Opadokun advocates protests for political justice

Leader of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), Chief Ayo Opadokun, has called for street action to achieve political justice in the country. The political activist made the call yesterday while delivering a lecture on ‘Political Injustice’ at the 2019 National Civil Leadership Summit at Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State.

The event themed ‘Leadership For Societal Justice’, which commenced on Tuesday, ends today. Opadokun maintained that political justice would continue to elude the country because of its warped and skewed political structure. He added that Nigeria, touted as a federal state, operates a unitary system.

“Political justice is impossible in Nigeria. It has remained a pipe dream because the prolonged reign of military dictatorship occasioned gross abuse of human rights, devaluation of human dignity, repression and oppression of social critics, so much that the average Nigerian, who is pre-occupied with sourcing for his daily bread, had virtually capitulated and/or joined the ‘owners’ of the country in the popular music of ‘if you can’t beat them, you join them.’

“Political justice in Nigeria from our colonial masters till date has, therefore, remained an aspiration, a mirage of an expectation that has turned out to be extremely difficult to accomplish because the struggle is between two major divides of unequal status; the British and their successors (civil and military),” said he.

The Offa-born activist restated that Nigeria would only change course to make political justice a public policy “when the citizens are ready to educate, inform, conscientious and mobilize others to take street action to express their feeling about government’s non-performance.”

According to him, whenever any government discovers that 1,000 to 10,000 people have started street action, agitating for the reversal of a government policy or asking government to step down as a result of misgovernance, corruption of various kinds or misuse of the coercive instrument of government, it will be forced to listen to public outcry.

Secretary of the planning committee, Mr. Toba Adaramola, said the essence of the event was to bring role models together to share their experience.

“The idea is to bring the best hands to appeal to the minds of the people and the sense of those going into politics as well as change the orientation to let them know what they stand for,” he said.