The Inhumane Treatment Of Over 100 Minors Over Protesting Against Bad Governance Is Crime Against Humanity -Rescue Movement

By Our Reporter

The Rescue Movement For New Nigeria aka Rescue The Vulnerable Initiative has strongly condemned the inhumane treatment of the 125 people arrested during the 1st August, 2024 #Endbadgovernance protest of which over 100 of them are minor, describing the treatment as crime against humanity and calling on the federal government to immediately commencement investigation into the scenario as some of us still want to assume that such acts could be the handiwork of overzealous official.

This was disclosed in a statement issued on Friday November 2, 2024 by the National Director Media and Publicity of the group, Rev. Olorunmagba Emmanuel, stressing that watching the disturbing video of the malnourished minors that were brought from prison to the “court for trial after being detained for over 90 days, anyone with human sympathy cannot hold back tears. And this is a total shame to our country and those responsible should not go unpunished, if and only if the order for such treatment did not come from the federal government.

“The condition of the minors as can be clearly observed from the video shows that they must have subjeced to serious hunger and other kinds of maltreatment for protesting against hunger under a democratic government that all the key actors also protested against the government even when the situation of the country was still far better than it is, of which both the present president and the immediate past president were always at the forefront of protest against the then sitting government including leading protest against removal of subsidy that the same President Tinubu was leading protest against has come to now announce the removal of the same subsidy in a manner that has plunged the country into economy nosedive resulting in acute hunger that necessitated the August 1, 2024 protest”.

“In a sane society, even animals prepared for slaughter deserve better treatment than what was done to those minors for taking part in a peaceful protest demanding for better governance.

Stressing further that the “Justice Obiora Egwuatu who presided over the case, who could not hold back tears seeing as the minors were collapsing and some fainting, but still went ahead to give bail conditions that will be so difficult to meet, leading to taking the minors back to prison, one will want to wonder of our respected judge is being compelled by higher authority to hand down bail conditions to the very poor minors each with the sum of N 10 million naira, a suretie of someone not less than level 16 in the civil service with a means of identification. Yet in the same country a lawmaker that assaulted a bolt driver was granted bail in sum of N500,000.

“For minors arrested in Kano and some from Kaduna and brought to Abuja to be charged charged with terrorism by the Nigeria Police Force alleging that they intended to overthrow the government of president Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not only laughable, but a total shame to our country.

“We don’t only expect statement from the presidency over this dastardly acts, but appropriate action to really show that the actors are not acting on order from the presidency”, the statement concluded.