Deploying soldiers in Lagos shows Jonathan is pretending to be a democrat.
Bamidele Aturu, a lawyer and human rights activist, led a group of protesters that were stopped by soldiers on the streets of Lagos on Monday.
How would you describe your experience with soldiers on the streets of Lagos on Monday?
It was very shocking to me that the civilian administration of Goodluck Jonathan could resort to such (an) unheard of massive deployment of soldiers on the streets of Nigeria to quell protests that were extremely orderly, extremely peaceful.
It showed to me clearly that it would amount to living in a fool’s paradise for anyone to assume that we have democracy here in Nigeria.
As a matter of fact, from what I saw on January 16, 2012, it became clear to me that we have not even started to attempt to build a liberal democracy in Nigeria.
In other words, people are making pretences here and there that we have liberal democracy in place when in fact we have autocrats, people of authoritarian disposition occupying public spaces under a supposedly democratic society.
So, it was clear to me that we don’t have a democracy and there is in essence a descent to barbarism, using force to resolve issues that ordinarily ought to be resolved by superior arguments.
When the government resorts to using force, the army, to force its ideas on the people, it is clear that that government has lost ideas about governance and how to move the country forward.
But for the maturity of members of the Joint Action Forum, no fewer than 50 people would have been killed yesterday (Monday) because when we started the protest from the Labour House in Yaba, we moved straight to Ikorodu Road, and our people conducted themselves in a very peaceful manner, even with the presence of soldiers and policemen on the way.
So, there was no incident until when we got to that point when this group of soldiers waylaid us in a Gestapo-like manner. In fairness to the soldiers led by a lieutenant, he said to us, ‘Look gentlemen, I wouldn’t stop you but I got an order from above that we must not allow you to cross this line and if you did, we should shoot.
And please, I don’t want to shoot, tell your men to go back because if I don’t shoot, they will bring another troop to shoot you from behind and then I might be court-martialled.’
So, when he said this, we consulted and we thought the best thing to do was to move our men back; after all, we had made our point that we could not be intimidated as Nigerian citizens and nobody could stop us.
Probably the government decided to deal with some elements who it claimed hijacked the protests from labour.
It smirks of authoritarianism for the government to say a peaceful protest has been hijacked by other interests.
Those people described as other elements, are they not Nigerian citizens? Don’t they have the right to show their grievances? It’s unfortunate for a government to use unprintable words like miscreants, hoodlums, never-do-wells to describe citizens of Nigeria, who have been rendered unemployed or unemployable as a result of government’s incompetence, fraud and corruption.
It’s indeed very bad to say those people hijacked the protest. It’s not true that the protests organised by labour were hijacked because if you go back and read the papers, you will find out that there was no single instance of anybody taking the law into their own hands.
People conducted themselves very orderly; even the police conducted themselves professionally.
If protesters were peaceful, the police were professional, so why would you deploy soldiers if your aim was not to intimidate Nigerian citizens? This is the same President who claimed to have had a pan-Nigeria mandate only last April, now using the military in a democracy to stop people from expressing their grievances in clear violation of the constitutional provision that guarantees the rights of people to express themselves. So, the same President now cannot expect the people to feel that he is a democrat; that is why I said we don’t have democracy in Nigeria.
People must brace for struggle to democratise our society because never again must we have a commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces deploy troops to resolve a civil dispute, a dispute that was not about power but about governance, policy making; a dispute that could have been sorted out through explanation, through the engagement of civil society groups, labour and all other critical segments of the society.
That tells you that this government does not have the temperament of democrats. This government believes that the only way it can get its policies enforced in Nigeria is through the use of force, then essentially, there is no difference between this government and military despotism. And that is why I said that it is really ironical that even under a military government, we didn’t get soldiers deployed on the streets. Now, we’re having a civilian who had never been a soldier like Obasanjo or who had no military training but who because he wants to implement the agenda of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, an agenda that cannot be implemented even in those societies, had to resort to using force.
Bamidele Aturu, a lawyer and human rights activist, led a group of protesters that were stopped by soldiers on the streets of Lagos on Monday.
How would you describe your experience with soldiers on the streets of Lagos on Monday?
It was very shocking to me that the civilian administration of Goodluck Jonathan could resort to such (an) unheard of massive deployment of soldiers on the streets of Nigeria to quell protests that were extremely orderly, extremely peaceful.
It showed to me clearly that it would amount to living in a fool’s paradise for anyone to assume that we have democracy here in Nigeria.
As a matter of fact, from what I saw on January 16, 2012, it became clear to me that we have not even started to attempt to build a liberal democracy in Nigeria.
In other words, people are making pretences here and there that we have liberal democracy in place when in fact we have autocrats, people of authoritarian disposition occupying public spaces under a supposedly democratic society.
So, it was clear to me that we don’t have a democracy and there is in essence a descent to barbarism, using force to resolve issues that ordinarily ought to be resolved by superior arguments.
When the government resorts to using force, the army, to force its ideas on the people, it is clear that that government has lost ideas about governance and how to move the country forward.
But for the maturity of members of the Joint Action Forum, no fewer than 50 people would have been killed yesterday (Monday) because when we started the protest from the Labour House in Yaba, we moved straight to Ikorodu Road, and our people conducted themselves in a very peaceful manner, even with the presence of soldiers and policemen on the way.
So, there was no incident until when we got to that point when this group of soldiers waylaid us in a Gestapo-like manner. In fairness to the soldiers led by a lieutenant, he said to us, ‘Look gentlemen, I wouldn’t stop you but I got an order from above that we must not allow you to cross this line and if you did, we should shoot.
And please, I don’t want to shoot, tell your men to go back because if I don’t shoot, they will bring another troop to shoot you from behind and then I might be court-martialled.’
So, when he said this, we consulted and we thought the best thing to do was to move our men back; after all, we had made our point that we could not be intimidated as Nigerian citizens and nobody could stop us.
Probably the government decided to deal with some elements who it claimed hijacked the protests from labour.
It smirks of authoritarianism for the government to say a peaceful protest has been hijacked by other interests.
Those people described as other elements, are they not Nigerian citizens? Don’t they have the right to show their grievances? It’s unfortunate for a government to use unprintable words like miscreants, hoodlums, never-do-wells to describe citizens of Nigeria, who have been rendered unemployed or unemployable as a result of government’s incompetence, fraud and corruption.
It’s indeed very bad to say those people hijacked the protest. It’s not true that the protests organised by labour were hijacked because if you go back and read the papers, you will find out that there was no single instance of anybody taking the law into their own hands.
People conducted themselves very orderly; even the police conducted themselves professionally.
If protesters were peaceful, the police were professional, so why would you deploy soldiers if your aim was not to intimidate Nigerian citizens? This is the same President who claimed to have had a pan-Nigeria mandate only last April, now using the military in a democracy to stop people from expressing their grievances in clear violation of the constitutional provision that guarantees the rights of people to express themselves. So, the same President now cannot expect the people to feel that he is a democrat; that is why I said we don’t have democracy in Nigeria.
People must brace for struggle to democratise our society because never again must we have a commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces deploy troops to resolve a civil dispute, a dispute that was not about power but about governance, policy making; a dispute that could have been sorted out through explanation, through the engagement of civil society groups, labour and all other critical segments of the society.
That tells you that this government does not have the temperament of democrats. This government believes that the only way it can get its policies enforced in Nigeria is through the use of force, then essentially, there is no difference between this government and military despotism. And that is why I said that it is really ironical that even under a military government, we didn’t get soldiers deployed on the streets. Now, we’re having a civilian who had never been a soldier like Obasanjo or who had no military training but who because he wants to implement the agenda of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, an agenda that cannot be implemented even in those societies, had to resort to using force.
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