ON April 10, 2025, Nigerians once again witnessed a descent
into tyranny when peaceful protesters under the banner of the Take It Back
Movement, led by human rights activist Omoyele Sowore, were brutalised by the
very institutions tasked with protecting them.
The protests centred on the repressive Cybercrime Act, the
declaration of emergency rule in Rivers State, and the imbroglio in the Senate.
Despite duly notifying the authorities of their intentions
to hold a peaceful protest, these citizens were met not with dialogue or respect
but with tear gas, baton beatings, and police brutality. Injuries were
recorded. Rights were violated. The state bared its fangs against its people.
This is not an isolated incident. In 2024, Nigeria saw a
series of peaceful demonstrations, most notably the hunger protests—citizen-led
uprisings sparked by widespread economic hardship, soaring food prices, and a
collapsing currency.
In those moments of collective agony, the government
responded with brute force. Police officers stormed the protest grounds,
violently dispersing demonstrators and forcing them back into the shadows of
hunger and despair. What was their crime? Daring to cry out.
This is an affront to democracy, a violation of sections 39
and 40 of the 1999 Constitution.
By suppressing protests and silencing dissenting voices, the
government of President Tinubu demonstrates that it is allergic to critical
voices.
On October 20, 2020, during the #EndSARS protests, Nigerian
soldiers opened fire on peaceful protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos.
The images and videos circulated worldwide bore testament to a government
willing to unleash deadly force upon its unarmed youth. To this day, not a
single soldier has been brought to justice.
The government failed to accept responsibility for the
incident. Instead, there has been a deliberate erasure, a rewriting of history
by those desperate to bury the truth under silence and fear.
The Tinubu-led administration continues to treat dissent
with a sledgehammer, all tactics of autocrats.
It is even more insulting when this repression is carried
out by the Nigerian Police Force and the Nigerian Army, institutions that ought
to be non-partisan, bound by law to protect the people.
Instead, they have become tools in the hands of politicians,
instruments of a wicked enterprise designed to perpetuate fear, enforce
silence, and suppress any attempt by Nigerians to hold their leaders
accountable.
In functional democracies, such as Ghana, Kenya, South
Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, protest is not only
tolerated but also respected.
Citizens march on the streets to demand justice, economic
reforms, accountability, and better governance.
Rarely, if ever, are protesters in those countries maimed or
killed for demanding better lives.
Why then must Nigeria stand as an outlier—where peaceful
demonstrations are treated as acts of treason, and dissenters as criminals?
Yet, protest is not a privilege granted by the government.
It is a right, a non-negotiable right. A right protected by the Nigerian
constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the UN
Declaration of Human Rights.
The Tinubu government should stop the assault on the people
whose votes put it in office. When peaceful protest is no longer an option,
what remains is anarchy. And history is littered with the ruins of governments
that mistook silence for consent, and fear for submission.
The judiciary, civil society, and the international
community must continue to speak out against this encroaching tyranny.
The Nigerian Bar Association should challenge these
violations in court. International human rights watchdogs must continue to
shine the spotlight on Nigeria’s declining civil liberties.
And Nigeria, for all its many challenges, does not deserve
to be ruled by fear. Nigerians have the right to assemble, speak, and protest.
That right is not up for debate.