Sowore: Calling for revolution in Nigeria ‘perfectly legal’ — Lawyer

A Lagos-based lawyer and civil rights activist, Inibehe Effiong,
has called on federal authorities to immediately free Omoyele
Sowore, a Nigerian publisher and activist, who was arrested
overnight in Lagos.Mr Sowore was picked up by state agents said to
be from the State Security Service (SSS) at his residence in Lagos
at about 1:30 a.m., although no official confirmation had been
obtained as of 8:10 a.m. Saturday.

The arrest comes two days before a nationwide protest being
coordinated by Mr Sowore. The protest, tagged ‘RevolutionNow’, was
scheduled to take off across Nigeria on August 5 to demand a better
Nigeria.

Mr Effiong, himself a part of the planned protest, told PREMIUM
TIMES Saturday morning that Mr Sowore’s arrest indicates that
authorities have considered his call for a revolution, an illegal
act.

“But it is not illegal to call for a revolution in any
democracy,” Mr Effiong said. “Calling for a revolution is not
treasonable under any guise.”

Mr Effiong said the planned protest, also known as ‘Day of
Rage’, had specific demands that were outlined for the government’s
urgent action.

“People in Hong Kong have been protesting for a change in
political order for the past two months, and people in Puerto Rico
just used peaceful rallies to out their governor for being
incompetent,” Mr Effiong said.

“If it is happening all over the world, why should it be
different in Nigeria? The fact that someone has won an election as
president does not mean he will be immune from criticism or being
asked to resign from office,” he added.

The SSS has not returned multiple requests for comments from
PREMIUM TIMES about Mr Sowore’s arrest. But Nigerian security
operatives regularly crackdown on protests and dissenting critical
voices, despite several court orders asserting the rights of
citizens to a peaceful assembly.

Protest will go on

Nigerians had been quick to demand Mr Sowore’s release, with
several potential demonstrators warning that the ‘RevolutionNow’
matches would go on whether or not Mr Sowore remained in custody
beyond August 5.

Organisers said the government should focus on addressing the
issues that informed the planned demonstration, rather than
cracking down on citizens for exercising their rights to speech,
association and assembly.

“We have a list of demands,” Mr Effiong said. “And everything
borders around good governance.”

The protesters said the demand had been broken down into three
phases, each of which contains a laundry of critical issues that
must be addressed — failure over which the protest would not
cease.

* First Bundle: End anti-people economic policies
* Second Bundle: End special privileges for the ruling class
* Third Bundle: Return political power and national wealth to the
working people

The details of these bundles include:

First Bundle: End Anti-People Economic
Policies:

* Return of fuel prices and electricity tariffs to their levels
in 1999, the immediate repair of all the refineries, pipelines and
fuel depots in Nigeria and, an end to the importation of fuel.

* End to estimated and inflated billing by the electricity
distribution companies and to their extortion of money from
consumers for transformers, poles, cables, etc.

* No devaluation of the Naira.

* End to the insecurity and constant bloodletting in the country
but by methods that respect human rights and justice and the sack
of the current set of service chiefs for their self-evident
incompetence in their duties.

* Abolition of tuition fees and inflated service charges in all
public universities and secondary schools.

* Immediate payment of the N30,000 minimum wage, with annual
increases pegged to the rate of inflation and to the national
average rate of profit of multinational corporations operating in
Nigeria and of all local private companies employing more than 100
workers (irrespective of the contract status of such workers).

* The immediate release of all political prisoners, including
Shi’ite leader Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife, and an immediate
stop to the persecution of people based on their political or
religious beliefs or their ethnicity.

* The immediate payment of all outstanding salaries of workers
and pensions of retirees.

* The immediate implementation of all agreements the government
and private sector employers have signed with the trade unions at
all levels and in all sectors.

* A massive public works and services program in every sector
and level of the economy as well as in the urban and rural areas to
provide employment for unemployed youths.

Second Bundle: End Special Privileges for the Ruling
Class:

* All public officials in elective, appointive, or senior
administrative positions must be banned from educating their
children or dependants in private schools in Nigeria or in schools
in foreign countries.

* These officials, their immediate family, and their dependants
must be banned also from obtaining healthcare in private hospitals
in Nigeria or in hospitals in foreign countries.

* These officials must also receive basic salaries and
allowances not higher than those received by the highest paid
professors in public Nigerian universities.

* An immediate end to the use of police or military personnel as
private security guards for these officials.

* Except for the president and governors, these officials and
their immediate family must not live in class-exclusive estates or
other similar places of residence but among the working people who
they serve.

Third Bundle: Return Political Power and National Wealth
to the Working People:

* The complete and uncompensated repossession by the working
people of all national resources stolen by the ruling class and
their foreign masters through the fraudulent privatisation of
public resources since 1986.

* The complete and uncompensated seizure by the working people
of all private wealth accumulated by public officials (as defined
above) during and after their tenure of service whose value exceeds
their total lawful and demonstrable income during and after that
tenure.

* The complete socialisation of all land in the country and
declaration of access to land as a basic right, by this means to
break the monopoly of the ruling class on ownership and access to
land in the country and thus make land available to the poor who
live by farming and those who need to build their own houses.

* To break the stranglehold of the ruling class on political
power by banning from politics all who have stolen the people’s
money and property since 1960 and those who have been in elective
or appointive political office for more at any time before and
since 1999, ending the influence of money and god-fathers in
politics, imposing term-limits for national and state lawmakers,
completely liberating local governments from state government
control, returning power from the national and state levels to
governing councils controlled by citizens at the town, city, and
village levels, etc.

* To reduce the cost of governance by abolishing the Senate,
thus establishing a uni-cameral legislature with only the House of
Representatives; and by abolishing constituency projects to end the
theft of public money through such projects.

* Abolishing the death penalty except for the embezzling or
privatisation of the public wealth.

* Producing a new constitution for Nigeria by a democratic and
people-led process involving open discussion, debate, and
determination of proposals and suggestions by the working people in
towns and villages, in factories, on farms, in the Diaspora, on
school campuses, in neighbourhoods, market places, workplaces, mass
media, social media, etc.