THE recent attacks on members of the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria by soldiers during the group’s annual procession to mark the International Quds Day in Abuja call to mind the crowd management deficit of the security agencies.
Reports say soldiers blocked the protesters with a tank and opened fire to disperse them. Media reports indicate that five members of the Shiites were shot dead, but the lawyers to the group declared that 26 members were killed.
Over 30 persons sustained various degrees of life-threatening injuries, and about 274 were arrested by the soldiers and were later handed over to the police and kept in detention, including 60 minors. A police officer lost his life in the needless clash.
While the group said they were attacked unprovoked, the Nigerian Army insisted that the group “became violent, disrupted law and order, and started engaging the troops”. The Army’s claim does not justify the killings.
The Nigerian government and its security agencies are notorious for their intolerance of opposition under this democracy, especially in the past 10 years. They are noted for escalating peaceful protests, cooking up tales to justify the repression of opposition and killing of innocent protesters with impunity.
Despite the denial, the Judicial Panel of Inquiry and Restitution held that nine unarmed persons were killed, 22 sustained gunshot injuries and 15 others were assaulted by the soldiers and the police during the 2020 #EndSARS protests at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos.
The August 1-10 #EndBadGovernance 2024 protests started on a peaceful note but were later mismanaged by the security forces. 31 citizens were lost to the unfortunate protest, 1,135 were arrested and are awaiting trials across the country, and trillions of naira were lost.
Government repression of the Shiites assumed an alarming dimension in 2015, with security agencies using live bullets to hack down the group, including men, women, and children, during a procession in Zaria, Kaduna State.
Human Rights Watch records that on December 12, 2015, the Nigerian Army killed 347 members of the Shiites during a procession on the allegation that they stood in the way of the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff, Yusuf Buratai, and tried to kill him.
Rather than prosecuting the erring soldiers in the Zaria killings and getting justice for the victims as recommended by a Kaduna Judicial Commission of Inquiry, the state prosecutors brought charges against 177 members of the group in the killing of “Corporal Dan Kaduna Yakubu, the only military casualty in the crisis”.
In decent countries, security agencies act professionally as agents of the state and not of the government in power. The converse is the case in Nigeria. Security agencies act with impunity when it comes to anti-government protests and give adequate protection to pro-government protesters. Nigerian security agencies must act in defence of the people, especially the weak.
The Shiites have a right to engage in processions and protests under the law.
Security agencies have become fixated on the use of excessive force and live ammunition during crises. This is disingenuous. The police and other security agencies must have a crowd control template for handling protests and processions. The police should be regularly trained in crowd management and control.
The police deploy tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters and employ technology to apprehend offenders later elsewhere. Nigerian security agencies must borrow a leaf from this civilised professional practice.
The killings allegedly committed by security agencies should be investigated, and the offenders must be brought to justice.
No matter the alleged uncooperative disposition of the Shiites, the government must respect their rights and religion as constitutionally enshrined. It should devise a workable strategy to manage them.
