The right to peaceful protest is a fundamental human right under our constitution
For too long, the police authorities have continued to frighten our public with the colonial law that requires permit to hold protests, processions and rallies. Yet, the right of the people to peacefully protest in open expression of their grievances or support of any issue in the public space remains a fundamental right that does not require anyone’s permission. In the light of the recent protest and how it was nearly scuttled by the police, we need to stress that the people do not derive their natural right to peaceful assembly from the government: they are born with that right.
Protests only become matters of public safety when they degenerate into riots. The definitions of protest and riot respectively are clear to every literate adult. The recent practice by the police of citing undisclosed ‘security reports’ indicating that a particular protest could be hijacked by hoodlums to cause trouble to stop protests even before they take place is a subversion of people’s rights. It is an embarrassing display of operational laziness by the police.
We pay the police to be present whenever and wherever the people are exercising their rights. In all such situations, it is the responsibility of the police to protect the lawful and arrest the lawless for prosecution where and when necessary. The citing of dubious security reports to scuttle and abridge citizen rights is a relic of decades of military autocracy and should be legally challenged. Security is not the myth and cultic mystery that we keep being blackmailed with.
The issue of protest and the role of the police are already a settled matter in Nigeria despite the fact that the police continue to flout the law. In ANPP V IGP (2004) the Federal High Court declared police permit (for rallies and meetings) illegal and unconstitutional. In IGP V ANPP (2008) 12 WRN 65 the Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment and held that rallies and demonstrations are part of the fundamental right to freedom of expression which cannot be curtailed by the police. In view of the settled state of the law the FCT High Court did not hesitate to annul the ban on rallies convened by the BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) in 2014.
Since after the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the US, there has been one protest or the other in the US and the West almost on a daily basis. I think that our police are finding it a bit difficult to understand the elementary fact that they are hired to manage the delicate balance between protecting citizens exercising their lawful rights and the responsibility of ensuring an orderly environment for the discharge of the obligations of government. A mindset that is trained always to see protesting citizens as potential criminals to be dispersed with tear gas and sometimes live ammunition is a disgrace to any society that aspires to be termed democratic.
If there is one cardinal democratic principle which was aptly demonstrated in the most recent nationwide protests in Nigeria it is that popular participation is the ultimate safeguard of democratic norms. The American founding fathers aptly recaptured this ageless truth when they said many years ago that, “governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. Also, the Nigerian Court has ruled that the right to peaceful rally and peaceful demonstration is a fundamental human right protected under our constitution. Specifically, section 41(1) of the 1999 Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of movement. Besides, peaceful strikes, lock-outs, non-violent positive actions and others are well-known legitimate weapons of expression in a democracy.
Since it is the people that directly bear the full brunt of government policy, they deserve to be heard.