How the Shi’ites began their advocacy in Abuja -By Sesugh Akume

I am a witness to how the Shi’ites began their advocacy in Abuja to impress on the Buhari regime to honour the 3 court orders granting Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky bail. They first met in the evenings at Unity Fountain alongside the #BringBackOurGirls movement. They later shifted their own sit-outs to the mornings as BBOG met in the evenings.

Their conduct and MO increasingly mirrored BBOG’s. They learned to clean up after every meeting. They had their chairs arranged vertical and chained to the trees, the next day they set them up, had their meetings, secured the chairs and left. They spoke one after the other and guarded their language, not that they didn’t say what was. I thought such a harmless group should’ve been left alone to exercise their freedoms! Not in Nigeria. Not under Buhari, and Osinbajo.

As with BBOG, the chains were broken and chairs stolen, most possibly by the police. All meetings at Unity Fountain were banned. The police deployed horses, dogs, armoured vehicles, hundreds of armed mobile policemen and women with combat gear, tear gas, and live ammunition. Unity Fountain was cordoned off. Nothing warranted this. Simply, the regime didn’t want citizens expressing their freedoms.

Both BBOG and the Shi’ites were pushed to the streets. BBOG stayed at Unity Fountain, outside the cordon. This, not without attacks. There are videos of police hostilities, shooting tear gas pellets at unarmed BBOG members who posed absolutely no threats. I don’t need to go more into this. Images of police harassment, violence, and arrests of BBOG members are everywhere online.

On the streets, the Shi’ites organised themselves and marched. No harassment of motorists or other road users. Their message was simple, ‘Free Zakzaky’. Why this offends anyone I don’t understand.

None of my colleagues at BBOG that I know who regularly saw the Shi’ites at Unity Fountain believes the story about their starting the violence. Not anyone that I know of. We all seem to know instinctively what happened. On 28 May 2014, pro-government thugs attacked our very civil sit-out, physically assaulted us, broke our chairs, even journalists’ cameras; stole handbags, etc right in front of a police detachment.

They saw it all happen but only stood by and watched. We, on the other hand, were asked by our leaders to do nothing, to be attacked like weaklings. When the thugs were done they left. What was the police’ plan? For a fight to break out so that the daily sit-outs would be declared unsafe and cancelled. We frustrated them. Before then and after, we watched out for who was amongst us, both at our meetings and marches. We avoided infiltration, those who did, those with ulterior motives not new members, were found out. What my colleagues, as I believe is, hired thugs infiltrated the Shi’ites’ match that day, and the police began the violence to trigger the result they wanted. Live ammunition were shot that day by the police. Many seem to have missed that. Some policemen on duty were harmed too. I’m talking of the altercation that took place around the Hilton, NCC, Power House, and the entrance into Gana Street.

Today, I hear the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) has been officially proscribed, declared a terrorist group. BBOG was once called a terrorist group engaged in ‘psychological terrorism’, soliciting and receiving foreign donations, engaged in military exercises to take over the government. Though the government didn’t go the full length having the courts to declared us so. I think that there is no wisdom in this. It was better to have done the right thing from the start to release the man to go on bail, as granted by the courts. This lawlessness cannot be justified. The protesters should’ve been allowed to be seated at Unity Fountain where they were. No need sending them out. Their protests on streets were well-coordinated. They filed in rows and columns as they marched, they were never a mob. The lawlessness, violence, and bloodlust of the regime are what has to be interrogated and roundly rejected.

Using the force of might to make an oppressed and angry group go underground is asking for the trouble we don’t have the capacity to handle. There can be no wisdom in this. We have refused to learn from the attempt at forcefully silencing Boko Haram by murdering Mohammed Yusuf. Ten years on, precious lives are being wasted daily in the northeast. This is true even though it is hidden. We don’t need this show of force, it is utterly needless. We never learn.

For those who think that none of this is their business, recall the immortal words of Pastor Martin Niemöller, ‘First, they came for the socialists. . .’

PS
Meanwhile, I know a group that has been murdering police operatives and soldiers, threatening everyone publicly including the government, unleashing mayhem on the populace countrywide but this still isn’t terrorism, and the group is not a terrorist yet. I’m sure they are a charity organisation.