Underage treason detainees: Beyond the public outrage
It was not a mild gale of outrage that greeted the sight of under-aged Nigerian youth when they were arraigned in court after being in police custody for as many as three months, apparently without trial. The gale of public outrage was spawned by several factors which included their disheveled appearance in court as they […]
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It was not a mild gale of outrage that greeted the sight of under-aged Nigerian youth when they were arraigned in court after being in police custody for as many as three months, apparently without trial. The gale of public outrage was spawned by several factors which included their disheveled appearance in court as they were visibly famished, with some of them collapsing on the court floor out of fatigue. Another factor was that they were arrested and charged to court for engaging in acts of treason, as some were reportedly in possession of foreign nation’s flags, during the nationwide #EndBadGovernment protests, which took place in August this year. Then was the angle of their youthful ages with some of them reportedly as young as 14 years.
Following the outflow of public outrage over the oddity, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had since directed among various reliefs, the release of the under-aged detainees among them as well as the investigation of the circumstances surrounding the messy situation which must have attracted opprobrium for the nation and his administration. Just as well the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs had reportedly also waded into the situation, with a promise to address their plight in its own way.
The president’s intervention should mean that not only is the last word on the matter yet to be heard, but that the Nigeria Police Force will expectedly, expedite action on the matter with a sense of urgency that is in tandem with the public outcry over it. Yet as far as most Nigerians are concerned, this matter is as good as dead, while the agony and privations suffered by the children may remain as their personal losses. This is just as all who died in the protest may also for now be considered as good as unsung heroes.
However even as the president’s quick response has attracted encomiums to him from some Nigerians, it is also the hope of Nigerians that he is coming to terms with the real essence of how far the Nigerian system can drop in executing overkills with routine situations of law enforcement. Otherwise how come 14-year-old children are arraigned for treason? This is just as he also needs to appreciate the reality that these are simply the representative victims of the faces of the pains the country is undergoing with his reforms. Beyond the pangs of privations they endure, they are also being penalised for crying like most other Nigerians even if not behind bars.
From an ordinary perspective the police have statutory powers to effect the arrest of any person – young or old who contravenes the law of the land. On that ground the arrest of these youth should not be a big issue, if they were arrested on the grounds of criminal conduct. The caveat here is the imputation of treason in their circumstance. In the public take on their situation, can they really be considered as capable of acts of treason, without the connivance of some other better disposed actors? The focus then should have been on their better disposed co-travellers in the course of crime.
In another vein, historically, the crime of treason which is the act or intent of overthrowing a sitting government, remains a most sensitive matter in this country. Virtually every government including the current Bola Tinubu administration seems to fall into the mould of nursing a tinge of insecurity whenever any vigorous challenge to its policy decisions occurs. For instance, Nigerians were witnesses to the escalated level of panic which the Tinubu administration fell into during the last EndBadGovernment# protests. The government had dramatised its fears including calling a meeting of the nation’s Council of State to deliberate on the matter, whereas all that the protest organisers were asking for was simple dialogue with the administration. Instead of the dialogue, the administration responded with an iron-fist, while muzzling all dissenting voices.
In the circumstance, while the youth under consideration may seem subdued in their incarceration, they still represent in their silence the reality of the country’s vehemence to the style of the Tinubu administration. Stripped to its bare essence the entire drama of protests against bad governance which started with significant media blitz and fanfare may have come and gone. But left in the lurch are these youth along with others so detained and yet others who died in the process as cannon fodder as they were dispensable as sacrificial lambs for the exercise. In their apparently prostrate condition, these youth may also not be seen by the establishment as significant, even as they constitute the real heroes of the struggle to rid the country of bad governance.
With the protest in which they were caught up on the wrong side of the law now technically abated, the government should not rest on its oars but brace up to reconcile with what they actually represent – the unfinished struggle by Nigerians for a better country. They actually qualify as representing various generations of Nigerian children who were failed by their nation. The wider implication of that scenario is that the struggle continues with a re-launch of protests, only a span of time away.