By Sonnie Ekwowusi
Last Wednesday some hired political thugs, hoodlums and hooligans threatened the Labour party in Lagos to stop conducting a rally tagged: #Obidattti23 Forward Ever Rally” scheduled to hold in Lagos on October 1 2022. Also last Saturday another set of hired thugs, hooligans, hoodlums and policemen were sent to disrupt the peaceful one-million-march movement organized in Ebonyi State by the Labour Party supporters in Ebonyi State. All these travesties of democracy are happening at the threshold of the commencement of political campaigns that would usher in the 2023 elections, and, also around the time that the test polls conducted by Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s NOI Polls Limited and Tedo N. A Peterside Foundation reveal that the Presidential candidate of Labour party Peter Obi towers above the duo of Alhaji Atiku Abubarkar and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Without holding brief for the Labour party or its Presidential candidate Peter Obi, the aforesaid threat, aggression, hooliganism and violence meted out against the Labour in both Lagos and Ebonyi States, is, to say the least, a big set-back for Nigerian democracy. Why should a political party descend to the barbaric low level of threatening another political party to refrain from carrying out their political campaign? Democracy is a learning process but I seriously doubt whether our Nigerian politicians are really and truly learning the lessons of democracy. I had thought that the Nigerian democracy had outgrown the weaponization of threats, intimidations and violence in cowing down political opponents or in disrupting their political activities. It is obvious that I was mistaken. Impelled by an inordinate thirst for power, pomp, property, quick money, some dirty politicians are still using threats, intimidations and violence in their bid to grab political power. Machiavellianism still reigns supreme in our national politics, otherwise why should a political party issue a threat to stop another political party from holding its political rally? If the man with a cheap appetite is so desperate to become the next President of Nigeria he should roll out his manifesto and engage the electorate in a robust political discourse instead of hiring political thugs, hooligans and never-do-wells to threaten the Labour Party to stop its political activities in Lagos.
Labour must not succumb to their threat, violence, aggression and hooliganism. Rather it should simply ignore them and work harder to coast to victory in the 2023 general elections. I have perused the scrap contained in the writ issued against Labour in Lagos State by the hoodlums, and, I would advise the party to ignore the scrap. First, the makers of that scrap are hired young hoodlums and never-do-wells. Besides, the court does not act in vain. No court makes an order that cannot be obeyed. No judge makes a court order to take away the inalienable rights of an innocent citizen or to prevent the citizen from exercising his or her constitutional right to freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of thought, conscience and religion as enshrined in our 1999 Constitution. No judge can make an order contrary to the current Election Act to empower hooligans to continue to indulge in their illegality, hooliganism, and violence in our national politics. Therefore the threat issued against Labour in Lagos is a violation of the Electoral Act. It is illegal and unconstitutional. Ditto for the disruption of the political rally organized by Labour in Ebonyi State. Look, you cannot stop anybody from exercising his or her God-given freedom. You cannot force a voter to vote for you in 2023. I am disappointed with the dirty politicians hiring thugs to intimidate and harass their political opponents. Instead of concentrating on winning the confidence of the electorate to vote for them in 2023 despite their monumental failure in the last seven and half years they are busy issuing threats and unleashing violence against Labour because they are afraid that Labour might win the Presidential election next year.
As I earlier said, I am not a member of the Labour party neither am I a card-carrying member of any political party for that matter. But I must call evil by its name. I cannot say that evil is good. The violence unleashed on Labour in Lagos and Ebonyi States is illegal and antithetical to the tenets of democracy and by extension human civilization. Note that this is not the first time political thugs have been hired to issue threats and unleashed violence against perceived political opponents in Lagos State. I remember that during the last general elections in Lagos State hired political thugs were seen gallivanting about intimidating potential voters to refrain from voting for candidates of their choice or else they would be driven out of Lagos. One man even went to the ridiculous extent of threatening to throw some people into the Lagos Lagoon. Apart from threat and intimidation, they have formed the habit of sending their political things to remove, or yank off or destroy the hoisted campaign banners or billboards of other political parties. There is one thing I cannot still fathom: the gullibility of the governed. Aside from the leadership crisis, the next crisis undoing Nigeria is the followership crisis. When will Lagosians and the people of the South-West understand that the politician with a cheap appetite is merely exploiting them for his own benefit?. When will they understand that the man does not put food for them on their respective tables? At times I wonder whether this man has cast a kind of spell on the people which blinds them to follow him. What does it profit a man or woman to vote for the politician with a cheap appetite only for him or her to thereafter continue walking the streets battered and hungry?.
This is sad. I tell friends that violence has never been used to solve the problems of mankind. If violence is useful in the settlement of human disputes Russia would have won the Russia-Ukraine war a long time ago. Violence begets violence in the same way injustice begets injustice. Violence is a recipe for anarchy. Ours is a multi-party and multi-religious system. Therefore it makes no sense for one political party to choose to become a nuisance to other political parties or disrupt their political activities. Life is live and let live. No man is a single verse. Nobody can live alone in this passing world. Man is a social animal. We are members of the same human family. We need one another in our socialization and even political processes even though our tribe, tongue and religion may differ. By using threats and violence to disrupt the political activities of Labour the politicians sponsoring these hooligans are conveying the impression that they are incapable of winning an election except through violence, rigging, gerrymandering and election manipulation.
The current Electoral Act punishes electoral threat and electoral violence. For instance, sections 116 and 128 of the Act stipulate that anybody or group persons disrupting a political meeting or gathering or anybody directly or indirectly, by his or herself or by another person on his or her behalf, makes use of or threatens to make use of any force, violence against any political candidates or political party commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine or imprisonment or both. Therefore Labour is advised to lodge a petition with the law enforcement agents to arrest the Lagos hoodlums and their sponsors threatening to stop the rally of the Labour Party on October 1 2022. The party is also advised to petition the law enforcement agents to arrest the hooligans who disrupted the Labour activity in Ebonyi State last Saturday. Certainly the arrest and prosecution of these hoodlums and their sponsors would serve as a deterrent to other hoodlums and party stalwarts planning to commit the same crime.
Legitimate competition to win power is not synonymous with deployment of thugs to intimidate and harass political opponents. If political competitiveness is allowed to degenerate into violence the negative fallout of it might spell doom for our country. This is why the Federal government must warn all political parties to desist from wielding violence against their political opponents. INEC, federal government and the police must ensure that the Lagos hooligans and thugs do not make good their threat against Labour. Nobody has the monopoly of violence. If the Lagos hooligans proceed to disrupt Labour rally on October 1 2022 and Labour tries to repel the attack in self-defence, a breakdown in public peace might occur resulting in the killing and injury of many people. This is why the law enforcement agents must intervene now to arrest the hired Lagos hooligans and thugs threatening to stop the Labour rally on October 1 2022.
As fragmented and pluralistic as our political culture is it justifies our faith in a common creed-belief in human freedom even though some politicians have shown an inclination to think otherwise despite what freedom means for modern society. We still hold this truth bequeathed to us by our nationalists and freedom fighters: freedom is our greatest achievement, and our greatest bequest to posterity. Therefore all hands must be on deck to denounce hooliganism and violence that violate freedom in our national politics. In his book, Spirit of Liberty, Learned Hand, writes, inter alia, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women: when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.
