Baba Aye's

You are a Co-Convener of the Coalition for Revolution (CORE) that organised peaceful protests across the country for a revolution that was expected to usher in a positive change in the lives of Nigerians. What is the state of CORE and the other affiliates now? The series of peaceful protests you are talking about comprise the #RevolutionNow campaign, which was launched on 5 August 2019 with a nationwide #DayOfRage protest. The campaign helped to catalyse the reawakening of a spirit of revolt against the oppressive rule of the APC in particular and the exploiter ruling class and their repressive apparatus in general. It contributed significantly to igniting the #EndSARS rebellion in October 2020. A lot has happened since, with both the coalition and its affiliates. CORE unfurled the campaign in the wake of a resolution adopted by the African Action Congress (AAC). The Take It Back movement of the AAC, as you know, was a member-organisation of CORE. In fact, it was one of the two blo...

Students of the Federal College of Education (Technical) Akoka declared 18 February as Liberation Day, forty years ago. On that day, the autocratic Provost of the school, Dr Auta was humbled and made to reinstate the students union which he had banned five years earlier in the wake of the Great Anti-SAP Revolt. Four student leaders from the University of Lagos, Akoka came to invite him to the university campus close by, at the behest of the FCE(T) students: Omoyele "Sho" Sowore, Tope "Authority" Ajeigbe, Lanre & yours truly.  But the journey to that day started five months earlier with the resistance of 17 students at the college on teaching practice. These students, who included Tayo Aderinola, were denied their Teaching Practice allowance, even though this was budgeted for. And they asked questions.  Auta's response was to suspend them. But they would not simply give up. They formed a group called G17 with the help of Gbenga Fakoya, a former student and me...

With increase in kidnapping and other crimes, the Afenifere leaders have just suggested a multi-level policing in the country. To what extent do you agree with the Afenifere leaders? Do you see this yielding meaningful results considering the existing Police structure? Kidnapping has become a major industry of what you can describe as the insecurity sector of the national economy. You might want to recall that in the first half of 2021 alone, over N10 billion which amounted to $19.96 million at the time, was recorded as ransoms paid to free over 2,000 kidnapped people. This did not stop the deaths of about 10 percent of these victims. We thought things were bad at that time. But compared to now, that was child’s play. This nefarious industry now has different scales, large-scale, medium scale, small scale and even micro. You tend to hear of those big women and men or increasingly so middle-class people that are kidnapped. But even welders, cobblers, barbers and other poor artisans ...

Angry youths took over the streets in cities and towns across Nigeria in October, calling for disbandment of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police Force, whose operatives were trained and supplied equipment by the British government from 2016 to 2020. The largely peaceful protests were drowned in blood on Tuesday 20th October. In the wake of the massacre, there were violent clashes with scores of police stations torched, several jailbreaks and a festival of ‘looting’. The restoration of law and order in the dying days of the month might however not translate into a restoration of the pre-EndSARS normality in the country. SARS was established in 1992. Its plainclothes operatives were meant to infiltrate robbery gangs to nip their operations in the bud. By the turn of the century they started apprehending online scammers as cybercrime became common.  Young men with tattoos or dreadlocks automatically became ‘419’ (online scam) suspects. Having an iPhon...