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LAUGHABLE PROSECUTION OF NIGERIAN UNDERAGED.
As Social Media witnessed an eruption of Nigeria’s Govt intent to prosecute underage youth for taking part in the #ENDBADGOVERNANCE protest sometimes in July, the Governing institutions were for the most part strangely silent.
The Nigerian Police was absent and the office of the Attorney General of the Federation was short of solutions, other than to threaten to prosecute.
It took the human rights lawyers, clerics, scholars and opinion leaders to explain why the Federal government lost moral grounds to continue its hold on the children and must release those children from state detention back to their respective families.
Looking closely at how this controversy has been influenced by broader trends in the polity, it shows how the government has lost its moral grounds since its declared stance to remove subsidies on essential life saving commodities.
Nigerians believe that the socalled progressive political era championed by PBAT at this time must for good be a mirror to the conflicts of the present day for practicable solutions.
In many communities, the number of destitute youth found has more than doubled, a trend that reflects precipitous rise in conflicts and school dropouts.
There is nothing more valuable and desirable than having a Govt that can clearly value our humanity with support to back our demands and heal the innermost parts of ourself that have been hurting because of the austere economic measures being implemented.
This turns out to be nothing more than a trial, for which the chances of our youth avoiding death row may be thin as the charges of “treason” hanged on their neck. As we attempt to look at the interventions, it becomes necessary to look at the process and try to examine how events occurred.
The #ENDBADGOVERNANCE protest collectively defined the problems which must prompt govt to act immediately. Democracy cannot work without freedom to say your view and peacefully challenge unsuitable programs and practices.
But since the goal of Govt’s intimidation was to test the resilience of our communities in fighting back the demeaning political class in ways that suggests their uncaring, unhealthy and unpatriotic acts, the dichotomy was overdrawn and over simplified.
The court appearances and the terms for bail set by our indifferent court suggested empty rhetorics by the Govt organs on the efficacy of democratic practices.
Institutional stability (public order) has its moral dimensions One major defects of our inherited democracy is that, it has robbed us of our rights and freedoms. To the political elites, they view the emerging policies as a new system of social control which seeks conformity as the price of security, while to the ruling APC party, it emphasizes the role of market as a mechanism for expanding freedoms.
IMPACT OF THE REFORM.
In the attempt to contain human misery, Govt created new institutions to secure citizens against the evils of inefficiencies as way of dealing with the break down of traditional ways of coping with distress in families, ethnic groups which resulted in the erosion of its institutions. Efforts to deal with distress perversely increased it. (Nathan Glazer 1971)
Policy expanded, changed and created new problems as serious as the ones it hoped to displace. The misery is not removed but is refilled by the revolution of rising expectations, the revolution of equality, and the inherent limitations of financial resources, professional skills and knowledge.
No easy rescue from these contradictions is at hand for the govt, but some part of the solution of our social problems lies in traditional practices and traditional restrains.
To quote former US President Obama, “The good news is that these problems are solvable, but only if we listen to each other, and only if we abide by the core constitutional principles and democratic norms that made this country great”.
“In a country as big and diverse as ours, we won’t always see eye-to-eye on everything. But progress requires us to extend good faith and grace — even to people with whom we deeply disagree”. Unquote.
8th November 2024
Malam M K Ilyasu a retired foreign affairs officer, author and public affairs analyst writes from Kaduna Nigeria
