IMN: Another of police misstep

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I heard with disconcertion the news of the action by the Nigerian police against members of the Islamic Movement if Nigeria, IMN. It was learnt that the movement had embarked on a peaceful protest aimed at commemorating the deaths of their members, who had paid the supreme price especially in the hands of the Nigerian security forces. But in the line of this, the police swooped on them and violently dispersed them.

In a statement which seems not to proffer a genuine reason as to why they were stopped from holding their legitimate right of protest/paying respect to their dead loved ones, the Nigerian police concurred that the protest was a peaceful one, but had only the purported proscription of the sect as the reason to have attacked their assembly.

It's pathetic how the Nigerian police has refused to face reality in what is their responsibility to protect citizens and fight crimes and has resorted instead to harass and intimidate people who mean no harm. It is indeed condemnable how they have channelled their strength to fighting innocent civilians instead of focusing such angst against kidnappers, terrorists, bandits and other criminals that ought to face their wrath.

As I cannot condemn enough the incessant and unwarranted harassment of innocent civilians, who are merely exercising their rights, I just hold our police apparatus in pity. 

But why I cannot understand in the first place the so-called proscription of this sect that has given basis to this highly unnecessary intimidation of the members by security forces,   I make bold to remind the Nigerian system, in case it's forgotten, that those who make peaceful change difficult, make violent change inevitable.

#StopTheHarassment

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