Dear Colleagues and friends,

This is important. Use and spread it. The threats are most alarming, as we prepare to hit the streets tomorrow Monday Jan 9 in the Niger Delta region.

Morning comes,

Anyakwee

Niger Delta Civil Society Coalition(NDCSC): Press Statement  - Port Harcourt, January 7, 2012

RIGHT OF ASSEMBLY AND ASSOCIATION

Niger Delta Civil Society Coalition(NDCSC) is most concerned about the unsustainable, unconstitutional disposition of the Nigeria Police Force, always showing itself, simply as a political tool of a wicked  government, rather than a civil force put in place to serve the citizens and their interests. This ugly disposition has once more appeared through series of threats and actual harm,  in regard to the recent and absolute need by civil society organisations and labour unions to express their disgust over the federal government’s genocidal policy of shifting their burden of  political corruption, through the removal of nonexistent fuel subsidy, on the poor majority of citizens, that have sacrificed so much in the last 10 years of transition, without dividends, inspite of the huge wealth of the nation.

NDCSC, for the avoidance of doubt wishes to remind the Inspector  General of Police and his Commissioners across the core states of the Niger Delta region, that the Nigeria Police is the creation of the Constitution, not the President of any regime in Nigeria, as such is required to serve and protect the letters of the constitution to the full.

NDCSC, therefore calls their attention and observation to the following minimum standards of civilization:

1.    The right to assembly and association is the right to gather in groups, public or private, to discuss, protest or petition for those ideas in society. The rights are contained in various international and regional instruments on human rights and fundamental freedoms, which Nigeria is a contracting party. It is clearly enunciated in Chapter Four of the Nigerian Constitution. They have been long considered and agreed as fundamental to the functioning of a liberal democracy and the effective mobilization of citizens of a democracy to proclaim and assert their rights and interests as they understand them.

2.    The right of people to peaceably assemble for lawful purposes existed before the adoption of the Constitution of Nigeria. It is, and always has been, one of the attributes of citizenship under free government, democratic in form, implies a right on the part of the citizens to meet peacefully for consultations in response to public affairs and petition for redress of grievance.

3.    Democracy feeds and thrives upon the thought and action of its citizens. To act upon such thoughts in a democracy implies bringing those thoughts to the attention of the government, which can be effectively done in combination with other citizens. To stifle the association and assembly of citizens is to cut off the feed line, the nourishment of the community. Only totalitarian regimes and their law enforcement outfits fails or refuses to recognize this.

NDCSC, therefore, urges the Nigeria Police authorities, especially those domiciled in the region, to strictly observe  respect for the principles of human rights and fundamental freedoms in regard to Right of Assembly and Association, as consecrated in the United Nations instruments, including the provisions in the UN Standard Minimum Rules for Law Enforcement Officials, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and the Nigerian Constitution, as they perform their duty of citizenship in the course of the justified protests by members of civil society and labour unions, against the back drop of the latest heinous genocidal policy of  nonexistent fuel subsidy removal. Let it remain seriously instructive that effective compliance with these principles of participation in public affairs, will effectively contribute to the maintenance of peace and diminution of national tensions.  The reverse will intensify same most dangerously. The police must be held responsible for any deprivation, locally and internationally.

Signed:

Anyakwee Nsirimovu

Chair