TheCable

Some civil society organisations (CSOs) have condemned the arrest of women who protested the supreme court verdict on the governorship election dispute in Nasarawa state.

On January 20, the apex court affirmed Abdullahi Sule as the duly elected governor of Nasarawa, sparking a protest in Lafia, the state capital.

The Nasarawa police command had said it arrested 38 persons over alleged public disturbance during the protest. The suspects comprised of five men and 33 women.

In a statement on Tuesday, the CSOs said Nigerians are unhappy to hear of the arrest of the women for exercising their rights to protest.

The statement was jointly signed by Women Aid Collective (WACOL), Womenifesto, Gender and Development Action (GADA), Atrocities Watch Africa (AWA), Enough is Enough, and other CSOs.

The CSOs said the prosecution of the women shows the failure of the Nigerian police and government of Nasarawa to uphold the rights of citizens to protest, assemble and freely express themselves, as enshrined in the 1999 constitution.

“These women were nude, demonstrating clearly that they were both committed to peaceable protest and unarmed,” the statement reads.

“It is a travesty to then accuse them of being violent when in fact, they were the people violated by the attack from the uniformed personnel, including with projectiles.

“Security agents, nearly all of them male, assaulted, beat up, shot at, and seriously injured some of these women in clear violation of the constitution and in full public view.

“Locking them up in indefinite pre-trial detention at the instance of those whom they were protesting against constitutes political persecution.”

The CSOs said through ‘Project-Free Nasarawa 30’, they are rallying to ensure that the violation of the rights of the women stops.

“Project-Free Nasarawa 30 is a national and non-partisan coalition comprising of civil right activists, citizens’ journalists, rights’ organisations and international advocacy and solidarity groups demanding the immediate release of the Nasarawa 30, a group of women currently in jail over no crime they committed even as contained in the unacceptable charges filed by the current Nasarawa State government against these women for exercising their rights to assemble and express themselves,” the statement adds.

“Project-Free Nasarawa 30 rejects in totality the tactics and aggression against these women, and calls for the immediate review of their bail conditions to grant them freedom without the culture of punitive bail terms that have been unethically and wrongly adopted by the current judicial bench to justify empty allegations against the Nasarawa 30.

“An attack on the Nasarawa 30 is an attack on all women across the globe. End the persecution now! Free Nasarawa 30 unconditionally today.”