President Bola Tinubu on Sunday failed to condemn the violent crackdown on peaceful protesters by the police in many states such as Abuja and Lagos.
The president, however, condemned the violence that has trailed the protests in some states and led to the deaths and destruction of properties.
Mr Tinubu, in his first public statement since the protests began on Thursday, urged the protesters to “suspend any further protest’ and warned that the law would catch up with those executing violence.
Although the president acknowledged that some of the protesters “were young Nigerians who desired a better and more progressive country where their dreams, hopes, and personal aspirations would be fulfilled,” he kept mum on the police’s violent crackdown on such peaceful protesters.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how the police repeatedly fired tear gas and live bullets to disperse peaceful protesters in Abuja leading to injuries to many of them as well as journalists covering the protest.
The police also targeted journalists, assaulting, brutalising and detaining some of them despite identifying them as journalists.
In his speech, Mr Tinubu only called on security operatives to “continue to maintain peace, law, and order in our country following the necessary conventions on human rights, to which Nigeria is a signatory,” thus suggesting that has been the practice of the security agencies in handling the protests.
Details later…
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