*March Lagos House of Assembly
*Demand an emergency session on insecurity
A coalition of 19 civil society organisations have asked the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Honourable Mudashiru Obasa, to convene an emergency session of the Assembly on the state of insecurity in Nigeria and particularly in Lagos.
The groups also want the Speaker to convey the feelings and frustrations of Nigerians on the security situation to President Muhammadu Buhari being the chief security officer of the nation, with a view to coming up with a solution to the problem.
The demands were made on Friday May 28, 2021 when the groups marched on the Lagos House of Assembly, Alausa-Ikeja carrying placards with various inscriptions on the state of insecurity and killings of individuals including security personnel across Nigeria.
Earlier before marching to the Lagos State House of Assembly, the Lagos procession march which kicked off at Under Bridge Ikeja was addressed by various leaders of civil society groups decrying the killings and spate of insecurity across the country. The marchers distributed fliers and handbills to motorists as they moved along.
Speaking to the crowd of marchers, the Executive Director, Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), Akinbode Oluwafemi, decried the spate of insecurity and called on the government to act to save the country from being overtaken by bandits.
Convened by CAPPA in conjunction with 18 other groups, the march culminated in the delivery of a petition which was received by representatives of the House led by Deputy Speaker, Sanni Eshinloku after an initial refusal to allow the protesters into the pavilion built for the purpose of meeting with the public.
Oluwafemi said the decision of the groups to mark the day of mourning was to draw the attention of the lawmakers to the situation and urge them to address the situation urgently.
Vice President of the Joint Action Front (JAF), Achike Chude cautioned that the nation’s drift into anarchy will ultimately consume all-alike and wondered why those at the helm of affairs at state and federal levels continue to handle the matter with levity and act in nonchalance.
The petition titled Urgent Need to Address Grave Insecurity Situation as Nigerians Mourn noted that Nigeria’s struggle with inordinate and escalating insecurity rooted in mass atrocities continued unabated with the figures in 2020 reaching about 4,556 killings, a significant increase beyond the 2019 figure which was 3188.
The petition reads in part: “The pattern of mass atrocities across the country continues to bear regional nuances, but the lines are increasingly getting blurred. Insurgency, pillages, and communal attacks characterize the major forms of atrocities in the North, while rival gang attacks, killings from mob actions, extrajudicial killings, politically motivated killings, and mob lynching, so-called unknown gunmen attacks and herdsmen attacks have become the order of the day in the south.”
The coalition therefore urged the Lagos State House of Assembly to hold a joint session with federal representatives from the State to come up with a unified position on the state of security in the country. They also asked the lawmakers to commence citizens’ engagement including townhall meetings on specific security challenges in their respective constituencies with a view to arriving at workable and inclusive solutions.
Some of the groups that signed the petition and engaged in the march are Centre for Children’s Health Education, Orientation and Protection (CEE-Hope), Center for Dignity, Centre for Human and Socio-Economic Rights (CHSR), Education Rights Campaign, BudgIT, Global Rights, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) , Spaces 4 Change, and Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC) among others.
