By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa,SAN
Life is generally a bag of mixed occurrences, with a blend of the good, the bad and the ugly. There is no better way to teach a clowning government a lesson than when its officers embark upon an expedition of embarrassing proportions.
We are well accustomed to the odious practice of arraigning activists and other ‘enemies’ of the government in court for one trumped-up charge or the other but never did we ever imagine a descent of this magnitude as happened with the minors in Abuja on November 1, 2024.
Revolution is a form of conscious agitation for a fundamental change or a radical departure from the status quo.Politically speaking,it is organized to change the existing structure in order to usher in a new one.
In some cases,it may involve the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed. In simple terms, it is to achieve a radical change, mostly in the socioeconomic situation.
There is a prevalent case of notorious neglect of children by the Nigerian government and all its collaborators, such that the number of out-of-school children has doubled over the years. One government after another, including the Renewed Hope ambassadors, have in the past promised to fix the helpless circumstance of all almajiris but nothing substantial has happened thus far.
The situation of Nigeria presently presents a golden opportunity for radical change, to halt the increasing hopelessness that neo-liberal agents and Brenton Wood apostles have imposed upon our people. The #EndBadGovernance protests opened up the flanks to challenge and indeed expose the cluelessness of the present leadership.
So it was that in or around August 1 2024 or sometime thereafter, citizens of Nigeria took to the streets in protest against hunger, bad governance, corruption and economic hardship. Government did its best to scuttle the protests but did not succeed as Nigerians insisted on due exercise of the right and freedom of expression granted to them under the Constitution.
Surely no one supports the resort to violence in the guise of protest in any form whatsoever but it should not be the duty of the government to seek to gag its citizens all the time. The reality of what happened on August 1 2024 is that people are suffering and they should not be expected to keep quiet in the face of biting hunger and famine, which are the consequences of the failing economic policies of the government.
The images from Kano and Kaduna States caught the government unawares as they helped to galvanize the spirit of revolution across the land. The reality must have dawned on the government belatedly though that it was losing grounds. I believe this is part of the reasons why those children were herded together and bundled to Abuja for trial.
But unknown to all of us, they started a revolution, a kind of movement which we must all key into and take to the next level. What were the minors saying? End bad governance, simple. The policies of fuel subsidy removal and floating the national currency have wreaked havoc on our people because they were either not well thought out or wrongly implemented.
Since the August protests, Nigerians have woken up to the reality of what awaits them in this Emilokan era. It will be a period of tax upon taxes without commensurate benefit to the people; mass hunger for many and prosperity for the few privileged ones who are close to power. Energy costs have ballooned uncounted times.
From N187 per litre, petrol is now sold for N1,100 or more. This has in turn affected the cost of transportation and virtually every other aspect of our lives. In justifying the incredible hike in electricity tariff, the government created superficial divisions in the electricity distribution chain and graded the costs according to supply and availability.
Those graded on Band A were assured of a minimum twenty hours supply of electricity daily. That has not happened at all, in fact the national grid has collapsed beyond rescue after the said grading and electricity supply presently is about five hours a day in the Lekki area where I monitored it. When the conditions of a contract are broken, the contract itself becomes void and unenforceable.
In the case of the Discos however,the government has empowered them against the citizens such that even when the Discos are not performing according to their covenant on the grading of the Bands, consumers are still forced to pay for their failure.
Since the government has a monopoly over electricity, supply should be a matter within the exclusive knowledge of the person exercising the monopoly so as to trigger the suspension of tariff hike once there is failure of electricity supply.
To set up the bureaucracy of asking consumers to file complaints is pure exploitation and criminal evasion of responsibility. These were the issues that led to the #EndBadGovernance protests and they are still with us real time. My personal observation is that they have even gone worse than in August when we had the protests.
Since the minors were arraigned, the world has reacted with justifiable outrage at the seeming heartlessness of their captors. To commit treasonable felony is to seek to overthrow the government with arms, it is a deliberate plan to chase out those who are in power through force or violence. This will involve serious planning, huge funds and capacity, which is why the offence of treasonable felony attracts the maximum penalty.
To then turn around to trivialize such sensitive matter by clamping it on minors who have no understanding of its import is a disservice to the nation and indeed the administration of criminal justice. Children are in a special class of their own, given that they are vulnerable and subject to manipulation.
For this cause,special considerations are granted to them by way of waiver for their trial and prosecution, whenever any offence is alleged against them.
First, it was wrong to have dumped them in police custody since August 2024 when they were arrested, constituting a gross violation of their fundamental rights. Second, conscious efforts should have been made by their captors to grant them right of access to legal practitioners, to their relatives and other persons who may render assistance to them in the course of their unlawful incarceration.
The sore point is their contrived arraignment. Interestingly, the proof of evidence filed by the prosecution in this case talks about water pipes, Russian flags and cables. This is nothing but prosecutorial malady. It is little wonder the government has hurriedly released the minors.
Like the Arab springs, it takes only one wrong move by any unpopular government for the people to rise up in mass protests. The case of the Abuja minors is one of them, seeing the state of hunger, poverty and neglect on their faces each time one goes through the viral video. No serious government will expose its citizens in such a form, breaching their innocence and showcasing the mercilessness of the government that is supposed to protect and care for them.
What will a thirteen-year-old boy offer in any plot to overthrow the government? It is wrong to punish even adults for protesting or seeking better governance how much more infants and minors.
It is the same government that promulgated the Child Rights Act, wherein the procedure for the trial of minors is well encapsulated in fine details. Section 1 thereof states that “in every action concerning a child, whether undertaken by an individual, public or private body, institutions or service, court of law, or administrative or legislative authority, the best interest of the child shall be the primary consideration.”
How does unlawful remand for three months without adequate care represent the best interests of children? In section 277, a child is defined as “a person under the age of eighteen years”, meaning that all those hapless souls that were ferried to court on November 1, 2024 by the federal government of Nigeria are regarded as children under the law.
Both in section 34 of the Constitution and section 11 of the Child Rights Act, the child is entitled to freedom from torture and accordingly, “every child is entitled to respect for the dignity of his person, and no child shall be subjected to physical, mental or emotional injury, abuse, neglect or maltreatment, including sexual abuse, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, attacks upon his honour or reputation, held in slavery or servitude, while in the care of a parent, legal guardian or school authority or any other person or authority having the care of the child.”
One then wonders what would drive the government into this desperate frenzy of baring its fangs on minors in order to make the point that it would not breed opposition. But the revolution has now fully commenced and all well-meaning persons who have the good interest of Nigeria at heart should join to rescue this country from the buccaneers and economic rentiers.
The Emilokan regime is a symbol of prebendal dynasty, where all is about the interests of those in power and their cronies. The rights of the minors must be respected, protected and enforced.
The National Human Rights Commission should initiate the process of seeking redress for their unlawful detention and wrongful prosecution and civil society organisations should approach the courts on their behalf to challenge the flagrant violation of their fundamental rights.
The Nigerian Bar Association should move beyond press statements by visiting the minors and thereafter proceed to challenge their arraignment and prosecution and hold those responsible for this miscarriage of justice accountable. That is the best way to partake in the minors’ revolution.
