Tag: Pro-Buhari

IN the build-up to the February 6 ‘One Voice’ protest organised and recanted by popular musician, Innocent Idibia, aka Tuface, the police and the Department of State Service (DSS) in the two target cities of Lagos and Abuja were anxious to deflate the exercise. The law enforcement agency and the secret service profusely quoted what they believed to be the law and the constitution guiding public protests in their attempts to foil the marches. Legal experts did not think the authorities were right, but both the police and the DSS were naturally not disinclined to forswearing their habitual antidemocratic pastime. Apart from indulging in the occasional vacillation characteristic of imperious government agencies, the two security agencies appeared to put pressure on Mr Idibia until he caved in and dissociated himself from the protest.
Explaining his climb-down a day before the protest was supposed to take off, Mr Idibia had whined: “…In line with the commitment of ‘One Voice’ Nigeria to ensure a peaceful and impactful protest, the 2face Foundation and partners engaged with the security agencies to resolve all major security concerns, but treacherous gaps remain that we are unwilling to ignore. The risk of hijack by various political and sundry interests’ intent on using the platform to drive agendas that we as the 2Face Foundation are not aligned with and therefore exposing protesters to high levels of danger is the main reason 2baba regretfully had to withdraw himself from the march. He has refused to inadvertently present a platform for mischief makers to exploit. 2baba would like to express his great regret over these circumstances to everyone who feels disappointed. However, he hopes they will agree that as he said in the video announcing the development; ‘no protest is worth the blood of any Nigerian.”
It was clear the security agencies had won the psychological warfare. For not only did Mr Idibia inadvertently take the shine off the ‘One Voice’ protest, declining to lend it his enormous goodwill, he also deprived what was shaping up to be a movement his contagious influence as a popular musician and youth mobiliser. The protest nevertheless held in both Abuja and Lagos, but it was a shadow of what was anticipated. The police surprisingly behaved professionally towards the marchers, but the expected crowd thought capable of giving the marches some respectability and resonance simply did not materialise. Indeed, the valiant and honest attempt by civil rights lawyers and other legal experts to draw attention to the constitutionality of protests failed to prevent the thinning of the crowds in both cities.
Almost immediately after the ‘One Voice’ protest was conceived, pro-Buhari groups served notice of their own counteraction, one at a future date to enable proper planning, and the other simultaneously with the ‘One Voice’ marches. The country waited to see what the approach of the security agencies to the pro-Buhari protesters would be, considering how intolerant and remorseless they were against what they regarded as the anti-Buhari protests. But either because they seemed persuaded that a structural and attitudinal shift had occurred in the way Nigerians organised protests or they simply and shamelessly demonstrated bias, the security agencies refused to oppose the pro-Buhari protests and would not even object in writing or verbally to the counteracting marches of February 14 citing their famous ‘laws’. The pro-government protests, which were not any better than the ones they tried to counteract, were addressed by the embattled Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, and one of President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesmen, Garba Shehu.
It of course does not matter whether any of the protests inspired by Mr Idibia or the pro-government people were justified or not. What was in dispute was the constitutionality of the protests, a point so gravely missed by the pro-government rallies, the security agencies, and the aides of the president who addressed the pro-government rally. It is shocking, for instance, to hear Mallam Shehu, himself a senior media professional and somewhat a past activist, declaim against the anti-Buhari marches while apologising to the pro-government protesters about the minor resistance they encountered at the gates of the presidential palace. Hear him: “There was a communication gap at the Aso Villa gate because the police there did not know who was coming and I hope we will learn from this. You people put this government in place and you want to show support for what the government is doing; nobody has a problem with this. So, we welcome your demonstration, we welcome your support because this is what will keep the government strong.”
If Mallam Shehu’s emotive statement was revealing and depressing enough, Mr Lawal’s Freudian slip and sycophantic gesture about President Buhari winning a second term even before the president could gather enough stamina to indicate interest in re-election revealed the sorry pass leadership and administration had come to in Nigeria. Nigeria, poor Nigeria, will have more of such ingratiating misspeaks in the months and years ahead, even as the security agencies continue to demonstrate both their imperviousness to the constitution and their unthinking and unbridled loyalty to the occupants of high office rather than the laws of the land.