By Henry Uche
Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, on a monitored interview on Channels TV, spoke on the ongoing nationwide protest over hardship, among other issues.
Your assessment of the nationwide protests
From reports across the country, while the protest was going on, incidents of violence were recorded. For me, I think we should begin to draw the necessary lessons from what happened today. First, it’s the need for the government across levels and all authorities to learn to move speedily to douse tension in the country, to learn to engage people as I did suggest a couple of weeks ago. The government must engage the young people who are aggrieved. Some of us said we don’t know the sponsors of the protesters, but the State Security Services said they know them. The government would have engaged them immediately. To me, it’s more urgent than before, to begin that constructive engagement in the interest of the country. In the entire country today, I think it’s only in Rivers State where the governor came out to address the crowd. And for the young people, you could see it on television. They felt substantiality fulfilled, at least somebody was listening to them and somebody was assuring them that their complaints would be attended to and that should happen all over the place. And then we must also learn to stop mobilizing people to disrupt rallies. We must stop mobilizing traditional institutions or traditional rulers and some emergency organizations, to say, oh, we are pulling out of the protest. They do not plan the protests with anybody. So, the government must now begin to identify those who are genuinely aggrieved and then begin to ask, what are your complaints, so that people will have a feeling, a sense of belonging; that is key. Secondly, the security forces in our country must also, from this experience, learn to engage those who have given you notice of protests, because what the law now requires, what the law is saying, what the laws have stipulated is that, once you notified the police that you want to have a rally, a public meeting or a procession, the police shall make arrangements to provide adequate security. And that is not enough, because from what I saw on the television this afternoon, I began to ask myself, do we have enough tear gas? I didn’t see any water cannon anywhere. Because when you are managing a crowd in any modern society, there must be the possibility that a peaceful protest could turn violent even in the most advanced democratic countries; what do you do? You have to fire tear gas, water cannon so that you can demobilized those who are violent but where we do not have enough tear gas and water cannon at all, you have problems.
So, for me, the government must go back to the drawing table and learn some lessons and see how we can prevent occurrence of violence because in this country, we have been doing protest since the colonial regime. You talk of Aba woman protests in 1929 when the British colonial regime killed 55 women, unarmed women. In 1949, Hema Valley workers were on strike for better conditions of service, the British colonial regime killed 21 of them, and we can’t continue like that under a democratic government. That is why the government and security forces must discard that colonial orientation, we must see our people, as our people and engage them and ensure that the government goes out to douse tension all the time.
Legality of court’s ruling to protest within a confined place
Again, I think the government should have learnt not to rush to court on the eve of a strike action by workers or on the eve of a protest by young people. I think it was in 2006, the NLC was to go on strike and at the dead of the night, an order was issued by a Lagos High Court, which the den president of Nigeria labour Congress, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, referred to as a black market injunction because the difficulty was such that they were never served on those meant to restrain. For instance, the order in Lagos wasn’t served on anybody, the order in Ogun State was not served to anybody, the order in Abuja, I think one of the defenders I think was said to be an unknown person. How do you serve a Court order to an unknown person? But gladly to be honest with you, I think with respect to Abuja and Lagos and Ogun, there was substantial compliance. Many of the protesters did come out to criticize the restriction. And when my views were sought, I did say yes. Whereas section 83(4) of the police Act provides for procession, rallies and public meetings and protests, if the policing say , sorry, or the state says, we are unable to mobilize enough security forces to man processions all over the country, as you may have to understand that, if they now say you are restricted in Lagos, likely today, from my information, people came as far from about 30, 40 kilometers away to participate in the protest in Ojota. And again, that was the venue that was being used for protests before the government sealed it off. Ditto for Abuja, protesters were using an enclosure -the Unity Fountain, a stone’s throw from Transcorp Hilton hotel. The government in Abuja, the FCT administration sealed it off, so people then went to the street. If the government is now coming back to say in every state capital, we want to designate a venue, a protest ground as done in many countries in the world, it is a lesson to learn from that. You don’t rush to court when you have at least two weeks notice of an impending protest. Don’t rush to court on the eve of that protest because even if the court grants you the order, it’s not going to be served on the people practically. And that is why as I said, we must draw some lessons from this process. There is need to be very cautious, so that court orders are not rendered irrelevant to situations in our country. Because if an order of court is not obeyed, you are ridiculing the Court. And we shouldn’t allow that.
The consequences then?
You see, this business of law sometimes where you are talking politics, there are complications. For instance, yes, if anybody is arrested in Eagles Square or outside the National Stadium, protesting in Abuja, you will need to take the person to court for contempt to initiate the contempt proceedings. You must show, demonstrate that the order was served on the person, but if the person says I’m not aware of your order, it is going to be difficult. What is important because I did investigate, why did anybody go to Eagle square even when the court has restricted to the National Stadium! Unfortunately, my finding is not very good. I mean, it’s doesn’t speak well of the authority. Because there was going to be major violent clash in the stadium whereby a counter protests were also organized. A group that wore a vest, “no to protest in their mass, and so these are the guys who have been restricted to the stadium; they simply withdrew and attempted to use the Eagle Square and from my report again, there would have been a clash between the two groups. Apart from throwing of tear gas, there would have been a serious clash because I understand some senior military officers were around, appealed to the police, to ensure that peace was maintained, and that was why we didn’t have any terrible incidents in Abuja today. So that is what I mean by saying organisers of protests and the police must be in touch during the protests. And that was why the Inspector General of Police was asking for details, who are the leaders of the protests in each of the state, so that we can link up with them if there is going to be any disturbance, a situation and again, as I said, we’re learning. Where we’re coming from is that, public protests were declared illegal in the country, and those who brought that law to Nigeria, as was said in the case of MPP and IGP in Ghana, the same law on protests, restricting protests in our country, never apply such laws in their country, that is- United Kingdom. So now that we are free, we must now allow people to express themselves. If you are not able to use the newspapers or the television, you can go to the street, either for or against the government. And when that is going to be done, to make it peaceful,. the security must be involved. So, this is the position of the law today. But if you then go to court, you want to restrict me, you must give me notice, you must serve notice, so that we can also tell all the would -be participants in the protest, we are now being restricted, this is the basis of the restriction.
Some people have begged to cut short the protests. In your view, has the objective of the protests been communicated to the quarters that should hear them?
My position is that even if the protests hadn’t occurred today, there’ll be no movement today. The organizers would have drawn attention of the government and the people of Nigeria to our protests, because the government popularized the protest with reaction. The government summoned many meetings in Abuja, the government came out almost belatedly, to reel out the list of achievements of the Federal Government and at the same time, some officials of the government embarked on a campaign of calumny against certain people who they thought were responsible for the protests. But now that the protests took place as I said, I didn’t plan the protests. We didn’t plan a protest. We only advise, what is important is to engage the organizers of the protest. We were involved as lawyers; usually when people are going to protest, they’ve said what in case we are arrested, who would like your services? We met the IG, we did make our point. I’m not a member of the take back movement. But since we’re invited to this meeting, we need to give advice on the state of the law or when we had the Nigerian Labour Congress and the TUC had protests in the past, and how it was managed. So that is our duty. Now, it is the organisers of the protests that the government will have to persuade to cut off. And it has happened some time ago, the NLC had said we’re going to have an indefinite Protest. After a day, the government reaches out to them. They said okay, we are postponing the protests to see how the government will react in the next two or three months. And we must use the same formula here. Oh, you have made your points. The young people would say, what point that we made. But we can say at least, this is already clearly a wake up call for the government across board. All governments including the state and local government must now be seen to be involved in promoting public accountability in our country. The legislators in Abuja that had a special session almost on the eve of the protests should now go beyond expressing concerns and telling the protesters, we heard you loud and clear. You must now begin, I think, now that they have been asked to go to their constituencies, during this recess, the legislators must meet members of their constituency to discuss their constituency projects. Where those projects are going to be located, the contractor that will handle the projects, because we understand not less than N500 million has gone to every constituency because by September or there about, another budget would be presented. On the part of the state governments, it’s not enough to be asking for palliatives from Abuja. The state governments must also move out to also address problems of increasing poverty in the country. For instance, and here’s why young people and all of us particularly the elite, must take more than a personal interest in the affairs of our country. Because just last week, the FEC approved about N1.3trillion to the three tiers of government, that is the highest and the last one.
In addition to that, according to the Federal Government, N438 billion naira was given to the states as part of the loan taken during the COVID 19 pandemic. So, the money now is called and being used to address poverty in the country. So, we must also ask and engage our governors, this money that has come from Abuja, in addition to your statutory allocation for July, what are the projects? Who are the people to be assisted from this huge fun? So, unless we have a comprehensive review of the affairs of the government, the budget of the government, not just the budget of the federal government, the budget of the state government, and of local governments must ensure budget implementation is taken serious.
Are the objectives of the protest being achieved?
For the young people, they have some demands. The government will have to address them. And that is why I’ve suggested as a matter of urgency and engagement with the leaders of the protest movement. There are other groups whose leaders are known to the government, and this is a time now to quickly summon a meeting of those leaders. It is not like #ENDSARS that was a leaderless revolution. This one, the leaders are known, they have been issuing statements and the government has been responding to the statements. If the organizer feels that the issues raised by them have not been addressed, then we may not be addressing the problem, so that we don’t deceive ourselves.
Who should the Nigerian people hold accountable for loss of life and property?
Unfortunately, violence occurred in some parts of the country. And of course, I wish to express my condolences to the families of those who were killed. In matters like this, what will happen is for the state involved to investigate the remote and immediate causes of violence that has occurred and that happened during the #ENDSAR. Unfortunately, majority of the state governments did not release the reports of the Judicial Commission of inquiry, set out during the #EndSAR. If those reports have been released that white papers have been issued, recommendations have been implemented. There wouldn’t have been any kind of outline this time around and that is why we must learn.