{News} Chibok girls: Rights groups attack FG as police halt BBOG protest.
A gale of condemnation, on Tuesday,
followed the disruption of a protest by the Bring Back Our Girls
campaigners in Abuja, who were stopped by security operatives and a
group claiming to be supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari from
seeing the President.
Among the human rights groups and
individuals, who condemned the action of the police and the pro-Buhari
supporters, were the Executive Director of the Civil Liberties
Organisation, Mr. Ibuchukwu Ezike; the Executive Chairman, Coalition
Against Corrupt Leaders, Mr. Debo Adeniran; the Civil Liberty
Organisation; a security analyst, Ben Okezie; and the Publicity
Secretary of pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Mr. Yinka Odumakin.
Ezike, while speaking with one of our
correspondents on Tuesday, said the government had shown its lack of
respect for the citizens and human rights by deploying the police to bar
the BBOG protesters.
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| Cry of Chibok girls mother. |
He said, “Even if it is one person who
is protesting or demanding an explanation from the leaders or the
government, such a person should be afforded the opportunity, how much
more a group that has been campaigning for government to intensify
effort to rescue these girls from the captivity of Boko Haram.
“The government not listening to them
shows that we have not departed from the past. And for the police to
harass them, it shows that there is no respect for human rights because
the citizens have the right to protest activities of the government
which they find not to be in consonance with best global practices.’’
Also, Adeniran described the
government’s approach to the BBOG protest as a miscalculation, saying
the police were making their cause more popular by stopping them from
seeing the President.
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