Nigeria is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a generation. Annual inflation stands at more than 30%. Prices for food like yams, a staple food, are almost four times higher than last year.
New protests against the recent fuel hikes began the first week of September.
Protests, inspired by the protests in Kenya against IMF-imposed austerity, pushing poverty, encouraged protests to demand an end to the Nigerian President’s “shock doctrine.” The so-called shock therapies that the Nigerian president is currently using include the reduction of gas subsidies higher electrical costs, and the devaluing of the currency, which is like a pay cut for workers. That austerity allowed Nigeria to get a $2.25 billion loan from the World Bank and the austerity is celebrated by the banks. But not celebrated by the victims of the imperialist’s financial and economic war on the people.
Ten people who took part in last month’s protests across Nigeria have been charged with treason and other serious offenses at the federal high court in the capital, Abuja.
All of the accused pleaded not guilty. The charges of treason look very similar to the charges by the U.S. federal government against the three members of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement in Florida—serious charges that break down into criminalizing speech.
Amnesty International has labeled the ongoing trials in Nigeria as a “sham.”
We are honored to present this report by Nigerian journalist and President of Society of International Awareness (SIRA) Owei Lamkefa.
Democratizing treasonable felony and deregulating intelligence failure
ADEYEMI Abayomi Abiodun is a respectful, hard-working and dedicated youth. At 6 p.m. Monday August 26, 2024, he was picked up by the Nigeria Police Force, NPF. He is a staff of the Iva Valley Bookshop located in the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, headquarters. His employment by the bookshop means he is guilty by association.
The police had raided the bookshop in the night of August 7, 2024 in search of Drew Povey, the bookshop owner. The NPF claims that Povey, a Briton, is the prime suspect “in numerous criminal activities across Nigeria and other African countries.”
Apparently, Abayomi could not help the police in their investigations nor implicate himself as a sponsor of protests in the country. Those who saw him three days later in police custody said he was in chains and had evidently been badly tortured.
Povey had returned to the United Kingdom on a scheduled trip three days before the police raid, so there was no way Abayomi could produce him.
Povey’s immediate family was in a similar dilemma. So members have suffered visitations by security agents. These include visits to the Stars of Nations Schools which the family runs and where Povey’s wife, Helen Batubo, is principal. On August 21, 2024, her home at Serenity Estate, Karshi, in Nasarawa State was raided.
Povey also claims the police raided his personal home: “The police smashed in the front gate and the back door of my house. They turned everything upside down and stole our television and my granddaughter’s bike. They then left the house unlocked for anyone to enter. Later, police were seen returning to try and trap my family.” He also claimed that in the various raids, the NPF had seized his books, photocopier and car.
Ms Batubo herself was invited and interrogated by the NPF on allegations of “criminal conspiracy, terrorism financing, treasonable felony, subversion, and cyber crime.” These allegations carry life sentence.
The interrogations reveal that the main claim against Povey is that he is one of the foreign sponsors of protests in the country. Snippets also indicate that he is suspected of sponsoring the on-going civil war in Sudan which has claimed some 15, 000 lives, 33,000 injured with at least 10 million persons displaced or becoming refugees.
When in a phone interview, the National Record Newspapers asked Povey on the allegation of sponsoring the Sudanese conflict, he responded:
It is true that I worked as a secondary school teacher in what is now Sudan for a year. But this was 45 years ago and I have not visited the country since then.
Povey has lived on and off Nigeria for about a quarter of a century now and what struck me about him is that he seems a conscientious investor who is committed to Nigeria. I reached this conclusion based on his investment in education, marriage to a Nigerian which technically should earn him citizenship, and of course, in running the Iva Valley Bookshop and Business Center.
I am not surprised he is of interest to the security services given the fact that he is an enthusiastic leftist with an undisguised aversion to international agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These agencies have, since 1986, virtually dictated the economic direction of the country. This may make Povey appear like an enemy of the state.
I also find interesting the fact that he named his seven-year bookshop, Iva Valley. That is the coal mine where on Friday, November 18, 1949, British colonialists opened fire on striking coal miners. Twenty-one miners were killed and 51 others injured in the shootings. This became known as the Iva Valley Massacre. Apart from the international outcry it elicited, that event became the rallying point for nationalists.
Since independence, the political elites have tried to downplay that massacre and its significance in the anti-colonial struggles. Comrade Ola Oni, an outstanding radical, mentor of youths and conscientious intellectual, had tried to keep it alive by naming his popular bookshop in Bodija, Ibadan, Iva Valey Bookshop. But that seems to have collapsed after he passed away on December 22,1999.
The last time I met Povey and Abayomi at a public function was on July 19, 2024 when the proactive Political Science Department of the Bingham University organised a symposium to commemorate 50 years of the famous book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, written by the intellectual giant and political activist, Walter Rodney.
A salutary contribution by the duo at that occasion was to make the book available to all those who wanted copies. The price was low, as are most books the bookshop sells.
Let me add that it is not just Povey, Batubo and Abayomi that are being accused of these serious crimes. Others, like Comrade Joe Ajaero, President of the NLC, are similarly accused. Also, six Polish students and a lecturer were arrested for allegedly taking part in the ‘End Hunger Protests’ in Kano and waving Russian flags while doing so. I felt ashamed that our security agents do not have the most basic knowledge of international relations. If their leaders do, they would have known how weird it is to accuse the Polish of carrying Russian flags. Good sense prevailed and the Polish were released after some weeks.
This liberal democratization of these crimes remind me of the Abacha junta. In those days, any seeming dissident earned you an allegation of being “an accessory after the fact of treason”, and you are off to life jail. When the then Publisher of the The Sunday Magazine, TSM, said she doubted the veracity of an alleged coup by Colonel Lawan Gwadabe, she was sentenced to life.
When TheNews magazine reported that the Military Tribunal was setting some of the accused coup plotters free, one of its Editors, Kunle Ajibade, was tried as an accessory and received life sentence. Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, the leader of the Pro-Democracy Movement was suspected of being in possession of the defense statement of coup suspect, Colonel Bello Fadile. For this, he was tried as an accessory to treason and sentenced to life.
The security agencies should not return the country to those Babangida and Abacha junta days. They need to concentrate on the rampant cases of banditry, terrorism and kidnappings that have seized the country. They also need to win the trust of the citizenry, especially the youths, who can assist in fighting the true enemies of the state and ensure the protection of the country.
Let me draw the government’s attention to a reality. While it is dissipating energy searching universities, bookshops and bus stops, and, accusing Poles, Britons, Nigeriens and Nigerians in Diaspora of sponsoring the protests, hunger, the real sponsor, is hiding in plain sight.