DAILY TRUST
The recent release of protesters detained in connection with the August 1 to 10 #EndBadGovernance protests in some parts of the country has raised fresh issues concerning the propriety of the arrests, detention, trial and treatment of suspects while in custody as well as the sudden interests shown by state governments in the case.
It also questions the reaction of parents who all the while remained largely silent until the uproar that greeted the arraignment of the now released protesters began.
No fewer than 114 persons were arrested from Kano and Kaduna states in connection with the August protests and taken to Abuja, where they were detained for close to three months before they were arraigned at a Federal High Court in the Federal Capital Territory.
The arraignment exposed the conditions under which the suspects were held and the demographics which revealed that 32 of them were under 18 years of age.
While the protests held in many other parts of the country, analysts say it is curious how only suspects from Kano and Kaduna were brought to Abuja for trial.
The inclusion of minors among the detainees, whose ages were discernible even from their outlook and the length of time taken to arraign them before their plea for bail could be heard, comes to many as puzzling.
The protesters were charged with treason as they were alleged to have held Russian flags and openly called on the military to intervene in the political system.
Most of the minors who spoke with our correspondents said they were arrested at various points with some picked up in circumstances not even in connection to the protests.
Some of the parents of the detainees said they did not know where to look for their sons and they had given up on locating them until they saw them on the pages of newspapers and on social media platforms.
Kano: ‘How we were arrested and our experiences in detention’
Seventeen-year-old Mustapha Ibrahim, who is currently on a sick bed in a hospital in Kano, said his arrest was just a matter of ill luck as he was picked up on his way to buy rice for his family to eat on that fateful day.
“I was arrested while I was on an errand to buy rice for my mother. I never knew about any protest, but they arrested me on my way,” he said.
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