By John Eche
In the aftermath of the crackdown on protesters in Monday’s anti-government protests in several parts of Nigeria, some relief has set in with a court in Lagos ordering the release of 25 anti-government protesters.
The protesters had been arrested on Monday for staging protests around the state capital, Ikeja to protest the poor economic and security conditions in the country.
There had also been simultaneous protests in Ogun and Osun States and the Federal Capital territory.
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Responding to the incident, President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman, Mr. Femi Adesina had described the protesters, who were chanting ‘#RevolutionNow’ as irritants.
The New Diplomat reports that the protests are coming exactly one year after the 2019 #RevolutionNow protests that had been coordinated by the publisher and political activist, Omoyele Sowore.
Sowore, publisher of the SaharaReporters news medium, was subsequently held in detention for the better part of 100 days until pressure from within and outside Nigeria forced his release. He is presently confined to the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja on bail conditions that some commentators have equally described as most perplexing.
There has been widening concern in Nigeria over worsening economic conditions that have now been compounded by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is in addition to widespread public dissatisfaction over the Buhari administration’s continuing inability to deliver on its strongly stated campaign promises of ending the Boko Haram insurgency and boosting the security situation countrywide. Paradoxically, not only has the insurgency persisted, attacks by marauding bands of assailants on sundry communities, including most notably at the moment, the people of Southern Kaduna in the North Western state of Kaduna, have been most debilitating and worrisome.
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And only recently, the United States reportedly released information to the effect that it had picked up even more worrying signals that the security crisis in the country could even become worse, given what it described as the determination of the Islamist ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb groups that had been expanding the thrust of their attacks in Central and West Africa, to launch new theatres of operations in Africa’s largest economy and most populous state, Nigeria.
