Recently, the media space, local and international, was awash with the news of the arraignment in Nigerian courts of minors on charges ranging from treason to arson, among many others. Those arraigned were arrested during the #Endbadgovernance protests in parts of the country.
More pungently, one international media outlet carried on its news bar that 29 children were about to be killed for protesting against the high cost of living. Before this unfortunate public show of shame, legal experts, civil society organisations (CSOs) and other stakeholders had condemned the arrests, especially when some of the minors collapsed in court when they were brought for trial.
The spectacle was horrendous, to say the least, as speculations became rife that they were maltreated while in police custody, where their welfare was criminally overlooked.
The plight of those minors brought back stack memories of the #EndSARS protests that claimed many lives through the high-handedness of officialdom.
#Endbadgovernance Protest: Arrest, Detention, Trial Of Minors Unacceptable – AYCF
It was not unlikely that the lousy publicity Nigeria was beginning to get from that abuse of power prompted President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to direct that they be released and reunited with their families.
We commend the President for saving those children from the excesses of overzealous security operatives within the Police in particular. But we are of the opinion that they ought not to have been arrested in the first place. The children were protesting against what they perceived as a threat to their well-being. They were hungry, malnourished and ill-maintained, and they took to the streets to draw the attention of government officials who chose to drink tea in their homes while the masses languished in penury.
The French Revolution that brought down the monarchy in that country was caused not just by the pervasive poverty and want but mainly by the indifference and insensitivity of the ruling class.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was not dismantled by nuclear armament. The citizens of those countries decided it was time to end the misery and pretentious proclivities of the ruling elite.
Sadly, in our opinion, lessons of history are hardly learnt, and that is why nations continue to repeat their mistakes. Otherwise, what is happening in Nigeria and the response of the government at all levels would out of place.
In a country where essential food items and other necessities of life have gone out of the reach of the average citizens, the leaders spend humongous sums to pander to their bohemian propensities and dare to chide children for complaining of hunger.
What happened with the arrest and incarceration of those minors brought to the public view, again, the unbridled rascality and overzealousness of the security operatives paid and maintained through public funds.
Even worse, in our opinion, the ill-treatment these children received from their government in a supposedly democratic milieu exposed the absence of humaneness and intolerance of the powers that be who, like modern-day Nero, the fabled Roman Emperor, fiddled while Rome burned.
As a newspaper, we are worried that the experience of those children, most of whom are of impressionable minds, in the government gulag may turn out to haunt the nation. The security agencies might have unwittingly indoctrinated them with ideas of resistance that are dangerously negative. That experience, we dare say, can turn those young minds into social deviants of a criminal nature.
It is pertinent to refer the authorities to international protocols on how to handle children in crisis situations of the nature of the #EndBadGovernance march. Even in wars, those statutes are respected, and the protests were not wars, no matter how anyone may want to stretch the definition of war.
We are persuaded to argue that the opportunity provided by the protests must not be lost. Those children wanted to be heard. The message that ought to be passed to the ruling elite is that human development in the country, especially the cost of living, has reached crisis proportions. And children are often the most vulnerable group, more exposed to the vicissitudes such inadequacies bring in their wake.
It is vital to let President Tinubu know that the angst of those minors will not go away simply by releasing them from detention, putting an end to their trial and reuniting them with their families. Those minors want the problem that attracted such ill-treatment to them to be addressed expeditiously.
They will feel assuaged if they notice that deliberate efforts are being made to ensure that no child marches out in the streets again to draw attention to their plight brought about by poverty, hunger and lack of basic needs taken for granted by their mates elsewhere in other climes.
It is embarrassing to point out that minors without weapons of any kind were classified as felons and treated as such.
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