By M. O. Idam. Esq.

I am not in the least impressed. No thanks to the judgment. The acquittal is, to me, best described as a stale snack, served cold to a dying man who must die whether or not he eats of it. As one of the lawyers who volunteered my appearance in solidarity for the former Chief Justice of Nigeria during the hatchet trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, I could sense that the trial was more or less a premeditated script simply handed down by the past President to achieve an insidious purpose.

Sadly, the Judiciary could not rescue itself from the shackles of the Executive to protect one of its own. Consequently, he descended from that topmost height and fell scornfully. There was no one to pat his back or rescue him. Oh! I just remembered that those perceived to be his allies on the bench had their fair share of persecution. May the soul of Hon. Justice Ngwuta continue to rest.

As a lawyer who participated in some of the proceedings at the CCT, I will not give a nod to the news, nor do I expect him or any member of his family to do so. Unless and until former president Buhari tenders a public apology for that hatchet job against him.

The Judiciary must recover itself from the grip of the Executive by making bold judgments no matter whose ox is gored, and resisting every form of enticement or else, judges will continue to play pawns in the hands of the executive.

Till the apology is rendered, I will not commend the acquittal.

M. O. Idam

By Suyi Ayodele

We are a nation in perpetual contrast! We claim to want the best for our country. But at every election turn, we hand over the country to those who have the lowest mental aptitude to govern a complex country like Nigeria!

In the heat of the 2015 election between President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari, I asked one of the Buhari supporters, a PhD holder, why he would support Buhari who paraded a questionable West African School Certificate (WASC) qualification against Jonathan, with a PhD. His response determined our relationship since then. “Even if it is a goat, I will still vote for him against Jonathan!”, he told me. The result is what we are seeing today. When you vote for a goat, you don’t expect the agility of a lion from it!

The first five chapters of Chude Jideonwo’s book, with contribution from Ademola Williams, How to Win Elections in Africa (2017), contain interesting topics. The chapters which run from page one through page 32 have the sub-topics: Legacy doesn’t matter as much as it used to, Change matters. Period.; Anger matters, more than you know; Establishment matters and Candidates matter, first and foremost.

The authors, on the qualities of candidates, say: “All the messaging in the world, all the ideas in the world, all the great plans and purposes and visions in the world amount to nothing if they cannot find the candidate who embodies this, that expresses it and that symbolises it” (Page 26).

The excerpt above underscores the importance of the competence of any candidate who seeks to rule over a people. The greatest problem bedevilling Nigeria, I say without hesitation, is leadership, quality leadership.

We have been so unfortunate in the last 25 years to have had almost the dreg of humanity at the helm of our affairs as a nation. The situation has been more terrible for Nigeria in the last nine and half years under the administrations of President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Buhari was elected in 2015 under the guise of a pseudo-legacy of honesty, discipline and a strong stance against corruption. Nigerians learnt too late to realise that all the robes Buhari was decorated with were borrowed ones and misfits in fabrics, sizes and styles. Under his watch, corruption wore three-piece suits on the streets of Nigeria while the Mai Gaskiya kept on picking his teeth!

Buhari’s successor, President Tinubu, gained access to the Aso Rock Villa because his handlers were able to successfully sell the dummy of a man with inimitable legacies of sterling performances when he held sway as the governor of Lagos State.

All attempts to convince the people, especially the poor masses, that the masquerade they were asked to come and behold at the political arena in 2023 was nothing but a normal human being with guttural voice and terrestrial robes, fell on deaf ears. Today, we are all victims of the choice we made last year. The tendency that we may remain victims of the lacklustre performance of Tinubu for the next six and half years is very high.

In the United States (US), today, November 5, citizens will be out to elect a new president who will take over power in January 2025. I have followed the US election with little or no interest. The problems at home here are more than enough to bother about what happens or does not happen in the US.

I agree that whoever becomes the president of the so-called God’s Own Country will have multiple effects on us here in Nigeria and the entire world. It is not lost on me, nor on many Nigerians, that Nigeria has rarely benefitted anything from the Western. In fact, the West often takes more than triple of whatever it offers us! Regardless of who emerges as the US president, their primary focus will always be “America First”!

This is where I think we should focus our attention. We should, in my own thinking, begin to ask if there will be a time when we will have a leader who will put Nigeria first before his personal ambition. That is the biggest lesson I have learnt from the US election and its electoral processes so far.

The US is not a Superpower because God created it to be so from day one. No! Leaders after leaders developed the country to be what it is today because the US has been fortunate to have leaders who think “America First”.

Nothing captures this more than the attitude of the incumbent President Joe Biden. Biden had sought to be US president for a second term. He was the choice of his party, the Democratic Party, until the love for the country came in and he had to bow to public opinion by yielding the stage to a more robust candidate, Kamala Harris, a woman and Biden’s Vice President.

The US is an institutionalised country. Nobody aspires to be the president without subjecting himself or herself to public scrutiny. It is not a place where a president-to-be will call the bluff of the people and refuse to participate in public debates.

The presidential debate in the US goes beyond an avenue to lay before the people, the presidential candidates’ programmes and plans. The presidential debate is essentially the avenue provided for the mass of the people to test the mental capacity of whoever aspires to lead the country.

The US has developed to that level of political maturity where the beauty of a candidate’s manifesto does not sway voters. While manifestoes are valuable, citizens prioritise the candidates’ ability to read the manifestoes, understand and effectively implement the ideas and ideals outlined in these documents.

This is what Jideonwo and co point out when they posit that: “All the messaging in the world, all the ideas in the world, all the great plans and purposes and visions in the world amount to nothing if they cannot find the candidate who embodies this, that expresses it and that symbolises it” (op cit).

The above test is what President Biden failed during the June 27, 2024, presidential debate with his main challenger then, former President Donald Trump, who is also running as the Republican candidate in today’s election in the US.

At the debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta and watched by over 51 million viewers in the country, President Biden was rated poor in all ramifications and his performance was declared by Elliot Morris and Kaleigh Rogers of ABC News’ 538 as a “disaster”.

One major weak point that the public noticed in Biden’s performance at the debate was his “frequent loss of train thought while he gave meandering, confused answers.” The general opinion was that Biden failed to convince anyone that he had the capacity and capability for another four years.

Little wonder all hands; party officials, fundraisers, undecided voters and volunteers, were up for him to step aside. The Democratic Party and the public correctly judged his mental ability. Biden had no choice but to step down for his vice president, Harris, to take over.

That is one of the beauties of the US democracy; the very one Nigeria claims to have copied. One single debate took Biden out of the race. But what do we have in Nigeria? How do we test the mental preparedness of our would-be presidents?

I have read a lot of comments by Nigerians about the US election and the Trump versus Biden debate. I have friends who were promoters of the spine-chilling cliche of “Buhari-can-have-NEPA-bill” – a reaction to the argument that beyond having no minimum certificate to contest the 2015 election, Buhari does not possess any inspiring mental aptitude for the office he sought- jumping and calling for Biden’s withdrawal from the race.

I did not also find it amusing that many Nigerians who did not see any wrong in President Tinubu asking his aides to answer questions thrown at him at the charade called Chatham House outing in 2023, pontificating on the Biden debate with Trump!

It is on record today that since 2015, there has been no presidential election debate in Nigeria. Yet, within that period, we have held three consecutive presidential elections in 2015, 2019 and 2023. The implication is that for the past nine and half years, Nigerians have never had the opportunity to access the mental aptitude of their would-be presidents.

The argument has always been that debates have nothing to do with performance! This argument, sadly, is the position of many Nigerians who stayed glued to their TV sets, keeping vigils, to watch the US presidential debates between Trump and Biden, and between Trump and Harris!

This lazy mental reasoning also played out in the recent Edo State governorship election where the two major political parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP and the All Progressives Congress (APC), refused to push forward their candidates for any debate.

Ours is a nation where all a Fulani man needs to be president is to line up all the Almajiris of the North behind his candidature and his Yoruba counterpart to enlist the support of all street-urchins of Lagos on the election day! The Igbo candidate, of course, can always bank upon the home support of the Nzobu nzobu orchestra of Ndigboland!

A nation that sacrifices merit for mediocrity can never rise above the mediocrity of its leaders. The physiological, physical, mental and character configuration of a leader matter. The health and mental fitness of a president will have negative or positive effects on his output. This is why we should not support any candidate who is not willing to put his mental and health issues to test at public debates before any election. If Biden had not participated in the June 27, 2024, presidential debate, the Democratic Party would have fielded a “disaster” as its flagbearer.

Nobody gives what he does not have. We have dwelt too much on lies and propaganda. We keep dressing dregs of humanity in our country in the celestial robes of Angels. We place ethnicity above competence and go after money at the expense of our collective future.

Those who should not hold the lowest councillorship positions are leaders of governments and legislative bodies in Nigeria today.  We elect leaders based on sentiments and we expect them to be fair, just and equitable. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Check out all the leaders in the executive and legislative posts; what do you find?

A last quote from Jideonwo: “Elections begin with candidacies. And often, they rise and fall on candidates. If the essential candidacy is defective or inadequate, almost everything else is doomed to fail.” Do we need a further prognosis of our woes?

By Lasisi Olagunju

Wahala no dey finish for Nigeria. Because President Bola Tinubu appointed an acting Chief of Army Staff last week, my northern friend sent me a WhatsApp message from Zaria: “It comes as a surprise as Oduduwa takes over the lead agencies of the critical safety sector: Army (military), Police (security), DSS (Intelligence), EFCC (anti-corruption).”

My friend was talking fairness. I heard him and remembered the quaint saying about equity and clean hands. So, I replied him: “Can you name those who served in those four positions under Buhari and where they came from?”

John Milton, legendary blind poet of seventeenth century England, said something about truth and falsehood grappling. Truth, the stronger, will always put the weaker to the worse. My friend thought he had the facts on his side, and so, he answered me: “Buhari picked those security chiefs across the north east, north west and north central…”

That was a half-truth, and I’ve heard it said many times that a half-truth will always mean a half-lie. And a half-lie is a lie nicely dressed. I asked my friend: “When you people met in Kaduna earlier on Monday and took a position on VAT, rejecting Tinubu’s tax reform bills, did you meet as three zones? No. You met as one North, one region. Those appointments made by Buhari were for that one North.” As I typed that response, I remembered that ‘One North, One Destiny, One People, Irrespective of Religion, Rank or Tribe’ was the motto of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), the North’s ruling party at independence. NPC may be long dead, but the North has dutifully kept its flame glowing. We still feel the spirit in every inter-regional discourse.

My friend argued more forcefully. He spoke as a northerner. I responded as a Yoruba man, not as a southerner, because there is nothing so called. I told him he was obviously not speaking for the other two zones in the South. I asked him if the North wanted the Chief of Army Staff position to go to the Igbo of the South-East. His response was that there was a time under Buhari when he campaigned for that arrangement. I asked him to speak for time present, not time past. “Would you want a South-East/South-South person to be Chief of Army Staff or Inspector-General of Police?” My friend did not reply me. He did not answer that question. I asked how he would feel if the positions go to the North today. He replied me with silence.

Finally, my friend quipped: “Personally, I pray for Tinubu to succeed but he doesn’t need to be nepotistic like Buhari, the disaster.”

Has Tinubu been unduly favoring the Yoruba in his appointments? Personal aides, yes. Security appointments, no. A list of 22 security appointees was circulated online at the weekend. Fifteen of them are from the North, five from the South-West, one from the South-East, one from the South-South. If anyone would complain of inadequate representation here, it should be the South-East/South-South corridor.

Sixty-four years after independence, Nigeria has remained a very delicate union of bickering partners. Despite several state creation exercises, the division along the original three regional lines has remained very strong. Today, the three arms of Nigeria’s armed forces have their chiefs chosen from the West (Army; East (Navy); North (Airforce). This would be fair enough except we are saying that one service chief is bigger than the others.

Army, SSS, Police, EFCC. For his complaint, why would my friend pick just four out of the 22 identified positions? Read my friend again. He described the four as “critical safety sector.” Buhari set the precedent by filling those posts with northerners; Tinubu has also filled them with westerners. If the East produces a president tomorrow, he will most possibly fill them with his regional brothers. But why?

Adebayo Faleti, late Yoruba playwright and culture scholar, wrote in his 1968 short story ‘Ogun Awitele’ (Foretold War) that war does not kill the coward; it also does not kill the fearless. The one who gets killed by war is the one who is careless (ogun kì í pa ojo; ogun kì í pa akin; aláìfòrànpòràn ni ogun npa). My playwright says war kills the careless. I will use the experience of Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, to discuss this. When Jonathan became president, he, like most of his predecessors, was very careful not to rupture the tenuous tendons of whatever we had as a country. But Jonathan overdid it. He apparently wanted to be another national hero and proceeded to make many strategic appointments which undid him. Jonathan’s 2015 election time Inspector-General of Police was a gentleman from the north. When it mattered most, the falcon refused to hear the falconer. The super cop did not just see his kinsman, Muhammadu Buhari, to victory, he publicly followed him to collect his Certificate of Return from INEC in April 2015. The gentleman officer abandoned his defeated Commander-in-Chief. Blood is thicker than water. The policeman came out three years later to celebrate what he did. He declared that the police under him forced Jonathan to concede victory to Buhari. Hearing him in an August 2018 interview gives reasons for appreciating the true meaning of blood and water and what made one thicker than the other. The former IGP said: “We forced those who lost elections to accept the results. The Nigeria Police forced those who lost elections to accept the outcome. It was the action of the police that made them to have a change of mind and accept the results. The heroes of that election should have been the police…I attended the presentation of certificate to the president-elect…”

Nigeria was deflowered in 2015. The hymen of innocence, once lost is lost forever. If the police were strategic in determining election winners, what wise president would then hand its rein to ‘outsiders’? Jonathan’s successor, Buhari, learnt from the Ijaw man’s fatal error. He inherited Solomon Arase from Edo State as IGP, kept him for one year and as the stakes were getting high, he quickly took the position ‘home’ and gave it to Ibrahim Kutigi from Niger State. From then on till he left in 2023, the baton passed from one northern state to another. Was Buhari being street-wise to have kept the Inspector-General’s position in his regional pocket for seven out of his eight years in power? If Buhari was not wrong that time, should we expect Tinubu to do today what Jonathan did which burnt his nimble fingers day before yesterday?

Jonathan’s ‘harakiri’ in politics started long before that appointment. He did several things which no one had ever done before. It was therefore not a surprise that his eyes saw what no one ever saw before. The Ijaw man made Fulani man, Attahiru Jega, INEC chairman in an election in which his main opponent was a Fulani. The man was praised by his nemesis and he enjoyed it. As the West African Pilot of 2 April, 1964 warned in an editorial: “The road to ruin is often smooth. Those who travel it pay the fare.” Three years after he was dusted and ousted, Jonathan wrote in his ‘My Transition Hours’ (page 75): “For some inexplicable reasons, the INEC had been able to achieve near 100% distribution of Permanent Voter Cards in the North, including the North-East which was under siege with the Boko Haram insurgency, but it (INEC) failed to record similar level of distribution in the South which was relatively more peaceful.” Because Buhari was no Jonathan, when it was time for him to replace Jega in November 2015, the Fulani man from Katsina went for a Fulani man from Bauchi. After eight years of uncommon tutorial from Muhammadu Buhari on how to (mis)manage a people’s diversity, it is not possible for any subsequent president (from the south) to do bobo nice again – especially with appointments strategic to their personal and political survival. A new INEC chairman is due for appointment in November next year (2025). Watch out for Tinubu. He will not be a Jonathan.

Key security appointments have become an armour for the president of Nigeria. The lesson taught by history is that a leader, while cuddling his neighbour, must never allow kin-blood to be diluted with water of whatever colour.

The politics of appointment into the head of the army started soon after independence. How did the government of Tafawa Balewa handle it? Sidi H. Ali, author of ‘Power of Powers: A biography of Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu’, Nigeria’s first minister of defence, wrote about the intense ethnic maneuverings and bitterness that attended the appointment of the country’s very first indigenous head of the army when the last expatriate, Major General Christopher Welby-Evarard, left in February 1965. “The four possible candidates were all brigadiers at the time. They were Ironsi, Ademulegun, Ogundipe and Maimalari. Ironsi was the most senior of all…After all the bickering, Ribadu came out to announce the appointment of Ironsi as the commanding officer of the Nigerian Army. This, of course, was received with mixed feelings…” (page 18). If Balewa were to come back from the dead today and is asked to pick his army chief, would he still go for Ironsi? Among the four gentlemen officers of 1964, who do you think Balewa’s choice would be?

Balewa is not coming back but his democratic successor was Shehu Shagari who came in 1979 and had Lt.-General Alani Akinrinade as his Chief of Army Staff. Shagari soon replaced the Yoruba man with his kinsman, Gibson Jalo. Jonathan inherited a chief of army staff, Abdulrahman Dambazau, from his late boss, Umaru Yar’Adua. He couldn’t sleep until he picked someone from his area, Azubuike Ihejirika, to man that goal post.

Every elected Nigerian leader since the end of the first republic knows why crab does not sleep. What it stays awake doing is 24/7 recce for the safety of its head. Its eyes should be its binoculars – and they are. Even Olusegun Obasanjo as civilian president did not deny himself that wisdom, although he was very nuanced about it. He had three Inspectors-General of Police and all three were from his western region. His DG SSS from 1999 to 2007 was Colonel Kayode Are, his Abeokuta kinsman. For the army, Obasanjo, a southern Christian, in eight years, had four gentlemen as his Chief of Army Staff. He started in 1999 with Victor Malu, a Christian from the North; then he moved south and picked Alexander Ogomudia, a southern minority. After two years, two months, Obasanjo took the position back to the North. But he did not give it to those who might use it to injure him. He picked Martin Luther Agwai, a southern Kaduna minority Christian. Three years down that road, he went south again and picked Andrew Owoye Azazi, another southern minority. It was clear that he was deliberate about what he did. He was wide awake, mixing his nationalist broth with condiments of small nepotism here, a little of altruism there. The Obasanjo experience ended almost twenty years ago. This is the age of reason, apology to Thomas Paine. The gloves are off.

But, I think the people who are reading north and south into today’s appointments had better shine their eyes and see where the real danger is. The fish gets rotten from the head – and it is always progressive. Under Buhari, the president’s wife ran the alternate presidency while a regional cabal revved up the old engine of the man we elected. Today, we are not sure whether it is the man we elected or the wife or the son (with their business friends) that is at the top. After this set, we may have grafted on the trunk of our democracy a hereditary oligo-monarchy.

And we cannot say a president should not have a family – and friends. Wither the way then? Igbó rèé, òna rèé (the bush is here, the road is here). Where should we face?

The founding fathers of the United States feared what we see now. In her review of Adam Bellow’s ‘In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History’, Joanne B. Ciulla says “nepotism was very much on the minds of America’s founding fathers. The last thing they wanted in their new country was hereditary rule.” She writes further (and this is interesting) that “one of the many qualities that made George Washington attractive as the first president was the fact that he did not have any children (who would share his powers or even seek to succeed him). When John Adams ran against Thomas Jefferson, his detractors feared that, because Adams had a son, he might try to start a dynasty.” Indeed, in that election dubbed ‘Revolution of 1800’, Jefferson, who did not have a son, defeated incumbent President John Adams.

But that cautious beginning notwithstanding, America has evolved to mint its own brand of ‘safe’ nepotism. Ciulla writes: “Let’s cut to the 2000 presidential election in the U.S. It pitted a son of a president against the son of a senator. When George W. Bush won, he appointed Michael Powell, son of Colin Powell, to be chairman of the FEC; Elaine Cho, wife of Senator Mitch McConnell, to be Secretary of Labor; and Eugene Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to be the chief labor attorney. In addition to these appointments, Bush made the Vice President’s daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, deputy assistant secretary of state, and her husband chief counsel for the Office of Management and Budget. At the request of Senator Strom Thrumond (and to the dismay of some people), Bush gave Thurmond’s twenty-eight-year-old son the job of U.S. Attorney for South Carolina.” The American system, from the above, draws a line between “bad nepotism and good nepotism.” Ciulla says the US now defines nepotism “not as hiring a relative but as hiring an incompetent relative…”

That is in the US. Here in Nigeria, competence is discounted. The concern is more on the history and the geography of the hired and the motive of the appointing authority.

In all these nepotism matters, the peace of the country and the happiness of the people are the casualties. Every hour spent by the leader ignoring competence but checking the bloodline or the ethnicity of the man for the next post is the hour just before darkness. And, if the nepotist succeeds in burying his long heel in this sand, it is bye bye to peace and amity. As Olusegun Obasanjo said in 2019 at the height of Buhari’s glass ceiling-bursting nepotism: “If you cannot trust me, why should I trust you?…The person who is our leader now is saying he cannot allow another ethnic group to work with him because he cannot trust them. If he cannot trust my tribe or your tribe, of what benefit is he? And he is saying my tribe and yours should come and vote for him. He can ask for our votes, but he cannot trust us to work in good positions. Life is give and take.”

By Sonnie Ekwowusi

The continued detention of the EndBadGovernance protesters by the Tinubu administration demonstrates that the administration has blossomed into full-blown despotism and totalitarianism. It is no wonder that the international human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, has recently called for the immediate and unconditional release of over 1,000 #EndBadGovernance protesters who are currently in prison custody nationwide due to their participation in the recent nationwide #EndBadGovernance protest.

Similarly, the Catholic Bishop Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), Transparency International (TI), renowned human rights activist Femi Falana SAN, and others have vociferously urged the federal government to expedite the release of the #EndBadGovernance protesters and other individuals being detained in connection with the protest.

According to Falana, no fewer than 2,111 protesters have been arrested in connection with the nationwide protest, out of which 1,403 have been secretly arraigned in various courts and ordered to be remanded in prison custody due to lack of legal representation.

This follows the surreptitious granting of a 60-day extension to the police by Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja to detain 124 alleged protesters, including at least 22 minors. In another development, a Federal High Court in Abuja has issued an order freezing the bank accounts of 32 individuals and companies allegedly linked to the #EndBadGovernance protest.

Meanwhile, the Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR) has drawn the attention of the federal government to the deteriorating health of some of the detained protesters, particularly Michael Adaramoye, Mosiu Sodiq, and Eleojo Opaluwa.

The nationwide #EndBadGovernance protest spanned ten days, from August 1 to 8, 2024. It is noteworthy that, prior to the protest, the federal government and some state governments openly acknowledged that the right to protest is a constitutional right and, therefore, urged the would-be protesters to conduct their protest in a peaceful manner devoid of violence.

The Lagos State government not only permitted the would-be protesters to protest but also directed them to do so in designated places in Lagos. It is therefore surprising that the protest has drawn the ire of the Tinubu government, culminating in the arrest and detention of over 1,000 protesters, including minors aged 14-17, who have been thrown into prison on accusations of terrorism, treason, and treasonable felony under the Terrorism (Prevention & Prohibition) Act.

The minors being detained include: Muktar Ishaq Alhassan, 16; Sani Aliyu, 17; Mahmud Mustapha, 16; Umar Abdullahi, 17; Habibu Sani, 17; Mustapha Abubakar, 17; Sani Hassan Idris, 17; Abdulrahaman Ibrahim, 17; and Salisu Adamu, 16. Others are Bilal Auwalu, 15; Amir Muhd, 17; Abdul’aziz Adam, 15; Sadiq Sunusi, 15; Ibrahim Sani, 17; Hassan Muhd, 17; Saifullahi Muhd, 15; Umar Ali, 17; Musa Isyaku, 15; Muhd Musa, 14; Usman Amiru, 14; Abdulganiyu Musa, 15; and Sunusi Nura, 14.

If the federal government had initially acknowledged the right of the protesters to protest under the Constitution and even permitted the protesters to go out and protest, why is the same federal government now turning around to arrest and detain the protesters, accusing them of committing terrorism, and treasonable felony? Why detain harmless minors who probably joined the protest for the fun of it?

It is unfortunate that the Tinubu administration has been unlawfully arresting, torturing, and detaining some of the protesters and promoters, contrary to sections 39 and 40 of the 1999 Constitution, which guarantee the right to freedom of expression and assembly. Additionally, the government has been unlawfully freezing the bank accounts of some of the #EndBadGovernance protesters and promoters.

The aforesaid actions of the Tinubu administration are illegal and unconstitutional. The continued detention of these protesters and the freezing of their bank accounts are capable of triggering another round of protests. We have yet to recover from the damaging effects of the last wave of protests, yet the government is not laying the groundwork for peace. Instead of giving peace a chance, the government is persecuting the #EndBadGovernance protesters and promoters.

Why should citizens suffer prolonged incarceration for exercising their fundamental rights and expressing their views about Nigeria? The truth is that young people in this country—those in the age bracket of, say, 18 to 45, who could technically be categorized as the younger generation—are seething with anger, perhaps now more than ever, over the way they are constantly being shortchanged in Nigeria. They are angry about the country’s deteriorating politics, increasing youth unemployment, the failed education system, and, in short, about everything. They are angry that President Tinubu is living in a lap of wasteful expenditure and opulence at the expense of the Nigerian people, who are dying of hunger and human misery.

The paradox is that Nigerian youth constitute a significant percentage of our population, yet they are completely marginalized in the scheme of things.

The worrisome aspect is that while the government has developed a proclivity for arresting and detaining young people on any flimsy excuse, political office holders who have looted the treasury are freely walking the streets untouched. Do we have two criminal justice systems in Nigeria—one for the rich and another for the poor?

The painful aspect is that while there are abundant laws against police brutality and human rights violations in Nigeria, the Nigerian police still go about arresting and detaining suspects and dumping them in prison without bail or trial. As clearly stipulated in our 1999 Constitution, every citizen is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law of competent jurisdiction.

Additionally, any person who is arrested or detained shall be informed in writing within 24 hours, in a language they understand, of the facts and grounds for their arrest or detention. If a person is arrested either for the purpose of being charged in court or upon reasonable suspicion of committing an offense, they must be charged in court within a reasonable time not exceeding 48 hours, failing which they should be granted bail.

Therefore, the Tinubu administration is urged to immediately initiate the processes for the release of the #EndBadGovernance protesters. The government should halt any further clampdown on #EndBadGovernance protesters. Nothing is gained by seeking revenge against these protesters and their supporters. After all, they are our children. Rather than wage war against our youth, the government should, in the coming weeks, order the release of the detained young protesters. It is self-destructive to continue shortchanging the young people, the leaders of tomorrow.

The beauty of democracy, in contrast to the totalitarianism and dictatorship we witnessed during the military regimes in Nigeria, is that citizens are free to express their opinions without any form of intimidation, persecution, or victimization. The rule of law ought to reign supreme over the arbitrary and capricious exercise of power.

Arbitrarily arresting peaceful protesters undermines the rule of law and further erodes public trust in the Tinubu government. Peaceful protest is a fundamental human right enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution. The detention of a suspect in prison without bail or trial is unconstitutional and actionable in law. In a democracy, the government must respect the voices of its citizens. Peaceful protests are a means for people to express their views, grievances, and demands.

Suppressing a peaceful protest by young people undermines democratic principles and can lead to more protest against the government. Nigeria is a signatory to various international treaties and conventions, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which protect the rights to freedom of assembly and expression.

Arresting peaceful protesters flagrantly violates these obligations and can damage Nigeria’s international reputation. When citizens are denied the right to protest, they may resort to other, less peaceful means of expressing their dissatisfaction. This can lead to instability, violence, and disruption of public order, which is detrimental to the nation as a whole.