The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) learnt with shock the invasion of the Nígeria Labour Congress (NLC) headquarters in Abuja popularly known as Labour House by the men and officers of the Nígeria Police on Wednesday night of July 7th, 2024.
CLO gathered that the angry looking police officers clad in police uniforms, mufti and masks like Boko Haram insurgents and bandits stormed the Labour House in the late hours of Wednesday night and forcefully broke into NLC’s bookshop carting away useful materials into their waiting vans. According to our sources, the police claimed that the carted materials were used in organising and inciting the protesters of the #Endbadgovernance protest which kicked off August 1, 2024, across Nígeria.
CLO condemns in its strongest term the criminal, unlawful and arrogant manner in which our law enforcement agencies, predominantly, the police invade people’s homes and offices of Nígerians and Organisations at odd hours even without Warrants of court like criminals.
We recall that on August 9, 2009, similar treatment was visited on the CLO at its 13, Soji Adepegba Close national Headquarters on Allen Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos. Our office was illegally sealed for one year with our key office materials, laptops, books and project facilities carted away till a court order vacated them from our premises. Till date, the police have defiantly refused to obey the judgment of the court that ordered them to pay CLO compensations and return its stolen property.
Also, under the lawless Muhammad Buhari regime, police, DSS, EFCC and other repressive institutions of coercion and terror were used to terrorise, intimidate and coerce judicial officers and other men and women of impeccable, strong characters to submission.
We hold that it is an abuse of democratic process for a government that was elected by the people to turn around and use its institutions of coercion to oppress its citizens.
It is unbelievable that Presídent Bola Tinubu who has protested against both military and civilian regimes before 2015 can resort to this illegal use of state machineries to threaten and abuse the rights of the natives. We demand that the police return carted NLC property without delay and tender an apology to them this flagrant and heinous act.
In similar manner, CLO warns the Federal Government of Nigeria to steer clear of the Russian Flag controversy in the aftermath of the #Endbadgovernance protest by releasing all those detained for armlessly flying Russian Flag in some parts of Nígeria. We also urge the Government to drop the Proposed criminal charges against the suspects and end the case in that way, especially as we have not found section of our Constitution that criminalizes the flying of other countries’s flags in Nigeria.
Moreover, Russia has denied any involvement in the flag matter. Nígerian authorities should, therefore, allow the sleeping dog to lie as our country does not have the capacity to engage in any confusion that may culminate in both human and material losses.
Let our strong military and other security agencies divert their attention and energies to combatting insecurity threatening Nígeria and leave the Russian Flag matter alone. In our thinking, too, Tinubu Government should focus its minds, strength, might and intelligence more on how to address the stinking corruption in the system, hunger, poverty, insecurity and subsidy crisis threatening our country and people before Nigerian youth would return to the protest.
These are the concerns of the CLO and all patriotic Nígerians, at least, for now.
May a stitch in time save us nine.
Comrade Ibuchukwu Ohabuenyi Ezike,
Executive Director.
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