Here, poor persons of different ethnic backgrounds are the ones led to the slaughter, either as soldiers or innocent and hungry bystanders. Poor people die and fight themselves in a civil war that ends up benefiting in varying proportions, the elites of the different ethnic groups. Although the Nigerian State will respond to a call for revolution with very deadly hostility and violence, the oppressed people can be sure they are “dying” in a fight against their common oppressors, rather than killing themselves in an ethnic war imposed and funded by the rich elites of different ethnic groups.

Although due to better access to education when compared to the imposed illiteracy in the north, and Western civilization, the people of Southern Nigeria appear to be more politically conscious. Shall we then say the apparently more politically conscious South must wait endlessly on the growing consciousness of the oppressed people of the North? Definitely not! For me, I’d rather the oppressed people of the South fight the incompetent and anti-people federal government alongside their corrupt leaders and governors of Southern origin. And while doing this, also encourage and support the struggles of the poor people of the North against their more vicious ruling elites. Even if the Yoruba and Igbo must necessarily secede from Nigeria, it is most important to in the first instance, join hands to defeat the common exploiters of poor people, organized over and across all ethnic groups and regions.

In all, the division of oppressed people along ethnic lines does little or nothing to liberate the poor from the shackles of poverty, hardship, and oppression. On the contrary, it’ll end up strengthening the hold of the rich and powerful few over millions of poor and oppressed Nigerians.

Detention Ordeal: My First 11 Days Of 2021; Starting The Year On A Revolutionary Note

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Detention Ordeal: My First 11 Days Of 2021; Starting The Year On A Revolutionary Note

As though coming to battle notorious terrorists and bandits, they came at us with three loaded vehicles convening heavily armed men whose mean demeanor ricks only of lustful desperation for violence and blood. On the other hand, the only arm we had were the ones that acted as support to our revolutionary fists as they pointed to the direction of the cold air with full determination. The rest of our ‘’arms’’ and ‘’battle’’ artillery were placards, banners and our facemasks.

On the night of December 31st, 2020, at about 11 PM, we had gathered at Lokogoma junction and then proceeded to Gudu, Abuja for a CrossOver Protest/sensitization with demands bordering on good governance, respect for citizenship, end to police brutality, environmental justice and a permanent end to insecurity and bloodletting in the country. As of this time, similar actions were ongoing in other parts of Nigeria including certain parts of Lagos, Ondo, Osun, Ogun, Kano, Kaduna, Adamawa, Edo etc.

Our Action at Gudu had been peaceful and without any sort of hiccup until about 1 AM when we were about to leave for our various homes. The government deployed three trucks of anti-riot police, armed to the teeth with apparent resolve to leave behind an ugly scene of death and destruction. Seeing them in such a violent manner with which they invaded our peaceful assembly, a number of protesters understandably ran for their dear lives. Me and a few others like Michael Adenola that had seen them from afar chose to stand our ground as we were not prepared to surrender our country to the rule of tyranny and lawlessness. And like a pack of hungry wolves, they descended on us violently, heating us repeatedly with their guns even as torrents of heavy punches continuously landed on different parts of our bodies. We were bundled to the trunk of one of their trucks and chained to the vehicle like hardened criminals. It was the gory sight of our dehumanizing brutalization that caught the attention of Omoyele Sowore, Nigeria’s foremost revolutionary and investigative journalist who currently faces the charge of treasonable felony for protesting the tyranny, corruption and maladministration of the regime. Sowore all through our procession had been filming our action and made way to his vehicle when it was apparent that we were rounding up. He had to step down from his vehicle to challenge the bloodthirsty and husky looking security operatives. Sighting him, they also descended on him with such fury that made it apparent they had a score to settle with him. They broke his nose and hurled him into the truck with us. As if that was not enough, they sprayed directly on our eyes and faces, a very pepperish chemical substance that made even breathing very difficult. When I managed to challenge this unruly wickedness despite being chained down, one of the officers held me and the other started spraying this substance directly into my eyes and did not stop despite seeing how I struggled to grasp for breath. The pain was so intense that I could barely open my eyes for about two hours and my entire body felt so hot for more than four days.

The Buhari regime is generally popular for his lack of respect for civil rights and rule of law. His notoriety and uncommon penchant for rights violation were such that Punch Newspaper, a foremost Nigerian paper resolved in December 2019 to henceforth regard Buhari as Major General Buhari as against President Buhari, in all of its publication. Despite his infamous track records, a lot of us had thought the President was at least going to make the first of January, an exception, to at least indulge Nigerians in the freedom he had denied and violently attacked over the past 365 days. And as it turned out, we expected too much from a regime that has consciously expunged democratic creeds from his dictionary of governance.

From Gudu, we were moved to the detention facility of the Special Antirobbery Squad (SARS) at a police station called abattoir. This detention facility was notorious for torturing and killing its victims. Upon our arrival, the station officer, a SARS operative, led his junior colleagues to unleash on us more beatings and we were dragged into the cell like common criminals. The only warm reception we received was from other inmates who accorded us great regard and couldn’t stop talking about how greatly they appreciate our relentless struggles for the soul of our country. They went out of their way to get us mats and blankets with which to relax and rest our weakened joints. A number of these inmates were kept illegally in custody without being charged to court. For the next 3 days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we were caged like animals in a cell within the cell and this was our abode till Monday when we were moved to court. We were in the first instance denied access to our lawyers, families and friends. And quite unusually, we were also denied access to our books. Upon granting us access to our lawyers after mass uproar, we had to declare a hunger strike in detention before they were pressured into allowing us access to our books. According to our lawyer, Abubakar Mashal, reports of our hunger strike caught the attention of the public and the uproar that followed forced the police commissioner into calling our lawyer at the early hours of 4 AM. The commissioner appealed to Marshal to come to our detention facility and avail us our books which they had initially denied us.

When we were being moved to court on Monday morning, we were prepared for all theatrics the government had cooked up to keep us in detention for as long as possible, hence, we were prepared for the worst. So that we were not caught off guard when the magistrate court, sitting at Wuse 2, Abuja, denied us bail, remanded us at Kuje Prison and impressed that our lawyer instead filed a written bail application. Prior to the pronouncement of our remand in prison, the police refused us phones to speak to our lawyers and arranged a team of five lawyers posing as human rights lawyers. The plan was to have those lawyers hoodwink us into taking up our defense in the absence of our lawyer and then use these so-called human rights lawyers to keep us in detention for as long as possible. When they approached us in court, we immediately told them off. Without the presence of our lawyer, the court session commenced and the prosecuting team announced appearances. When the magistrate, Mabel Segun Bello, called for appearance of the defense, the arranged lawyers whom we have told off attempted to announce appearance on our behalf but were immediately interrupted by Sowore who informed the court that the lawyers had no permission to represent us and lamented how we were denied access to our lawyers when we were being brought down to the court. The exchange between Sowore and the prosecuting team continued until the magistrate decided to adjourn for 10 minutes. By the time the magistrate returned to her seat, our lawyer was now in court. The disappointment in the face of the police prosecutors was so obvious. The arrival of our lawyer anyway did not stop them from achieving their devious aim of keeping us in detention. However, they would have been opportuned to keep us far longer if their game of imposing lawyers on us had worked. With our lawyers in court, we were able to take a plea on trumped-up charges bordering on “unlawful assembly”, “incitement” and “criminal conspiracy.” However, they would have been opportuned to keep us far longer if their game of imposing lawyers on us had worked.

Activists appear at the magistrate court, Wuse Abuja after spending four days in detention
Omoyele Sowore (Right), Sanyaolu Juwon (Left), Adenola Michael (Mid-Left) in conversation with their Lawyer, Abubakar Marshal (Mid-Right). They are part of many victims of police brutality, human rights abuses, and strangulation of civil rights by the Nigerian government. Credit: Witness

The road to Kuje was terribly bad and extremely tiring. The roads were so bad and highly discomforting to the extent that the police who were taking us to the prison complained very bitterly and relentlessly too. I had to immediately remind them how they would have shot at protesters if residents of Kuje had come out to protest bad roads. In fairness however to most of the Junior officers in the police, it was clear to us that a number of them sympathize with our struggles but lack the courage to turn their guns against the real oppressors of our mutual interest.  

When we arrived at Kuje Prison, the prison officials professionally told the police delegation that brought us that they had stopped accepting inmates due to COVID-19 and that their isolation facility is equally unavailable at the moment. Desperate to keep us in Prison, calls began jamming calls. From the police commissioner to the IG to numerous power brokers at the higher ups until a phone directive came to the prison controller who had to drive all the way from his home down to the prison. Sowore during the period of the wait told the police delegation that ‘’if the Police Commissioner was so desperate about keeping us in detention, he can as well keep us in his house where he will volunteer as a teacher to his children and lecture his wards how not to be a lawless public officer like their father.’’

We were at last admitted into the Prison and each of us dumped in solitary confinement. The prison confinement we were dumped looked like the ones reserved for persons on a death roll, but the prison warders called it a ‘’COVID-19 isolation facility.’’ We were denied access to doctors, food and our books throughout the night of our stay in prison. The following morning, 5th of January, when we were processed and returned to court for a bail application hearing, information of our presence, especially that of Sowore had become popular amongst prison inmates such that the Niger Delta activists among them were seen struggling to come towards us but were sternly repelled by the prison warders.

Another activist arrested and brutalized alongside Sowore and others during the early hours of January 1st
Emanuel Bulus was violently arrested, brutalized, and incarcerated alongside four other activists for protesting bad governance. Credit: Witness

Like criminals, we were handcuffed and hurled into the prison’s blackmaria that would be convening us to court. Stepping out of the blackmaria with cuffs in our hands infuriated the mass of Nigerians who had come to court to show us solidarity. Our lawyers did not take it easy either as they immediately demanded the removal of the cuffs. As the court session began anew, the Magistrate, Mabel failed again to grant our prayers for a bail after our application met vehement opposition from the police prosecutors. The magistrate then ordered that we should be remanded at the Police Force Criminal Investigation Department till Friday, 8th of January when she would then give a ruling on our bail application. In her ruling, she included a caveat allowing us access to medical attention, our books and upon Sowore’s request, made a special order to avail Adenola Michael, a level 3 law student, internet facility with which to participate in his classes which had commenced online on 4th of January. But of course, the police had no internet facility, neither did they have any decent hospital or detention facility.

Upon our arrival at the Force CID, we were immediately processed and hauled into our cell. Just like abattoir, our first detention center, we were locked up in a ‘’cage within a cage’’. The Police officers before our arrival had warned all inmates to steer clear of our cell and not canvas with us. This apparently was to prevent us from radicalizing the rest of the inmates. And just like we had it at our previous detention centers, we also had great support from the other cell mates. Despite restrictions warning the rest of the cell mates to steer clear from our own cell, a number of them still took turns in confiding in us, several injustices they have had to endure in detention, including how poorly they are fed and how a number of them have been denied access to lawyers and their families. Of the numerous cases, one caught our special attention. And it was the case of one Solomon Akuma, a pharmacist who had been remanded since April, 2020, for anti-Buhari twitter comments. The Pharmacist faces charges of treasonable felony, amongst many other charges. And while in detention, the government had done all they could to demoralize him. He was tortured into making a self indicating “confessional statement with the police’’, denied access to lawyer, family and told by police to plead guilty to ‘’criminal charges’’ they had forced him into admitting in a ‘’confessional statement.’’ Despite this, Akuma Solomon remains unbroken.

On the morning of Friday, 8th January, 2021, at about 8 AM, the police PPRO had come to our cell to inform us about our movement to court by 9 AM as ordered by the magistrate. Seconds became minutes, and minutes became hours, until about 10 AM, we were still in our cell and it wasn’t looking as though the police were prepared to comply with the orders of the court. Out of nowhere, one of the police officers stationed to our cell showed up. He said to Sowore, ‘’Leader, your attention is needed. Once Sowore stepped out, I had asked our comrades to also get ready in the hope that Sowore’s invitation was about our movement to the court. Once Sowore got back, I laughed uncontrollably at myself when I realized the persons who Sowore’s attention was called on were comrades who helped bring us food, water and other necessities. The summary is that, again the government proved its capacity and penchant for lawlessness with the flagrant disregard of a court order. Worthy of note is that prior to now, the Buhari Junta has violated over 40 court orders. One of such orders is one that granted bail to the Shiite leader, Sheik El ZakZaky and despite several court orders ordering his release, General Buhari has illegally held the Sheik since 2015. The police however weren’t the only culprit of this episode. Upon realizing the wretched game the police were playing, our lawyer went to court with the hope that the magistrate was going to sit as ordered. The court did not only fail to sit, the magistrate told our lawyer she wouldn’t sit unless we were produced in court. Meanwhile, the magistrate could have still ensured the court seats as ordered and at least made a pronouncement on bail. It was also within the constitutional powers of the magistrate to move the court to the police headquarters where we were detained and still make a pronouncement that must force the police into immediate compliance. She failed to do any of this and consciously helped police violate the orders of her own court.

Failing to produce us in court on Friday, we were forced to spend the next three days in the mosquito-infested and shitty detention facility. The wait wasn’t so bad though as it availed us the opportunity to meet certain new inmates who had been transferred from Abattoir, our first detention center before Kuje Prison. They informed us of how the abattoir police immediately freed/charged over 40 inmates who had been illegally detained. According to them, the police feared we may expose this illegality on their part once we get out. 

On Sunday, one of the inmates informed us that we will definitely leave detention on Monday and that he learnt that people were coming to protest at the Force CID. We became very certain that the police, fearing protest, had furnished the inmate closest to us with this information with the certainty that he would get us informed in the hope that someway, we’ll be able to communicate with ‘’our people’’ on the outside not to protest on Monday. Hence, it was the fear of a Monday Protest that influenced their decision to take us to court on Monday. We arrived at the court to the cheer of a mass of highly resilient Nigerians who have begun staging protests in front of the court building.

Entering into Magistrate Mabel’s court, the session as usual started with the prosecution and defense announcing appearances before the magistrate went into a long read of very verbose and deceitful ruling. Her ruling announced bail conditions that were no doubt not only vindictive and stringent but also that the court had preempted guilt before trial. One of the bail conditions ordered our restriction to Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria. Aside from the general bail conditions, Sowore was also ordered by the court to henceforth make a registered presence at the office of the registrar of the FCT high court every Monday and Friday.

Generally, the whole point to our brutalizations, arrest and 11-day detention at three different prison and detention facilities respectively was to discourage and punish our resolve to mobilize Nigerians in the line of social revolution that places public wealth into the hands and control of ordinary people. Alas, we have long surpassed the stage of fear into the realm of determination and courage, heading to the destination of freedom. And like the words of Leon Trotsky, the late Russian Revolutionary, ‘’We will not concede this Revolutionary banner to the masters of oppression and falsehood! If our generation happens to be too weak to establish a Revolution, we will hand the spotless banner down to the next generation. The struggle which is in the offing transcends by far the importance of individuals, factions, and parties. It is the struggle for the future of our country. It will be severe. It will be lengthy. Whoever seeks physical comfort and spiritual calm, let him step aside. Neither threats, nor persecutions, nor violations can stop us! Be it even over our bleaching bones, the truth will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy, as in the best days of my youth! Because, friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future.

One Dead, Others Injured As Customs, Soldiers Fired Several Shots Over Inability Of Goods Transporters To Pay Bribe

Sanyaolu Juwon
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One Dead, Others Injured As Customs, Soldiers Fired Several Shots Over Inability Of Goods Transporters To Pay Bribe

The Yewa North Patriotic Forum has expressed its preparedness to take to the streets over a recent attack on residents by a joint patrol of the Nigerian Customs and Army. The unfortunate incident which occurred on the 22nd of December, 2020 led to the death of one Olushola Samuel Ashamu with many others sustaining severe injuries.

Extrajudicial killing of Olushola Samuel Ashamu
Late Olushola Samuel Ashamu is yet another victim of extrajudicial killings and widespread impunity in Nigeria. Credit: Witnesses

In an interview with the Leader of the Forum, Omobolaji Oluwafisayomi Sanni, the Customs officers did not only seize the seven buses carrying goods, but they also brutalized the owners of the goods, shot randomly at people, causing the death of Olushola Samuel Ashamu, an innocent bystander. According to Comrade Sanni, the violence unleashed against the community on the said date started with the inability of the owners of the goods to raise the amount of bribes demanded by the officers. Sequel to this, the officers comprising of the military and customs seized the seven buses filled with goods, shot at people sporadically as they advanced with the goods, and subsequently proceeded to Ayetoro market, where they brutalized and shot at more people. Comrade Sanni said this is not the first time violence of this nature will be unleased against residents of the community by customs officers stationed at this community.

Widespread violence in Nigeria
Woman sustained wounds from sporadic gunshots and invasion of Ayetoro Market by government security forces. Credit: Witnesses
Widespread violence in Nigeria
Injured man assisted by a group of people after sporadic gunshots and invasion of Ayetoro Market by government security forces. Credit: Witnesses

The Forum in a statement called for the immediate intervention of the government to; ban the joint patrol of Army and Customs within their respective border towns, set up panels of inquiry to look into the horrific event of December 22, remove all Road Blocks erected by men of Nigeria Customs Service in towns and villages that are not 20km to the border. The statement also called for justice for victims of the dastardly event and the family of the slain victim.

#EndSARS: Two Months After Lekki Massacre, Sanwo-Olu, Buratai Yet To Be Sacked And Tried For Crimes Against Humanity By Sanyaolu Juwon

Sanyaolu Juwon
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#EndSARS: Two Months After Lekki Massacre, Sanwo-Olu, Buratai Yet To Be Sacked And Tried For Crimes Against Humanity By Sanyaolu Juwon

In a gory event widely described as Black Tuesday, Nigerians witnessed one of the most violent crackdowns on protest since the Enugu Iva Valley Massacre in 1949. Like bloodthirsty Vamps, the army and police on October 20, descended on peaceful protesters with the kind of force and desperation only witnessed in movies and war. We lost our Brothers, Friends, Fathers, Mothers, Sons and Daughters to the uncontrollable bloodlust of a rapacious and highly vindictive ruling elites. Just like yesterday, we saw our friends lying helplessly on the floor, drowned in their own pool of blood. Armed only with flags and solidarity songs, our friends were shot without mercy and hunted like games for exercising their legitimate right to protest. It was a day when the cries of despair competed with the horrific sounds of bullets. 

And as we watch our brothers fall to their death and our sisters drowned in their own pull of blood, we wondered if we had committed any crime for demanding a country where the creed of citizenship is respected and being young isn’t criminalized. We wondered if we had erred by demanding an end to the culture of impunity, respect for the rule of law, and democratic ethos. We marveled at what kind of a country treats its citizens with such disdain and unprecedented cruelty. Our protest which had lingered for close to two weeks was mobilized around specific demands to end police brutality, extrajudicial killings, and proper remuneration for the armed forces. However, on October 20, the government sent a clear message that it wouldn’t be willing to put an end to this undemocratic and barbaric practice. It was clear that our two-week protest, despite grounding the entire country, fell on deaf ears. We were not only brutalized and killed by the police, the latter and the military competed for the highest kill.

Amidst the madness of the massacre, the Lagos state government directed the Judicial Panel of inquiries to include the Lekki Massacre as part of its term of reference. Prior to this, the Lagos State Governor, Sanwo-Olu had denied having a single knowledge about the Lagoswide onslaught against protesters and had placed the blame at the doorsteps of the military. In a counter defense, the Military expressed grave shock at the denial of the Lagos Governor and reiterated that they stormed the streets of Lagos on the request of the Governor. It wasn’t until then the Governor made a U-turn and now admitted inviting the military. This was a man who in a CNN interview, shamelessly lied to the World about his involvement in this dastardly aggression and violent murder of our friends at Lekki and other parts of Lagos. What is more unfortunate albeit not surprising is the loud silence of both the Lagos House and National Assembly. None of these legislative organs devoted time to deliberate on this sad incident. Despite admittance of complicity by the culprits of the Lekki Massacre, no single action from state and national legislative arms. This was a time Nigerians completely lost confidence in their democracy and had to rely on the British Parliament to protect its interest. You will recall a similar occurrence with Sowore’s trial where it took the US parliament to deliberate and condemn the invasion of our court, disregard for court orders, rights violation, and sham trial of Sowore by the tyrannic Buhari regime, whereas the Nigerian legislative arm kept mum and were observing table manners. 

Of greater insult is how Sanwo-Olu had the temerity to direct the investigation of killings where he had played a very conspicuous role. And ever since the constitution of the infamous judicial panel, no single government official has been brought to book. Despite incontrovertible visual evidence and testimonies that have indicted the military and the state governor, no single conviction has happened. On the contrary, what we see is the same shameless culprits going after EndSARS protesters. We see a government that freezes account of some EndSARS Protesters, hounding several others to their homes and continue to arrest and remand scores in prison. As we speak, there are several EndSARS protesters like Nicholas Mbah languishing in different Nigerian Prisons, while the culprits who ordered and coordinated the murder and brutalization of our friends continue to walk freely.

Needless to say, the Nigerian government and the armed forces have become more ruthless and lawless since the EndSARS protest. They have now openly turned Nigeria into a police state where rights to peaceful assembly have now been officially criminalized. Police and Military have become more emboldened in abusing the rights of Nigerians and now have no business chasing crimes while the entire country falls to the control of insecurity, kidnappings, and banditry. Nigerians aren’t only getting more insecure in their own country, they are also getting poorer with unprecedented economic hardship.

Conclusively, it is more than evident that Nigerians cannot continue to watch while Buhari and the APC rule us like a conquered people. We cannot continue to watch in docility and fear as the government rips us of our humanity, dignity, and citizenship. We cannot continue to agonize in despair as Buhari continues to handover our country to the rule of banditry, kidnappings, poverty, lawlessness, and anarchy. It is clear that the status quo is deleterious, its funeral is long overdue; RevolutionNow.

Soldiers Kill In Nigerian Town After Anti-police Protests

UbuntuTimes
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Soldiers Kill In Nigerian Town After Anti-police Protests

Nnamdi Okorie said in late October, after the widespread protests against police brutality in Nigeria resulted in days of tumult in Oyigbo, a crowded suburb of the oil hub southern city of Port Harcourt, soldiers moved from house to house and searched for members of the separatist pro-Biafra group, IPOB.

Local authorities had blamed members of the state-banned Indigenous People of Biafra for the rampage that saw police stations and army patrol vehicles torched and six soldiers and four police officers killed in the town.

When soldiers arrived the Okories home, they wanted to take his 22-year-old son away, he said. But the young man, Obinna, refused to board the army’s Hilux pickup and tried to escape. He was shot dead and his body taken away by the soldiers, sending residents who witnessed the killing fleeing for safety.

“They should please give me my son’s body either dead or alive; I am committing all things to God who is the ultimate judge,” Okorie told Ubuntu Times, weeping.

For the days that followed, the River State government imposed a round-the-clock curfew and troops barricaded the area, leaving residents without access to water and food as security forces combed the area and randomly attacked locals, residents said.

“It was very tense. People could not come in or go out of the place for days. It was more like a war zone,” said Ike Azubuike, an oil worker who lives in the town.

Enforcing the curfew brought more casualties. Remigus Nkwocha said her husband who had gone on October 25 to a nearby market to purchase food items they could use through the curfew period, was hit by a stray bullet fired by soldiers implementing the lockdown. He died afterwards in the hospital.

Weeping in the midst of her children and sympathizers, Mrs. Nkwocha told Ubuntu Times her biggest worry was how to raise their four children. “I’m finished. I can’t bear it alone,” she said.

With access restored to the area after weeks of a punishing curfew which the government said was aimed at checking the activities of IPOB, a group that seeks an independent state of Biafra, the extent of the bloody raid has become clearer and residents have narrated their ordeal at the hands of security agents.

All the residents selected at random and interviewed separately said soldiers searched for members of IPOB and shot indiscriminately and killed people in an apparent reprisal for the killing of soldiers. At least 20 people would have died in the raid, they said.

The army said its troops “acted professionally” and denied attacking residents. The spokesperson for 6 Division of the Nigerian Army in Port Harcourt, Major Charles Ekeocha, said the army only entered houses that were possible hideouts for hoodlums, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Facing criticisms, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state denied ordering soldiers to kill residents in the community, but insisted he will “not fold my arms and watch criminals destroy my state.”

Protests and Rampage

The Oyigbo incident has become the latest bloody incident involving troops in the aftermath of the campaign against police brutality in Nigeria. The #EndSARS protests lasted weeks seeking the dissolution of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad. The protests found appeal with the country’s large population of unemployed youths and university students forced to stay at home due to lecturers’ strike.

Burnt military pickups
Burnt trucks residents say were military pickups razed by hoodlums. Credit: Ubuntu Times

As the protests became a rallying point for many, authorities claimed groups with sectional interests tried to exploit the campaigns for underhand motives. The demonstrations culminated on October 20 when soldiers opened fire on protesters at the Lekki Tollgate in the commercial capital, Lagos, killing at least 12, according to Amnesty International.

The turmoil that followed the shooting left the country in shock. Thugs set fire to public and private properties in Lagos and other cities and attacked security personnel. In Oyigbo, the government said IPOB, which has tried to revive the defunct 1960s-era Biafra Republic, went on a rampage and razed police offices and killed officers.

Police Area Command Oyigbo
The Police Area Command Oyigbo set on fire by hoodlums before attacks by soldiers. Credit: Ubuntu Times

An intervention by the army was thwarted as a patrol team sent from a nearby military base was overrun. Six soldiers and four police officers died.

“Since its proscription, the group has carried out intermittent processions in parts of Rivers State, especially in Oyigbo and some notorious suburbs in Port Harcourt Local Government Areas,” Gov Wike said in a broadcast on October 30 referring to IPOB.

“This evil, wicked and audacious action resulted in the unnecessary loss of scores of lives, including soldiers and police officers, and the destruction of both public and private properties, including police stations, court buildings and business premises.”

In interviews, residents said hoodlums also raided a courthouse and vandalized shops. Looting subsided after police and soldiers were dispatched to the area and a 24-hour curfew imposed. The attack soon degenerated to a confrontation between the thugs and soldiers, leading to the killing of soldiers, according to witnesses.

Killing the Innocent

That was the trigger of the siege. Residents said the army deployed more troops, who without systematically going after the attackers who by this time had fled the area, descended on unarmed residents.

Locals said at least 200 soldiers were deployed to cordon the bubbling district. They arrived in armored vehicles and went house to house and picked young men and loaded them into their trucks and took them to their base in Obehie in neighboring Abia State. Those who resisted were shot, according to witnesses.

Most residents refused to give their names or allow to be quoted over safety concerns. One elderly man told Ubuntu Times how a group of young men chased by soldiers around the Kom-Kom area ran into the Imo River swamp having reached the end of the road. He said soldiers fired into the water, killing the fleeing men.

At Afam Road roundabout, Ubuntu Times saw a burnt Volvo wagon car which residents said was used as an ambulance to convey a corpse to the mortuary when it ran into soldiers. They said after the driver explained his mission to the soldiers, he was chased off and the vehicle set ablaze.

Residents said soldiers killed several young people and their bodies taken away. Most of those detained and taken to the military based were yet to be released when an Ubuntu Times reporter visited the area.

Monica Chikwem, a resident of the area, narrated how her pastor’s son, a mechanical engineering graduate who recently got a job, was killed by a stray bullet. She said his body was left at home for two days since there was no way to move his body to the mortuary due to the soldiers’ blockade of all entry and exit points. The body was eventually smuggled to the mortuary through a bush path.

Chikwem said for 10 days, they lived in constant fear as bullets fired by soldiers fell occasionally on their roof. With total curfew in place, they had nowhere to buy food and other consumables and survived on eating premature crops nearby.

Another resident, John Nworgu, narrated how bullets pierced through his son’s leg who was trying to go through a back road to buy food for the family. Nworgu’s son survived.

During a recent visit to Oyigbo after the siege was lifted, one of the most talked about deaths was that of Queen Nwazuo, a 26-year-old polytechnic student, who was struck in the neck while at a hair salon. Nwazuo died before she could get medical assistance.

Oyigbo massacre stray bullet victim
A poster showing a fatal injury on Queen Nwazuo, one of the persons struck by a stray bullet fired by soldiers. Credit: @OgbonnayaMbaka on Twitter

An Ubuntu Times reporter said almost all the homes he entered and people approached for interviews had tales of woes about the siege and accused the army of highhandedness.

On November 3, the Guardian, one of the country’s most respected and popular newspapers, reported how its reporter visited a house in Oyigbo and saw four soldiers knocking hysterically on a gate to a building. The soldiers screamed: “If you don’t come out and open the gate, we will burn the building and kill you and nothing will happen,” according to the paper.

When one of the residents finally opened the gate, the troops ordered her to call out everyone in the compound and as residents gathered, one soldier yelled: “The army is very angry with this community because your people killed our colleagues, we are here to search for certain persons and you should obey everything we say, anyone that argues or disobeys, we will kill the person.” However, after a search of the compound, the paper said officers left, saying: “Our target person is not here”.

Ethnic Concerns

Residents interviewed by Ubuntu Times said they suspected the military operation had an ethnic undertone, claiming that soldiers had asked some men they arrested if they were Igbo. The claim, not independently verified, appeared to draw strength from comments by the governor and historical sentiments.

Synagogue razed in Oyigbo
A place of worship, synagogue, razed and destroyed by soldiers in Oyigbo. Credit: Ubuntu Times

In his broadcast, Wike said “Rivers State belongs to the indigenous people of Rivers State” and warned that “as a stranger element with strange political ideology therefore, IPOB has no legal or moral right to invade Rivers State or any part therefore at its behest; to disturb public peace, and subject lives and property to violence or threat of destruction under any guise.” He added: “We appeal to leaders of the various ethnic groups residents in the State to ensure that their members respect the sensibilities of our people and refrain from provocations and acts of hooliganism that could breach peace and security in the State.”

The group, IPOB, is predominantly Igbo, and the Rivers government said the group has used Oyigbo, which has a large Igbo population, as an outpost. The first attempt to create Biafra from Nigeria in the 1960s resulted in a civil war that killed over a million people. Since then, the Nigerian state has brutally crushed groups that align with that cause, often killing many.

Over years too, non-Igbo groups in the region have rejected the agitation for Biafra, and some Igbo cluster tribal groups have even denied having the same tribal roots with the Igbo, despite apparent linguistic ties. Some Igbo activists say the town raided by the soldiers, originally called Obigbo (meaning the heart of Igbo) was renamed Oyigbo in the early 1980s to spite the group.

In the chaos that unfolded in Oyigbo, some of the buildings reportedly razed by troops were synagogues assumed to be the worship place of IPOB members. The IPOB group has identified as Jewish and its members worship in synagogues, noticeably varied from the predominant practice of Christianity in the area. One synagogue was razed by troops near the timber market and another at Okpulor was demolished on November 9. But those interviewed said the synagogues were open for all persons especially the Sabbatarians, beyond IPOB.

Authorities Deny

Amidst criticisms following the attack, Gov Wike denied ordering soldiers to kill Igbo in the town. Speaking on television on November 2, the governor said the accusation was “politically-motivated.”

“It’s not true that I ordered the military to kill Igbo in Oyigbo. So, what about the Igbo living elsewhere in the state? Are they also being killed?” He added: “I will not fold my arms and watch criminals destroy my state, if those few criminals are Igbos then they should know that I will not allow them.”

Wike, however, said security agencies during their search of some residents in Oyigbo, saw shrines with IPOB flags and a picture of the group’s leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

Dispirited Oyigbo streets after massacre
Usually busy streets of Oyigbo remain scanty weeks after a deadly assault by soldiers killed many in the town. Credit: Ubuntu Times

The army also denied targeting a particular group. It also denied killing residents, even when the evidence shows the contrary. The spokesperson for Six Division of the Nigerian Army in Port Harcourt, Major Charles Ekeocha, said the army only entered houses that were possible hideouts of “hoodlums”.

“We lost six soldiers in that area, their weapons were carted away, it was planned and executed,” he was quoted by Guardian as saying. “The exercise going on there now is searching and identifying houses used by the so-called IPOB members. We are searching those houses to see whether we can get all those rifles they took away from our soldiers, that is what we are doing, we are professional about it. I don’t know about firing of weapons.”

Dispirited Oyigbo streets after massacre
Usually busy streets of Oyigbo remain scanty weeks after a deadly assault by soldiers killed many in the town. Credit: Ubuntu Times

On November 18, the king of Oyigbo, Mike Nwaji, urged the governor and the military authorities to caution soldiers against the indiscriminate arrests of residents in the area, according to the Lagos-based newspaper, Punch.

“Even if the person is a member of IPOB, I overheard the governor said that the activities of IPOB in Rivers State has been proscribed. I didn’t hear the governor say search them from house to house, but the governor said their activities, meetings, gatherings.

“So, any person going round and telling soldiers to come and see IPOB (should stop); the main people who committed the offense had all run away.”

Lagos Legislators Attack EndSARS Protestors Amid Push To Regulate Social Media

Delali Adogla-Bessa
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0
Lagos Legislators Attack EndSARS Protestors Amid Push To Regulate Social Media

Legislators in Lagos faced public outrage this past week after backing calls to regulate social media following the role it played in mobilizing and coordinating protests against police brutality.

Some legislators accused purported bad actors of hijacking the protests and spreading fake news to fuel unrest in Africa’s most populous city.

Actor turned legislator Desmond Elliot was an easy target and seemed to bear the brunt of criticism on social media.

He blamed the crisis that engulfed the nation’s commercial capital on the activities of social media influencers.

“Social media though good has its negative impact… Please celebrities, social media influencers, stop the hatred already,” Elliot said in a speech before the assembly on Tuesday.

When given the chance by local media two days later to clarify his utterances, an emotional Elliot said: “I can see why people thought it meant regulating the social media space. That was not in any way what I meant.”

“I could never have called for the social media space to be regulated,” said the legislator.

Elliot’s high profile status may have distracted from more forceful comments coming from other state and legislative actors against the protestors.

“The problems came from the social media,” another Lagos lawmaker, Adewale Temitope, said. “The need to regulate social media has become more than necessary. Our influencers must be brought to book.”

“There’s a way this social media can be controlled. You can’t just post anything in the United Arab Emirates, for instance. It’s being controlled by the government,” fellow legislator, Wahab Jimoh, insisted further.

It would surprise few observers that Nigeria’s Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, was also in full support of the regulation of social media.

Appearing before a committee in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, he did not mince words saying Nigeria ought to toe the line of China as far as regulating social media was concerned.

This has been a longstanding crusade for the minister. 

“When we went to China, we could not get google, Facebook, and Instagram,” Mr. Mohammed said. “You could not even use your email in China because they made sure it is censored and well regulated.” 

The minister is convinced regulation is needed to combat the threat of fake news.

“We are sitting on a time bomb on this issue of fake news. Unfortunately, we have no national policy on social media and we need one.”

There have been past reports that the Nigerian government has plans for a “Protection from Internet Falsehood & Manipulation” Bill, also known as the “Social Media” Bill.

Mohammed denied knowledge of such a Bill when he spoke to German broadcaster DW back in January 2020.

Activists like Sanyaolu Juwon, one of the leaders of the RevolutionNow campaign believe such a Bill to regulate social media exists and has vowed to resist it.

Juwon described the plan to regulate social media as “dead on arrival” when he spoke to Ubuntu Times.

“They have been planning this over the years and they have always introduced this Bill year in year out but every time, Nigerian people are mobilized against this draconian Bill.”

Underpinning the concerns over freedom of speech online was the hostility towards the #EndSARS protestors.

Various levels of Nigeria’s governance architecture remain reluctant to acknowledge the killing of unarmed protesters by security forces, most notably at the Lekki Plaza in Lagos.

At least 10 protesters were killed at the Lekki plaza on October 20, according to Amnesty International. That day has been christened Black Tuesday.

Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari set the tone for this posturing during a national address when he did not acknowledge the widely-condemned use of force by the state.

Lagos Speaker Mudashiru Obasa was less subtle in his contempt for the protesters when called for a moment of silence in the House Assembly for “patriotic Lagosians” who lost their lives, “and not miscreants that were killed by Police.”

Speaker of Lagos' State House of Assembly
Lagos Speaker Mudashiru Obasa offered no sympathy for the unarmed protestors killed during protests against police Brutality. Credit: Lagos State House of Assembly

Some like lawmaker Mustainu Tobun refuse to believe any protestors were killed despite compelling evidence.

“Till today there’s no record of death. Till today we did not see any pictures,” he retorted during assembly proceedings.

One member of the House, Owolabi Ibrahim, did acknowledge the killings when he took the floor.

“We saw when the Police Force actively tried to reduce the number of our youth. I say that because they were shooting sporadically. We saw the videos. All of us saw it.”

The utterances from Lagos legislators are why the protest against police brutality morphed seamlessly into a stand against “impunity characterized by bad governance,” according to Juwon.

The activist was critical of Lagos Governor Jide Sanwo-Olu who he blamed for the violence he and other peaceful protesters faced at Lekki, among others.

“We were hunted down like mere animals,” he recalled, insisting that the governor must resign.

The violent crackdown notwithstanding, Juwon does not think the movement was crushed.

“The tragic events of Black Tuesday, the rising body counts and direct role of the police and military, has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the struggle against police brutality and extrajudicial killings is far from over and Nigerians no doubt will be returning to the barricades sooner than expected.”

Nigeria President Buhari Turns Blind Eye To Shooting Of Unarmed EndSARS Protestors In National Address

Delali Adogla-Bessa
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0
Nigeria President Buhari Turns Blind Eye To Shooting Of Unarmed EndSARS Protestors In National Address

October 22 — Nigerians hoping for some contrition from their government were left fuming as President Muhammadu Buhari delivered an address to the nation that did not acknowledge the shooting of unarmed protesters in some of its cities.

While he said he was “deeply pained that innocent lives have been lost” in the Thursday evening address, there was no mention of what has been tagged Black Tuesday; a day defined by the killing of peaceful demonstrators at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos by security forces.

Human Rights group Amnesty International said the security forces killed at least 12 people in Lagos on Tuesday.

Some local media reported that close to 50 protestors were killed nationwide on Tuesday.

In what could be considered a slap in the face of victims of Black Tuesday, President Buhari made time to mourn “officers of the Nigeria Police Force who have tragically lost their lives in the line of duty.”

Despite the evidence and reports, President Buhari instead pointed fingers at persons he said had “hijacked and misdirected” the protest movement against police brutality.

His address was also littered with insinuations that the protests were being overcome by bad actors and that they were not operating “within the law.”

“So-called protesters have invaded an International Airport and in the process disrupted the travel plans of fellow Nigerians and our visitors,” he noted as an example.

“Certainly, there is no way whatsoever to connect these bad acts to legitimate expression of grievance of the youth of our country.”

President Buhari further demonstrated some concern for Nigeria’s reputation abroad warning of “deliberate falsehood and misinformation through the social media” purportedly meant to mislead international observers.

“To our neighbors in particular, and members of the international community, many of whom have expressed concern about the ongoing development in Nigeria, we thank you and urge you all to seek to know all the facts available before taking a position or rushing to judgment and making hasty pronouncements,” he urged.

President Buhari’s address then pivoted onto a more political lane where he touched on some policies and interventions his government had put in place including a “broad plan to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next 10 years.”

He thus urged angry citizens to “discontinue the street protests and constructively engage government in finding solutions.”

“I would like to appeal to protesters to note and take advantage of the various well-thought-out initiatives of this administration designed to make their lives better and more meaningful, and resist the temptation of being used by some subversive elements to cause chaos with the aim of truncating our nascent democracy.”

The speech was met with scorn from some Nigerians on Twitter, where the #EndSars hashtag has been the rallying cry for protestors.

For some, it was a reminder that Nigerians continue their resolve for change.

Unrest Following Black Tuesday

Reports on gunfire in urban areas and jailbreaks followed the Tuesday evening shooting of protesters in Lagos.

Lagos and other parts of Nigeria saw buildings set on fire and shops looted since the shooting.

This is despite the Lagos state government imposing an indefinite round-the-clock curfew on its about-15 million inhabitants.

The protests began about two weeks ago with angry youth demanding the disbandment of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).

SARS was eventually dissolved on 11 October but that shifted the protestor’s attention to widespread reforms in the security apparatus. Others have called for President Buhari to resign.

Black Tuesday prompted global calls for the Nigerian government to end the violence and investigate Tuesday’s events.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said reports that lights were turned off and CCTV cameras removed at the Lekki Toll Plaza before the shootings suggested it was “premeditated, planned and coordinated”.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an end to police brutality in Nigeria following two weeks of citizen protests.

In a statement issued by his spokesperson, he condemned “the violent escalation on 20 October in Lagos which resulted in multiple deaths and caused many injuries.”

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief also condemned the killing of protesters demonstrating against police brutality.

“It is alarming to learn that several people have been killed and injured during the ongoing protests against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad in Nigeria,” he said.

Statements from major regional bodies have however lacked bite and have been criticized as dishonest because of their framing of the protests as being violent.

While ECOWAS urged security agencies in Nigeria to act professionally, it also called on “all protestors to remain peaceful in the conduct of their demonstrations.”

In a statement on Thursday, the AU chairman, Moussa Faki Mahamat, “strongly” condemned the violence, appealing “to all political and social actors to reject the use of violence and respect human rights and the rule of law.”

Nigeria Tense After Shooting Of Protesters By Security Forces In Lagos

UbuntuTimes
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Nigeria Tense After Shooting Of Protesters By Security Forces In Lagos

Nigerian security forces opened fire late Tuesday on hundreds of demonstrators who had gathered in the country’s commercial center of Lagos, killing an unspecified number of people and leaving many injured.

Witnesses said soldiers fired live rounds under the cover of darkness at the Lekki toll gate, an upscale area of the city, just hours after the Lagos authorities imposed a 24-hour curfew to try to douse tension following two weeks of demonstrations demanding extensive police reforms.

A popular disc jockey, DJ Switch, who live-streamed the attack on Instagram, said seven people died. Some reports said more people died in the attack that has trended on social media as #LekkiMassacre and #LekkiGenocide.

“For 12 days, our young kept peacefully and intelligently asking @MBuhari
to #EndSARS. The best response he could give was ask the @HQNigerianArmy
to kill as many of them as possible in #LekkiGenocide,” former education minister and World Bank executive, Oby Ezekwesili, wrote on Twitter Tuesday night.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos promised an investigation and blamed the attack on “forces beyond my direct control”, an indication the directive for the raid came from the federal government, which controls the police and the military.

“For clarity, it is imperative to explain that no sitting governor controls the rules of engagement of the military. I have, nonetheless, ordered an investigation into the rules of engagement adopted by men of the Nigerian Army that were deployed to the Lekki toll gate last night,” the governor said.

“This is with a view to take this up with higher commands of the Nigerian Army and to seek the intervention of Mr. President in his capacity as the Commander-In-Chief to unravel the sequence of events that happened yesterday (Tuesday) night.”

Videos and pictures posted online show horrified protesters fleeing as soldiers fired live bullets towards the crowds. One footage showed victims trying to remove shrapnel from injured protesters.

The attack followed weeks of rare mass protests in a country that has endured two decades of democratic governance following decades of military dictatorship.

President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 and won re-election in 2019 on the promise to fight insecurity and corruption, but many citizens say the president has become aloof to the demands of citizens who voted for him. Mr. Buhari is yet to address the nation since the protests began.

The demonstrations started with demands for the disbandment of a notorious police unit, Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS, accused of rampant abuse of human rights, extortion, and unlawful killings. The government acceded after days of protests and named a new tactical unit, SWAT, modeled after the United States’ special weapons and tactics squad.

The mostly young protesters, however, have insisted on wider reforms, and more tangible actions such as the prosecution of police operatives who violated the rights of citizens and have demanded the payment of compensation to victims. They argue that previous promises by governments to reform the police were never actualized.

The demonstrations have taken place in several cities across the country, but have taken hold in Lagos and the capital, Abuja, and at least 12 people were killed either by the police or pro-government thugs before the Tuesday attack, local media reported.

The Nigerian army had last week warned it was ready to step in against “subversive elements and troublemakers”, and vowed to defend the country’s democracy “at all cost”. On Saturday, the army announced the launch of “operation crocodile smile” nationwide, saying it was targeting criminals. But the move raised concerns the government was planning to clamp down on the protests.

After curfew was announced in Lagos and several other cities across the country on Tuesday, protesters reported seeing unknown people removing CCTV cameras from the Lekki area where protesters had camped for the last two weeks. They said as night fell, street light in the area was cut before soldiers arrived and started shooting.

CCTV camera removal before Lekki Massacre
EndSARS protesters reported seeing unknown agents removing CCTV cameras from the Lekki tollgate vicinity before soldiers arrived and started shooting at demonstrators. Credit: EndSARS Protester(s)

The killings on Tuesday have horrified the country and drawn international condemnations.

Joe Biden, the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, urged “President Buhari and the Nigerian military to cease the violent crackdown on protesters in Nigeria, which has already resulted in several deaths.”

Biden said the U.S. must stand with Nigerians “who are peacefully demonstrating for police reform and seeking an end to corruption in their democracy.”

Former U.S. secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, called on Mr. Buhari and the army to stop attacking protesters.

The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, reiterated the UN’s call for maximum restraint in security forces’ response to the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria.

“The UN and I are following the protests in Nigeria calling for an end to human rights violations.

“I join the UN Secretary-General in stressing the importance of respect for peaceful protests and freedom of assembly, and call on the security forces to exercise maximum restraint,” she said on Twitter on Tuesday night.

The military has not commented on the incident, beyond tagging news posts on Twitter of the attacks as “fake news”.

Chaos escalated across Lagos on Wednesday with several properties belonging to the government or prominent individuals looted or torched. The palace of the traditional ruler, the Oba of Lagos, seen as a pro-government figure, was vandalized. A facility of the Nigerian Ports Authority and the Federal Road Safety Corps were also set on fire.

In response, the government deployed police and the military to patrol the streets, largely deserted by residents. Flights into and out of Lagos have been canceled.

Perception May Be Trumping Reason As Tensions Build Around Nigerian Retailers In Ghana

Delali Adogla-Bessa
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Perception May Be Trumping Reason As Tensions Build Around Nigerian Retailers In Ghana

On a calm Sunday in the business hub around the Nkrumah Interchange in Accra, a Nigerian immigrant, Junior Izuwu, has crept out into the open with his tabletop where he sells phone accessories and repairs electronics.

Sundays are slow days and human traffic is minimal. Business is unlikely to be good. But at least, Izuwu has some peace. There will be no state officials or Ghanaian traders to harass him.

He is one of the small fish caught up in the Ghanaian government’s attempts to enforce laws on retail trade mainly in the economic hubs of Accra and Kumasi. This has led to the forceful locking up of the shops belonging to foreigners engaged in unsanctioned retail trade.

The laws have been lax for so long that immigrant traders like Izuwu view their enforcement as man biting dog. Crackdowns over the last couple of years have been described as xenophobic in nature by some Nigerians. The lack of restraint from some Ghanaian traders has not helped the situation.

Whilst there is a sanctioned task force going round to check the registration of businesses for taxes, resident permits, standard controls, and the Ghanaian Investment and Promotion Centre (GIPC) permit for foreigners, Ghanaian traders have intermittently taken the law into their hands resulting in violent incidents.

“The last time they threw stones at us when we were gathered and everybody ran away then they locked shops,” Izuwu recounts to Ubuntu Times.

Seated in front of the locked shops of his fellow Nigerians, Izuwu demonstrates little understanding of the bigger picture and expects his government to intervene.

“For the Nigerian Embassy [in Ghana], I don’t know what they are doing. The way they are treating Nigerians here in Circle, it is not easy,” he says.

Nigerian immigrant in Ghana
Junior Izuwu makes a temporary home for himself in front of the locked shops of fellow Nigerian retailers. Credit: Delali Adogla-Bessa / Ubuntu Times

The GIPC permit appears to be the most stringent requirement. It demands that foreign traders have US$1,000,000 for trading activity with a minimum of 20 skilled Ghanaians employed while registering for the permit costs 31,500 cedis (US$5,446). The average immigrant in a largely informal sector cannot afford this.

Other than that, any enterprise not wholly-owned by a Ghanaian citizen cannot participate in the sale of goods or provision of services in a market, petty trading or hawking or selling of goods in a stall at any place, according to Ghana’s laws.

It is common to find some Nigerian traders and sympathetic Ghanaians citing ECOWAS protocols which allow for free movement across the West Africa sub-region. But its conventions do not supersede the sovereign law of individual states.

This is a point Dr. Vladimir Antwi-Danso, an international relations analyst, stresses to Ubuntu Times. “People always want to take advantage of the lapses in other country’s laws and exploit them. Period.”

Dr. Antwi-Danso expects zero compromises from the Ghanaian government as it looks out for the interest of indigenes and handles the grievances of Nigerian traders flouting the law.

“Retail trade is always reserved for indigenous people so it is made difficult to enter. There are no two ways about it,” he insists.

The clarity in this dynamic has been made murky by a recent back and forth laced with accusations between the governments of Ghana and Nigeria.

A major business district and electronics hub in Ghana
The Tip Toe Lane is a major business district in Accra home to many Nigerians and other foreigners. Credit: Delali Adogla-Bessa / Ubuntu Times

In the month that Ghana commissioned the African Continental Free Trade, Nigeria criticized the treatment of its nationals during the crackdown.

The Nigerian government in a statement last week complained about the “incessant harassment of its citizens in Ghana and the progressive acts of hostility towards the country by Ghanaian authorities.”

The statement, from Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed, also said its citizens in Ghana were being made “objects of ridicule.”

The statement followed Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey’s summoning of Nigeria’s chargé d’affaires to Ghana to complain about comments attributed to her Nigerian counterpart, Geoffrey Onyeama.

Mr. Onyeama is alleged to have said that the crackdown on illegal foreign retail businesses was bid for votes by the Akufo-Addo administration ahead of Ghana’s elections in December.

Chief Kizito Obiora, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the Nigerian Union of Traders in Ghana welcomed the signals coming from his government.

Speaking to Ubuntu Times from his Kumasi base, he said this response was the least he expected from his government. With a colorful analogy, he says: “no father will see that his children are being molested and he will just keep quiet. Any good father must surely take charge.”

Some anger simmers within Chief Kizito as he laments that the crackdown has revealed the “clear hatred of some Ghanaians”. He claims some Nigerian traders with the required documents are still being attacked and having their shops locked up.

A locked up shop belonging to a foreign trader in Accra
Some of the locked-up shops in Accra bear markers from task force enforcing the country’s laws. Credit: Delali Adogla-Bessa / Ubuntu Times

That said, he is aware of the need to enforce Ghana’s laws and is looking for some flexibility for the state.

“Our government has already advised us to be calm and continue to dialogue [with the Ghanaian government], which we have started,” Chief Kizito says.

That hope for leniency may have been quenched by a statement from the Ghana government responding to Nigeria’s earlier salvo.

A statement from Ghana’s Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah held that “there is widespread abuse and disregard for local laws and regulations governing retail trade by some foreigners, including Nigerians, which need to be addressed without discrimination.”

“It is important to note that the compliance exercise under reference is not restricted to either ECOWAS nationals or Nigerians for that matter, but extend to all individuals engaged in retail trade, including Ghanaians,” the statement added.

The discourse around the traders’ also brings to bear the larger concerns of the stereotyping Nigerians in Ghana as well as recent diplomatic embarrassment for Ghana.

Nigeria’s current concerns span beyond the handling of traders. The statement from its government also touched on what it called the “aggressive and incessant” deportation of Nigerians from Ghana, biased media reportage, and “harsh and openly-biased judicial trial and pronouncement of indiscriminately-long jail terms for convicted Nigerians.”

The Ghanaian government was also forced into a state of humility in June 2020 when armed men stormed the Nigerian High Commission in Ghana’s compound and destroyed buildings under construction.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo and other state officials were compelled to apologize over the incident. This incident also emboldened some Nigerian traders to protest against their treatment in Ghana.

Though Ghana has long had cordial relations with Nigeria, there have been past events that highlighted how fraught the bond between the two nations can be.

In 1969, then-Ghanaian Prime Minister, Kofi Busia, invoked the Aliens Compliance Order and deported an about 2.5 million undocumented African migrants. The majority were Nigerians.

In 1983, the “Ghana Must Go” period saw then-Nigeria President Shehu Shagari expel thousands of undocumented West African immigrants. About half of these were Ghanaians, who returned home with the iconic Ghana Must Go checkered bags.

The current Nigeria President, Muhammadu Buhari, also expelled some 7,000 Ghanaians when he was atop a military government from 1983 to 1985.

There is value in the larger context but it could also be considered as a distraction from what Dr. Antwi-Danso feels is a two-dimensional issue.

He describes some comments coming from Nigeria on the matter as “ignorant” and clouding a situation that is “purely economic and legal.”

“Those politicians in Nigeria making all these useless comments should rather dialogue. That is what we call diplomacy.”

Ghana and Nigeria have since proposed a committee to work towards regularizing the activities of Nigerian Traders in Ghana.

After deliberations between the leadership of both legislatures, they said they will “explore the possible passage of reciprocal legislation which could potentially be called the Ghana-Nigeria Friendship Act,” according to a statement from the two legislatures.

It shall propose a Ghana-Nigeria Business Council to provide a legal framework that hopes to be mutually beneficial to both countries.

Nigeria Sees Rising Coronavirus Cases But Fears Of Underreporting Linger

Ini Ekott
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Nigeria Sees Rising Coronavirus Cases But Fears Of Underreporting Linger

Abuja, June 10 — The Nigerian government in late May adopted an unusual protocol for sending treated Coronavirus patients home. Instead of two consecutive negative tests recommended by the World Health Organization, the government announced that patients would be discharged after a single test.

Local authorities welcomed the decision, including those in Lagos, the country’s commercial capital, and the city worst hit by the virus, where the number of Coronavirus patients is gradually outpacing available bed spaces.

Last Thursday, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control went a step further, announcing that a negative test would soon no longer be needed to discharge patients. Symptomatic patients would be discharged 10 days after symptom onset, and those without symptoms will spend a few additional days, it said.

“If your symptoms last for longer, we will wait for longer managing you supportively,” said Chikwe Ihekweazu, who heads the agency, at a press conference. “If you are asymptomatic, you can be discharged 14 days after your first positive result. A negative laboratory test is no longer required to discharge a COVID-19 patient.”

The agency said it was adopting the new methods to “decongest” the isolation centers as the numbers of new infections mount. Nigeria has seen an average of 1,300 cases a week since May 4, significantly higher than 286 recorded at the end of April.

But even as the numbers grow, many remain suspicious that the country may be underreporting the real extent of the contagion in Africa’s most populous nation. The country’s growing number of cases has largely failed to dispel lingering doubts about a reporting process that in some cases has been problematic, and at other times politicized.

“As of close of business last Friday, Nigeria had only tested 74,999 samples, which is a woeful return by any standard,” said Cheta Nwanze, lead partner at the Lagos-based research group, SBM Intelligence. “I fear that politicization, and the current government’s obsession with looking good at all levels.”

By Sunday, Nigeria had the third-highest number of infections in Africa at 12,233. It had 342 fatalities — the fifth-highest behind Egypt, South Africa, Algeria, and Sudan. About 50 percent of Nigeria’s infections were recorded in the last three weeks and Lagos alone accounts for nearly half of those cases.

Yet, when measured per capita, Nigeria’s rising figures don’t measure up given the country’s large population. In fact, when the number of cases is compared per million, Nigeria ranks 34 on a ranking of 57 nations, according to Worldometer, which compiles data on the Coronavirus pandemic.

The first factor many see as responsible for Nigeria’s relatively low numbers is the testing factor. So far, Nigeria with an estimated population of 200 million has only conducted about 75,000 tests. South Africa with 59 million people has done nearly a million tests; Ghana with a population of 31 million has done about more than three times the number of tests than Nigeria, while the small island nation of Mauritius, with a population of just above 1 million, has done over 150,000 tests.

“In summary, the issues are of control, of a need to look good, and a lack of competence in handling the pandemic,” said Mr. Nwanze.

In a bid to do more testing, the government increased the number of COVID-19 testing laboratories from four in February when the virus was first recorded in the country to 30 in June. It announced on April 28 an ambitious plan to test at least two million people by the end of July. After more than a month into the three-month target period, the country has only achieved less than 80,000 tests.

The second factor besides the country’s limitation with testing is perhaps more deadly: the suspicion that the country’s political leaders are deliberately underreporting cases of the disease in their domains for political reasons. In a country often polarized by politics and ethno-religious sentiments, the allegation does not seem far too off.

“NUMBERS GAME. Every evening NCDC releases #COVID19 numbers, what do they mean? Samples are sent to labs by task forces controlled by State Governors. The labs can only test what they are given. He who controls the sample set controls the numbers. Governors want low numbers,” Jibrin Ibrahim, a political science professor who runs the Abuja-based Centre for Democracy and Development, wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

Such sentiments are widespread and they have been strengthened by recent events. In early May, the state epidemiologist in the southern state of Akwa Ibom was dismissed in what local media said was punishment for sending more samples to the NCDC-run laboratories for testing than the governor had approved.

Up north in Kano, the country’s second-most populous state, after hundreds died mysteriously and cases of Coronavirus dramatically rose there in April, the government announced even without full autopsies that the deaths were not Coronavirus-related as widely suspected, rather were caused by malaria, hypertension, and diarrhea. Many rejected that claim. On Monday, several weeks after, the Health Minister, Osagie Ehanire, announced that investigations had shown 979 people died there, and 50 to 60 percent of those may have been caused by COVID-19.

Of the country’s 37 states, two — Kogi in the north-central and Cross River in the south — insist they have no cases of the virus despite being bordered by states with many cases. The country’s medical body and the NCDC accuse authorities in the two states of refusing to send samples of suspected cases for testing. In May, the NCDC said its staff sent to Kogi were attacked and chased away.

After the NCDC announced three cases from the state late May, the governor Yahaya Bello dismissed the result as a conspiracy to record cases against the state. An aide described the testing process that led to the result as “fraudulent,” prompting a rebuke from the country’s medical association.

“His use of profane words is capable of demoralizing the exemplary gold-winning health workers and the untiring NCDC, which possibly can lead to a national catastrophe,” Francis Faduyile, president of the Nigerian Medical Association said in a statement on May 29. The state government had “hardened its heart and ensured that the Kogi people remain in the dark, untested”, he added.

Responding to Mr. Ibrahim’s comment about governors falsifying the numbers, Nasir el-Rufai, the governor of the north-western state of Kaduna, said while the claim was “partly true,” some governors, himself inclusive, were doing the right thing and did not want the “fake low numbers.”

“FCT, Kaduna & Lagos States at least are actively tracing contacts because we want RIGHT numbers of those infected — to test, trace contacts & treat them. We want to save lives not have ‘unexplained deaths’,” said Mr. El-Rufai, who recovered from the deadly virus in May.

Nigeria has not yet flattened the curve. But the country in June relaxed its lockdown by allowing the reopening of offices and places of worship. Night curfew remains in place as well as a ban on interstate travels and an advisory on the use of face masks in public and social distancing.

Analysts fear that reopening places of worship and offices is hasty and may complicate an already dire situation with most residents barely observing the recommended social distancing or even using the facemasks.

Last Monday, at a local market in Kubwa, a suburb of the capital Abuja, majority of traders wore no masks and maintained no physical distance. Traders continued with their businesses as normal times.

In the most affected state, Lagos, the government said it will run out of bed spaces in three weeks if the numbers continue to grow. The state now plans to introduce home-care for patients without symptoms, only admitting those with moderate and critical symptoms to the isolation centers.

“If we carry on with the rate of positive testing that we are obtaining, we’re going to run out of isolation beds in our established isolation facilities,” Akin Abayomi, Lagos Commissioner for Health said at a press briefing on Friday.

“Therefore, we are projecting. If we keep getting 150, 200 positives every day, in another two or three weeks, even though we’re opening new isolation centers all the time, in time, we’re going to run out of beds,” the local newspaper The Cable quoted him as saying.

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