THE executive director of YIAGA Africa and a principal partner at the Election Law Centre, Samson Itodo, has said citizens who participate in civil protests and don’t engage in any form of violence exercise their constitutional right.
Itodo said this in reaction to treasonable charges slammed against some protesters recently by the Nigerian government in an exclusive interview with The ICIR – one of the series to mark Nigeria’s 64th independence tagged Independence Watch.
He explained that the government should understand that protest is one way for citizens to express their grievances.
Itodo added that peaceful protest is an exercise of the right enshrined in Section 40 of the Nigerian Constitution.
According to him, using treasonable charges against peaceful protesters is unacceptable.
“But we must also make a distinction, and I think that there has to be a thorough investigation. If there is evidence that people have violated our law, either by instigating treasonable actions, instigating violence, or just trying to ensure that there is political instability, I think that the state has a responsibility to protect the state. But they must do so within certain parameters of the law.
He said if protesters are arrested and are charged in court, they are entitled to bail.
“They should be given bail, not with certain conditions that you know they cannot meet. I think this tactical way of trying to keep people in detention is unfortunate.”
Speaking on his hope for a brighter future for the nation, Itodo said he was sure things would get better for the nation.
He said although the country might be going through hard times, he was optimistic about the future.
“I have hope, and the reason I have hope is that when there was no reason to trust that votes were going to count, citizens in their large numbers prior to 2023 showed up to register to vote, although most of them didn’t come out to vote,” Itodo said.
Itodo said he was very hopeful that a younger person could lead Nigeria. However, he said he would only vote for a young person with competence, character, and capacity.
Reacting to the just-concluded Edo governorship election, the youth advocate lauded the professionalism of security agencies deployed for the exercise.
“To a large extent, they were professional because the election, despite concerns that it was going to be violent, turned out to be peaceful.
“A lot goes to say about how the security agencies managed the situation. The one concern that has actually come, which we’ve also highlighted, was that we discovered that despite the huge deployment of security agencies, about 45,000, there were still uneven deployments,” he stated.
However, he faulted the security agencies for interfering in the collation of the result.
“We saw, from our observation, that they interfered with the collation process, and we are concerned that the police or security agencies need to explain the reasons behind that interference, especially at the collation centre, whether it was as a result of threat or violence,” he said.
The ICIR reported on Friday, October 4, that two months after the #EndBadGovernance protest, 723 protesters who were arrested in Abuja and those charged to court in Kano were still struggling to meet their bail conditions.
A reporter with the ICIR
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