When hunger protests become treasonable and criminal

The country’s hunger protests have brought about a great deal of sorrow, violence, and property destruction, which have taken a toll. Over twenty lives have been lost. These tragedies could have been prevented if better coordination and cooperation had existed between the government, security services, and protesters.

Sadly, if the protest fizzles out without achieving any of its objectives despite the heavy cost it has incurred, blame it on the factors reviewed hereunder.

It is not impossible for peaceful protests to happen in the current situation. Peaceful protests have occurred in Nigeria in recent past. Furthermore, as long as protest stays within the bounds of the law, it is an essential component of any functional democracy. To be clear, the freedom to protest is guaranteed by United Nations Human Rights Charter No. 12, African Union Human Rights Charter No. 9, (all of which Nigeria has ratified) and articles 39 and 40 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). Protests are therefore morally and legally acceptable, and they even constitute a fundamental human right.

Nonetheless, human rights are not absolute. Rights come with obligations. Anyone participating in a protest advocating for fundamental human rights must do so without violating the rights of others. Protests must also not tolerate criminal actions or acts of treason, such as pushing for regime change. This was what led to the motivation of some protesters to protest against the protest. Some even later protested against protesting against the protest.

Although the government acknowledged the right of Nigerians to protest, it questioned how arson and other criminal activity could be prevented. As a result, security agencies, in particular the police, insisted that the protest organisers reveal their identities. The government was initially alarmed by the organisers’ lack of identity and the protest’s general vagueness, even though a few figures are known—Omoyele Sowore, Deji Adeyanju, and Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa SAN, who wrote the IGP as the protesters’ lawyer—as well as a few others who also appeared but were of a sundry kind based on reputation.

The truth is that there was a glaring lack of leadership and coordination. Omoyele Sowore, for instance, has been abroad in the United States, and Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, in contrast to Gani Fawehmi, was nowhere to be seen throughout the protests, limiting his involvement to a legal brief. He also never disclosed whether or not he agreed with the demonstrators on any key demands. The only person who could be considered a leader in the Abuja protests was Deji Adeyanju, who led from the front.

That explains why the IGP called the protest organisers “faceless” on multiple occasions. IGP once questioned how he could have delivered the court order to the demonstrators that were hiding on social media and refusing to disclose their identities or addresses.

The majority of Nigerians concurred that the protest was required to emphasise that the country’s levels of hunger and suffering had become intolerable. But the lack of clear leadership and coordination became its undoing, like what happened in the EndSars protest of 2020. For instance, the start and finish points of the protest processions in each area would have been decided upon by the organisers and the security services. This way, the security agencies will be able to deal with the miscreants and criminals who organised their own protests for looting and plundering.

Therefore, those who accuse the security services of trying to suppress the protest needed to have taken into account this serious omission. Though the government equally made a significant mistake in its assessment of the protest. Erring on the side of caution, the protest should not have been permitted at all if the two requirements—knowing the identities of the organisers and reaching an agreement on the routes of the protest processions’ takeoff and finish points—were not agreed. The reason is that controlling the protest would be difficult, if not impossible, as the protest fatally proved soon after takeoff.

The government ought to have filed a lawsuit over those prayers rather than frivolously requesting that the demonstrators be confined inside Moshood Abiola Stadium in Abuja or any other location.

Then there’s the problem of demonstrators’ staccato and shifting demands. The protesters’ vague and confusing demands amply demonstrated the lack of effective organisation. As of the most recent tally, the demonstrators’ demands came in at least six different versions, ranging from “end hunger” to “end bad governance” and “end bad government” (regime change).

It does seem that the various people and CSOs that made up the protest movement each had a unique set of demands based on a variety of motives. This is a tactical error in and of itself. Given the fatality of flaws in the current protest, the organisers should have settled on a set of objectives that are realistic, achievable, and quantifiable rather than allowing shifts to vacuous demands that are beyond the core goal of the protest.

Unfortunately, the ambiguities in their demands escalated to calls for foreign countries to intervene militarily and to replace the Tinubu government. To emphasise their rejection of the Nigerian government as currently constituted, this group flew Chinese and Russian flags. They also directly invited Russia to intervene, as they had done in Burkina Faso and Niger, where the military recently toppled democratically elected governments. Thus they deviated from the primary goal of the hunger protest and shifted to what the government interpreted as treason, rightly or wrongly.

Speaking on behalf of the national security council, Chief of Defence General Chris Musa called this an act of treason after that august body’s meeting on the protest. While flying a foreign flag during protests might not be treason, the government can legitimately argue that advocating for regime change and calling on foreign forces to step in after such forces have committed a similar act in another nation constitute treason.

It is imperative that protests be planned appropriately going forward. The organisers need to take the initiative and decide on the paths for the processions in the future. Both sides need to adopt a new perspective on protest; demonstrators and their organisers need to understand that using violence is not necessary and should be avoided. Peaceful protests have happened in Nigeria on several occasions, including in 2012 during the “Occupy Nigeria” protests and fuel hike protests during the days of Senator Adams Oshiohmole as NLC president.

The government should be more tolerant, especially the IGP, whose PhD thesis, one understands, was on protest management. The police are the most valuable social asset of any nation, and ours must make every effort to remain so in the eyes of the citizens. Nigerians have no other police to call their own.

Furthermore, those protest organisers who are afraid to reveal their faces and lead from the front for fear of whatever should stop organising protests that put innocent Nigerians in harm’s way, as they did again with the ongoing End-Hunger protest, which has so far claimed over 20 irreplaceable lives.

Lastly, protest cannot be suppressed in a real democracy or by a president who himself is a prominent protester and an ace democrat; protest also shouldn’t be permitted in a way that makes its management impossible just because the organisers are anonymous and making demands that aren’t even within the president’s constitutional powers.

Dr. Law Mefor, an Abuja-based forensic and social psychologist, is a fellow of The Abuja School of Social and Political Thought. He can be reached via [email protected]; Twitter: @Drlawsonmefor.