One of the essential ingredients of Constitutional Democracy is the existence of virile opposition where dissenting voices are not stifled. In the build-up to the February 6, 2017, protest against economic hardship in the country organized by Enough is Enough Coalition, also known as One Voice Nigeria, the police deployed all kinds of tactics to frustrate the protest which had hip-hop icon, Tuface Idibia as the brand artiste.

But for a chance encounter with eagle-eyed Customs officers, another batch of 661 illegal high-calibre rifles would have successfully entered the Nigerian heartland and deploy to worsen the already high rate of insecurity in the country.

Another case of military brutality made its ignoble outing along New Market Road in Onitsha, the commercial nerve centre of Anambra State on Tuesday, February 7, 2017. This time, it was a couple of soldiers in full military gear, mercilessly whipping and dragging around a hapless, physically-challenged man, while a crowd of onlookers pleaded with them not to kill him.

FOR years (particularly the past twenty months), armed hoodlums masquerading as “herdsmen” have been attacking farming communities in the North Central, South East, South-South and South West areas of the country. Thousands of people have been killed; some of their victims were either slaughtered like animals or strafed to death with assault firearms.

The tension generated by the rampage of armed herdsmen throughout the country, especially Southern Kaduna, heightened recently when the Governor of Ekiti State, Mr Ayo Fayose, prevented a Christian cleric, Apostle Johnson Suleiman, from being arrested by operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS) in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, after a crusade.