The Convener of the Take it Back Movement, Omoyele Sowore, has condemned the treatment of protesters by police authorities nationwide, particularly after some were teargassed during a demonstration on Monday.
Just hours before the protest, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) urged organizers to cancel the event, citing the observance of National Police Day. However, protesters ignored this request, gathering in several cities across the country to voice their frustrations over certain Federal Government policies. In Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, and in Abuja, the demonstrations escalated when police officers deployed tear gas to disperse the crowds.
Outraged by the treatment of the protesters and the calls to end the demonstration, Sowore criticized the police, labeling their actions a violation of 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 on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.
“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, Monday’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.