The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) has called on the Bola Tinubu-led government to discontinue the trial of #EndBadGovernance protesters.
Some Nigerians staged a nationwide protest against bad governance and economic hardship from August 1–10, 2024.
The protest turned violent in some parts of the country, with looting and vandalism recorded in various states.
The office of the Inspector General (IG) of Police, however, arraigned ten peaceful protesters before a Federal High Court in Abuja last week.
The charges filed at the court included felony and treason, contrary to Section 96 and punishable under Section 97 of the Penal Code, even as the protesters were accused of conspiring to destabilise Nigeria, inciting mutiny, and levying war against the state.
CACOL chairman, Debo Adeniran, in a statement, said “From all indications, we at CACOL believe that the arraignment is unnecessary. Those who committed murder, arson or vandalism by destroying properties could be isolated and tried according to the law of the land.
“If government policies did not elicit mass hunger which later translated to mass anger it is not likely that anybody will look the government in the face and call a sitting government a bad government.
“Even those in government cannot say that the policies that caused hunger in town are in sync with what the people would approve. So, if they express their disapproval of such policies, they should not be blamed for it.
“Moreover, it is the responsibility of the government to protect the lives and properties of the people. Since the organisers of the protest gave enough notice before the commencement of the protest, that arson and vandalism were recorded during the protest can be attributed to negligence on the part of the government who ought to have put the necessary security apparati in place to prevent wanton destruction of properties.
“This is why CACOL, as a civil society organisation, is lending its voice to the call on the President to grant the protesters immediate prerogative of mercy knowing that they have genuine reasons to stage the protest.
“The Federal Government must immediately and unconditionally release all those arrested during the protest for exercising their right to peaceful assembly, instead of resorting to putting them through trumped-up charges just to justify unlawfully detaining them and thereby subjecting them to unnecessary psychological torture.
“To the best of our knowledge, peaceful protest is not and should not be linked with any crime against the state, especially ‘treason’’.”
