•Omoyele Sowore speaks at the protest ground in Abuja yesterday
The Convener of the Take it Back Movement, Omoyele Sowore, has criticised police authorities across the country for their treatment of protesters, some of whom were teargassed during a demonstration yesterday.
Hours before the protest, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) asked the organisers to shelve it, citing the celebration of the National Police Day, reports Channels TV.
But the protesters defied the plea, gathering in some cities across the country to register their displeasure over some of the policies of the Federal Government. In Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, and in Abuja, the demonstration took a turn for the worse when police officers fired tear gas at the protesters in a bid to disperse them.
Irked by the treatment meted out to some of the demonstrators and calls for the halting of the protest, Sowore flayed the police, describing their action as disrespect for human rights.
“Today was the day the police ought to have proven that this is a police for the people. If there was a professional test that could be conducted, it is what we did today, and they failed terribly at it,” Sowore said last night.
“Look at how they performed today – woefully again. They attacked us unprovoked. They are intolerant. They have no respect for human rights. There were three persons arrested today – one of them a journalist. They were made to lie down in a drainage. They fired tear gas at them. They beat them silly with the planks attached to their placards,” the former presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) claimed.
The protesters were gathered in Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Lagos and other states to register their grievances over some of the policies of the federal government.
They converged in clusters, chanted solidarity songs, and marched through the streets with placards detailing some of their demands.
While the group had protested over certain issues in the past, yesterday’s demonstration was built around a call for an improved economy, the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State, and freedom of expression, among other demands.
