Police tear-gas demonstrators, arrest Wole Soyinka

Police fired tear gas to disperse an anti-government demonstration in Lagos on Saturday and briefly arrested dozens of protesters, including the Nobel prize winning author Wole Soyinka. A coalition of opposition, human rights and civic groups under the name of Citizens Forum, called the march which began at Campos Square on Lagos Island. Many of the 500 or more protesters bore aloft banners and placards demanding President Olusegun Obasanjo’s resignation and describing last year’s elections that gave him a second term in office as fraudulent. The demonstration took place against a background of rising religious tension in Nigeria, following the massacre of more than 600 Muslims in the small town of Yelwa in Plateau State on 2 May and reprisal killings a week later of at least 36 Christians in Kano, the largest town in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria. Heavily armed riot police blocked the route of the protesters in Lagos on Saturday and shot tear gas canisters into their midst, forcing them to scatter. The marchers included human rights lawyer Gani Fawehinmi and doctor Beko Ransome-Kuti, a leading human rights activist, as well as Soyinka. They defied the tear gas and the afternoon drizzle and re-grouped to continue the march but were then arrested by police. All those detained were later freed without charge. “We were protesting the increasing dictatorship in this country, which is bordering on fascism,” Soyinka told IRIN after his release. “We will continue to protest the manipulation of elections, the blatant abuse of the electoral protest which has put people in power,” he added. Soyinka accused the police of “very deliberately” using tear gas on peaceful protesters. Opposition and civil society groups in Nigeria accuse Obasanjo’s government not only of rigging general elections last year and local elections in March, but also of implementing policies that have left an ever increasing number of Nigerians impoverished, heightening ethnic and religious violence. They are demanding Obasanjo’s resignation and the replacement of his administration by a government of national unity which would organise a “sovereign national conference” to work out a new constitution for the country of 126 million people. Police said the protest march was not allowed because the organisers failed to obtain a police permit as required by the Public Order Act. The organisers countered that the constitutional guarantee of freedom of assembly overides the act, making a police permit unnecessary. On 3 May, separate protest marches called by the opposition in the capital, Abuja, and the biggest city, Lagos, were disrupted by the police for the same reasons. However, opposition groupings say they will continue their planned series of demonstrations and rallies until their demands are met. “Every group has its own list of demands, but one thing on which we're resolved is to protect the democracy of this country,” said Soyinka. A critic of successive military regimes in Nigeria, Soyinka won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature. The playwright, poet and novelist was detained for two years during the 1967-70 Nigerian civil war for his criticism of the government and was forced into exile between 1994 and 1998 for his criticism of late military ruler Gen. Sani Abacha.