The APC not knowing how to respond to the international embarrassment of criminalizing protests and the persecution of minors as we all saw yesterday, has now mobilized its e-rats to start a North versus South propaganda in order to distract Nigerians, as if its strategy of weaponizing poverty and criminalizing protests, is region-sensitive.
Let their handlers know that these tactics are now trite and won’t work on civilized people anymore. The APC should just accept its failures and start packing because this signals the beginning of end of the Tinubu regime.
To deflate their North versus South weak propaganda, I will share my experience with dealing with these criminals in power. In 2017 when I was remanded unjustly in Kirikiri prisons as an activist, I met scores of children aged 12,13, 14 and 15 who were “awaiting trial” for different offences. It was shocking to find them in a medium security prison, forced to commune with hardened criminals; all of us packed in overcrowded cells. On the evening I and my Comrades were dumped at Kirikiri, the figure on the data board was above 3000. It was changed to about 1,000 just to signal to the judicial officers who visited the next day on a special occasion that there is still space for more “customers”. Yes. Every inmate is a customer. Customer to the warders, superior inmates and more unfortunately, customers to the government.
What was more bizzare than the sight of minors in Kirikiri was the charge against some of them that I later got released by paying their fines. It will shock you that they were charged for “not having a means of livelihood”. Many of the children and hawkers who were picked by Lagos State Task Force were dumped in prisons. To make the matter worse, they were told to pay a fine of 60,000 Naira then.
Children who did not have a “means of livelihood” were told to pay that whooping sum so they can be released from prison for not having a means of livelihood. People without means must find the means to cought out 60,000 to the government for their own freedom. Define kidnapping again.
It’s difficult to explain Nigeria even with a Harvard degree.
After we were released, we got seven children released and then started serious activism work in that regard.
Barely two weeks after an interview I granted went viral, the Chief Judge of Lagos State released 209 child inmates across different prisons in Lagos.
Now, consider these.
Kirikiri is not in Maiduguri. It’s in Lagos, the “shining light” of the Southwest, the acclaimed commercial capital of Nigeria. In this same Lagos, slum dwellers are arrested daily, beaten and many even killed as in the case of Otodo-Gbame demolitions, and recently Oworonshoki demolition. Who goes to those places to ask where these poor people are from before attacking them? North or South?
The earlier we conclude that the Tinubu regime has sworn to terrorize the poor and delegitimize their cry for justice during protests, the better for all of us. Tinubu has even taken its tyranny further by criminalizing minors for daring to protest against his corruption and malfeasance.
As of today, we can’t say for a fact that the number of children brought and displayed at the Federal High Court in Abuja is the exact number of children that was arrested and ferried from Kaduna to Abuja for torture. With the sad look on all of them, it won’t be wrong to predict that some would have died in the custody of the Police. The Inspector General has a lot of questions to answer.
The Attorney General who has suddenly woken up himself, is so unserious. Magistrates who have the statutory duty to visit police stations, at least once a month, to check who and who needs urgent attention in the cell abandoned their duties, so that for 93 days, no one with either executive or judicial powers could come to the rescue of these children. Let’s pretend for a second that they are the sufferers.
This horrendous act happened in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory where every power broker lives. One can only imagine the state of things in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Calabar and places far from the seat of power.
So after the outcry, what’s next? Do we wait for another “collapse event” before pretending to care? Must we wait for drama before we raise our voices on issues.
Today, no one is asking Tokunbo Wahab of Lagos where he is dumping all the “miscreants” he’s been arresting in Lagos or what are the charges against them?
Has anyone asked Wike where he took all the beggars he’s arresting to? Or are we waiting for the day they will also collapse in Court?
Who will speak for students who are dropping out of school because of maddening increment in fees? Or we need to wait for one drama around this too? Should we wait till they become highway robbers, so that we can pretend to be enraged when they tell their stories when caught? Let’s start getting serious as a people. We’ve tolerated nonsense for too long.
And to the miserable APC data boys, stop your propaganda immediately. It’s the height of shamelessness.
The beggars Wike declared war on are from where? North or South? You better get serious or get lost when serious issues are discussed.
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