Stop brutal attacks in Osun State

Recently, the Students’ Security Committee of the Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife received pathetic reports of sexual harassment and physical molestation meted on innocent students residing outside the university campus. Beforehand, our attention had been drawn to the activities of Osun State’s Swift Action Squad (SAS), who have illegally extended the constitutional framework of the armed forces and the police from guaranteeing the security of lives and property to incorporation of ‘cultural values’. Under the influence of security uniform and government ill-sanctioned policy, these security personnel have been battering, insulting and molesting innocent Nigerians on the premise that they do not meet their ‘tastes’ of good dress code, walking posture, acquisition of electronic properties, good human physique and other human factors. Sadly enough, these actions, which are product of a blatant legal fallacy, have been extended to innocent and defenseless students. First we reject the continuation of such actions. We term these actions sanctioned by the Osun State government and perpetrated by security personnel as illegal, unwarranted and superfluous.

Our rejection of this unnecessary and unlawful military attacks on ordinary citizens, especially students, is predicated on reasons ranging from legal logic to moral fallacies. Obviously the Nigeria constitution has made no error in defining the operational frame-work of military and paramilitary institutions in the country. The law has made it the primary responsibility of the armed forces to defend territorial sovereignty and the police and other similar constitutionally recognized policing institutions the responsibility of maintaining law and order. All these derived from the organic law of the land! Now the question is where the state government got the locus standi to put into security issues of private morality.

Glaringly, the law of the land has never specified which clothes are legal to wear or which hairstyle. Nor has it stated that youths should not own electronic properties. Is it a security threat for females to be naturally endowed? Then why are innocent Nigerians continually battered, molested and insulted for all these reasons when the security personnel lack the legal basis to ‘correct’ these things? Apparently the government action is a legal contradiction because it makes the government to act contrary to the law it has sworn to preserve by infringing on the rights of citizens instead of protecting them. It is even interesting that these actions are being perpetrated at a time when the Inspector General of Police has officially banned the ill-conceived roadblocks. It is vital to remind this law-breaking ‘security’ outfit that it is illegal and unconstitutional for security agents to arrest defenseless citizens without a warrant backed by the law, or a prior knowledge of the alleged crime one has committed.

We are not also oblivious of the fact that the government has fallaciously predicated its action on moral and cultural values instead of the law, from which its legitimacy is derived in the first instance. Still, appealing to moral values does not save the uncalled for actions of the SAS from illogicalities and gross superfluity. Had these policy makers considered the historical development of cultural values, they would have clearly acknowledged that cultural cum moral values are not static and that they vary with locations. Some decades ago in this part of the country it would have been considered eccentric to see ladies in trousers, but what do we have now? A wave of change in cultural mentality and norms! For the government to be in a subjective position to determine whether a dress code is right or wrong is such a display of idleness. It only translates to subverting the transiting nature of cultural values. In the face of global civility, the action of the state government to determine cultural values by use of force is undemocratic.

Good Nigerians who believe in democratic principles and the rule of law should reject this tyrannical action that is capable of turning the control of states over use of force fascist. A situation where a governor would wake up one day and deploy policemen on the street to enforce a grey uniform on civilians should be forestalled at this early stage of military tendencies in the Osun State.

We demand that the SAS activities be checked and limited to the set constitutional framework guidelines for security personnel. We also warn that continual assault of any kind on students, or SAS movement on campus would not be taken slightly by the great Ife students. We hence call on peace loving Nigerians to call the Osun State government to order, before its action forces students to take radical steps against it.
In conclusion, we are not opposed to good security in Osun State, but we are rather opposed to the use of security apparatus to intimidate innocent workers, students and the poor. We therefore advise the governor to concentrate on providing the good people of Osun State with security, not enforcing morals.

SIGNED

Samuel Adeolu (Com. Sammie), Chairman, Students’ Security Committee