Even though Nigerians were forewarned of the likelihood of the August 1 nationwide hardship protests turning violent and capable of resulting in loss of lives and properties, the people, nevertheless, were adamant and took to the streets to air their grievances against the government.
The protests kicked off on a peaceful note on the fateful day, but quickly got out of hand and degenerated into mayhem in some parts of the country, and like they say, the rest is history.
However, among political and socio-economic analysts, how the government went about preventing the potential breakdown of law and order has been a major talking point of the protests.
While some analysts lauded the constancy of government for proactively engaging stakeholders in order to stop the protests from happening, with a view to forestalling chaos, other analysts have said to be forewarned is to be forearmed and thus blame the government for not dealing with the problem well enough.
In defence of the government, analysts have also stated that dissuading Nigerians from protesting would have been an uphill task for anyone who stepped into the President’s shoes, considering, for instance, the North where a lot of hungry and illiterate Nigerians cannot differentiate between peaceful protest and riot.
One of the means employed by the government for stopping the protests was moral suasion. The Federal Government through many of its agents tried to convince Nigerians to jettison the protests and give the President a little bit more time to fix the country.
“Let us not deceive ourselves. Even if an angel left heaven to come here and tell us to shelve the protest, we would have rejected the angel and the message brought to us. Let us give the President the time he has asked for”
But the human rights activists and youths who have an axe to grind with the government over the state of the nation were hell-bent on protesting and so ignored the olive branch extended by the government.
For those leaders, it was protests or bust and in their view, no Jupiter could stop them. They were unstoppable – at least for some time.
The government on its own part was accused of raising the threat of violence before the protest. According to pro-protest organisers, “overzealous” appointees of the government were fanning the embers of anarchy and had to be held liable if violence erupted.
This is perhaps why the Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Social Media, Olusegun Dada, got a lot of stick. Prior to the protest, he had tweeted on X about a possible “resistance” to the protests.
“Those who want to burn the country down under whatever guise will meet the strongest resistance of their lives.
“Not from security agencies, but from the silent majority that gave their mandate to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for four years in the first instance. We are waiting,” Dada said.
But Nigerians quickly dug up an old post made by Dada in 2011 when the ruling All Progressives Congress and him were in the opposition and had protested against subsidy removal during the administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.
“When peaceful change is impossible, violent change becomes inevitable.
“We protest peacefully and you fire tear gas at us. Prepare for war,” Dada said at the time.
Although Dada deleted the tweet, pro-protest supporters said the post was one more reason why it was expedient to go on a peaceful protest.
The Special Adviser to the President on Communication and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, had also accused a former presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and his supporters of being behind the nationwide protest against economic hardship in the country.
Obi swiftly slammed a N5 billion lawsuit on Onanuga. He also gave the presidential aide a 72-hour ultimatum to retract his alleged defamatory statement against him.
However, Onanuga vowed that he would not retract his allegations. And true to his word, he damned the consequences. The 72-hour ultimatum has already expired, and the courts, all things being equal, will now adjudicate on the matter.
The back-and-forth between Obi and Onanuga, if it was intended to slow the momentum of the protests down, has since failed to deter protesters.
The government had also tried to use, albeit unsuccessfully, a court injunction to stop the protests and this was courtesy of the Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike.
Wike had gone to a FCT High Court to stop the protest in his domain, but the court only issued an ex-parte order restricting the protesters to the Abuja National Stadium (aka the MKO Abiola National Stadium).
On protest D-Day, it became apparent that one of the leaders of the protesters and human rights lawyer, Deji Adeyanju, had obviously noticed a lacuna in the court judgment about where exactly protesters should converge.
In no time, Adeyanju engaged in a war of words with the FCT Commissioner of Police, Benneth Igweh. While the CP said protesters should go into the stadium, Adeyanju told newsmen that the court order said protesters should be “at” the stadium, not necessarily inside it but within its vicinity.
Then again, prior to the protests, Wike had been accused of being brash and full of braggadocio when he was addressing journalists about the likelihood of the protest not taking place in Abuja.
And although Wike eventually said the government was ready to dialogue with protesters after hostilities started on August 1, he was accused of speaking out of both sides of his mouth after the Police began to fire tear gas canisters towards protesters on the second day of the protest.
The government also used the traditional institution to reach out to Nigerians. Tinubu met with several first-class royal fathers in Nigeria, including the Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Ogunwusi, and the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II.
The royal fathers did indeed speak to Nigerians by asking the people to be patient with the government, but it was the adherents of Oro who announced that their festival would hold from August 1 to 10, that arrested the attention of Nigerians.
Looking back now at the last two weeks, keen political observers have submitted that recent actions and decisions of the government have so far been people-friendly and may have been used for averting the protest as well as calm frayed nerves.
They listed the students’ loans programme which many undergraduates have started getting and the signing of the national minimum wage bill into law, including the plan to sell crude oil to private refinery owner, Aliko Dangote, as “tools” the government wants to use to sway Nigerians into supporting them.
Ordinarily, the bold moves primed the government for commendation, but those momentous occasions were not to be because they were overshadowed by the call for protest last week.
A political analyst, Ifeoma Ogbonna, said she disagrees with those who say that the government did not do enough to prevent the protests.
In her assessment, even if an angel came down from heaven to talk Nigerians out of protesting, the people would still have gone ahead with it.
“The President humbled himself and pleaded with Nigerians not to protest. We must commend him for that. Or what else do Nigerians want him to do? Speak to them? I believe he will do that at the right time.
“And what do you mean by coming out to address Nigerians? You want something like an Independence broadcast or what?
“What differences will that make? Can’t you see that everything he will say in such a broadcast has already been aired to Nigerians one way or the other?
“Let us not deceive ourselves. Even if an angel left heaven to come here and tell us to shelve the protest, we would have rejected the angel and the message brought to us. Let us give the President the time he has asked for,” Ogbonna said.
However, sharing his own views with The Point, a Port Harcourt-based public affairs analyst, Sylvester Enefeli, said the government did not do enough to stop the protests.
In his opinion, the best way to win the people over is to “grant their heart’s desire.”
“No, the government did not do enough to prevent the protests that turned violent in some parts of the country.
“And because the President is pleading for more time and asking the people not to protest does not mean that something concrete was done by him. If I was the President, I would have prostrated myself before the people.
“The truth is that you don’t need to beg anyone if you, first of all, know how to end their suffering.
“The people are saying re-introduce subsidies on fuel and electricity and be their hero.
“Let me tell you, subsidy is the only palliative that gets to the ordinary man. It is what touches us directly from the government. And as for the rice they have been sharing, I have not even seen the bags where they pour the rice.
“Moreover, everyone keeps saying that the money saved from subsidies is given to state governors for development? How many developments have we seen since state allocations increased?
“Let’s call a spade a spade. Everything about subsidy removal will not work in Nigeria. Corruption is too much.”
Abeny Mohammed (SAN) said the failure of the president to address the protesters before or on the slated date for the commencement of the protest was a missed opportunity by the number one citizen to show empathy and identify with the suffering of Nigerians.
“The massive deployment of security forces to stop the protesters from protesting is an admission of failure by the government that it has no solution to the genuine demands of the protesters and Nigerians generally.
“Crude and forceful suppression of genuine protest by aggrieved Nigerians in the exercise of their constitutional rights has no place in a democracy. It is a significant and brutal violation of the constitution by the president.
“Secondly, the late rush to procure what I may describe as market ex-parte injunctive orders by some state governments to stop or restrict the protesters to remote areas and render the action ineffectual is gross abuse of court process and infringement on Section 40 of the constitution, which provides freedom of peaceful assembly.
“Their actions should be condemned. The judges who granted the injunctions acted in ignorance and ultra vires of the principles governing the granting of ex-parte orders.
“The organisers of the protests gave more than two weeks’ notice of their intention to stage the protests, a period more than enough for the applicants to put them on notice of the applications for injunctions.
“There was, therefore, no urgency at all for the courts to have entertained the motions ex-parte hurriedly filed and heard less than 24 hours to the commencement of the protests.
“This is a clear case of self-imposed urgency under which courts should never entertain ex-parte. The ex-parte orders are, therefore, nullities even before superior courts set them aside”.
Similarly, Ikoro N.A. Ikoro said the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria provided ways through which people could air their grievances and that peaceful protest is one of them.
“The government has not done enough to address the grievances, as there is a lot of waste going on at the moment like spending money on luxury cars, repairing buildings that were just used by the previous government, buying yachts or aircraft and things like that.
“So, when you do these things and people can’t even find money to fuel their cars or to buy garri or beans because prices have gone up, then the government has not done enough, even though they are saying they should be given time.
“If they are given time, can they make sure that goods and services reach the common man; even the palliatives they are giving out, how is it helping anyone? How many people can get it? Is it going to get to the woman in the streets or those who are hard hit by the situation?
“What I can say is that if they had put the efforts they put in trying to stop this protest earlier, in addressing the real problems, maybe things would not have escalated to this state,” he said.
Also speaking, Hameed Ajibola Jimoh said the right to protest is governed by international law, adding that the only rule is for it to be peaceful.
“There is a need to ensure that in exercising the right to protest, the rights of others are considered, including the rights of the adults and the minors,” he said.
He added that the peaceful protest allows other citizens who may not want to protest to exercise their rights.
He pointed out that the government has not done enough to address the hunger in the land.
“There are mechanisms that I believe the government could have used to gauge the people’s opinion because the hunger did not just begin from this administration, but it only got worse, more than what the people can bear.
“Look at what the common man is suffering, you can no longer live the same life you did 10 years ago; things have become so bad in Nigeria that everyone is suffering.
“How many citizens can afford the basic necessities? Even the rich are also crying about the economic hardship. It appears the funds are only circulating at the centre and not getting to the people. This protest, as far as I am concerned, was avoidable.
“Government knows what should be done and they should do the right thing,” Jimoh said.
