Outspoken Northern leader and a former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf has said that arraignment of minors who participated in the Endbadgovernance protest for treason has affected Nigeria’s international standing. He called for the payment of compensation to the victims and their families for the pain and sufferings they went through.
In this interview with VINCENT KALU, the professor of Haematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation noted that President Bola Tinubu has inflicted an unbearable hardship on the citizens of the country. He also highlighted why the return to regional government will not work.
What was your reaction when you saw the video clip of malnourished minors arraigned in court for treasonable felony?
I did not see the clips until they were sent to me by two unknown journalists from far away Chicago in the USA and Brisbane, Australia. They wanted to know if there was another mass school abduction in Nigeria and if these were children rescued from bandits. Of course I told them that what they saw was the handiwork of our government’s attempt to stifle any dissent by terrorising the most vulnerable group in the society, our children. It was heart wrenching watching these obviously sick and malnourished children in court, some too sick to stand.
Over 2,000 protesters including women and children were arrested during the EndBadGovernance protests on August 1-10 which happened mostly in the northern states of the country. These protesters’ crime was that they were exercising their constitutionally protected right of protest and free assembly. They were held incommunicado, blind folded, starved, tortured and transported in Black Maria to Abuja from Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Gombe and Plateau states.
They were held together including the children less than 18 years in inhuman police cells for over 90 days before being arraigned before a federal high court judge in Abuja. On the day of arraignment in court, they clearly looked malnourished, weak and sick with some unable to stand and collapsing on the floor of the courtroom. These children needed to be treated in a paediatric emergency unit not a federal high court. They were charged with adult offenses like treasonable felonies for waving Russian flags, inciting mutiny and calling for the military to take over the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
These trumped up charges brought against minors was a clear sign of a government that is jumpy, afraid of its citizens and insecure of itself because of the hardships it has imposed on the citizenry. The treatment meted out to these minors was a cruel and shameful act perpetrated by the federal government with full complicity of the Nigerian police and the judiciary.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP) under whose watch this shameful act happened must bear full responsibility. He was credited with saying that the children that collapsed in the courtroom were acting out a script rehearsed with their lawyers. This statement, coming from him, was unbecoming and insensitive. We call for a full investigation of the role of the IGP and all those involved under his watch.
The law is a noble profession and all in the judiciary swore to uphold the law and dispense justice to all citizens. I must commend the professionalism and dogged determination of the lawyers of these victims for their pro bono compassionate services. Without their insistence on having these victims arraigned after illegal detention for over three months, the world would not have known about them and they would have died or left to languish in detention forever.
Conversely, I strongly condemn the lack of common sense and compassion of the prosecuting lawyers and the presiding judge. I call on the Nigerian Judicial Council to sanction them for their unprofessional conduct that brought the Nigerian judiciary to disrepute in the eyes of the world.
President Tinubu’s government finally succumbed to citizens’ pressure by dismissing all charges and releasing these victims. As a face saving measure, they were treated to a reception at the Villa where they were received by the vice president who handed them over to their respective governors.
We call for a thorough investigation of this sad and shameful act, payment of full compensation to the victims and their families for the pain and sufferings this cruel illegality caused them. Our hope is that both state and federal governments have learnt the lessons that power belongs to the people and that protests and the rights of assembly are constitutionally protected rights of citizens and that the voice of the people cannot be silenced. Most importantly, hunger, hardships and bad governance which were the original reasons for the protests, must be addressed for peace to reign in this country.
Check this story on Part 2
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