By Chimaobi Nwaiwu – Nnewi
The Federal Government has been told not to repeat the mistake it made by arresting and prosecuting the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, by arresting and prosecuting #EndSARS, protesters, and their alleged sponsors.
Addressing newsmen on Thursday, in his office, an Onitsha based Small Scale Industrialist and Chairman of Osakwe Industrial Cluster, Awada Obosi, near Onitsha, Chief Johnson Okolo, said that the Federal Government should have dialogued with IPOB or ignored them, but it made the greatest mistake of arresting Mazi Kanu and it is trying to make the same mistake by arresting and prosecuting #EndSARS protesters.
Chief Okolo also berated the judiciary for alleged misleading the Federal Government by giving the Court Order for the freezing the accounts of some #EndSARS protesters, adding that the judiciary is turning to be the greatest problem and agency of confusion in Nigeria.
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He said it is a contradiction for the Federal Government to approved the Panels of Inquiry being set up by state government to look into #EndSARS protest, only to turn back to arrest or hive its blessing to the arrest and prosecution of the protesters and their alleged sponsors.
He said that the move is going be counter-productive for the country and for the achievement of any meaningful result, adding that it amounts to passing a vote of no confidence on panels that have already started sitting whatever reports that will come out of them.
“The move being made by the Federal Government to arrest the #EndSARS protesters and their alleged sponsors will create more problems, they claimed particularly, the southeast Governors that IPOB and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu are problems to Nigeria, that IPOB is inciting another civil war, but what the Federal Government and its agents are doing now by arresting #EndDARS protesters is more dangerous and is capable to produce ten more dangerous people and groups than IPOB and Nnamdi Kanu from across the country.
“If you look at the list of the people they said they are going to prosecute in the court, musicians, entertainers, comedians, ex-footballers, religious leaders and what have you, these people are known across the world and have the capacity and all it takes to incite violence, rubbish the country and create problems in Nigeria.
“The best thing the Federal Government should do is either to dialogue with the protesters or ignore them, why are you prosecuting them, did any law in Nigeria prohibits protest, are you now calling them the hoodlums that broke and looted the warehouses where palliatives were packed or the ones that allegedly burnt police station and looted gun as we are made to believe. The Federal Government should thread softly and cautiously with the #EndSARS issues, that is my honest advice.
“To me the youths who organized the #EndSARS protest were credible and patriotic youths, they organized and did it with international best practices until it was hijacked by hoodlums, but before the hoodlums came, who were the people that did a counter-protest on Abuja and attacked the #EndSARS protesters, who were they working for and who sent them to do counter-protest, that is one aspect of the attempt to hijack or bring violence into #EndSARS protests, remember that the people doing counter-protest in favour of SARS threatened the #EndSARS protesters and even attacked them, who were those people and who sent them.
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To an average Nigerian, the so-called hoodlums worked in favour of the government, they saved the government from collapsing because many people including the elders wanted to join in the protest and by now the government would have been collapsed if not for the hoodlums that hijacked the protest and scattered its real intentions. Intact the protest would not have ended with just the youths, every other person wanted to join in the protest.
“The government should not cause more problem in the country by arresting and prosecuting anybody because the hoodlums worked for them otherwise by now the country would have collapsed because of the way the protest was escalating, they should rather dialogue with the protesters and their alleged sponsors, instead of creating more problems, they should not use the arrest, freezing of accounts and prosecuting the protesters, to cause more problems Nigeria cannot contain with.”
