In April 2014, an unwavering All Progressives Congress (APC) supporter, Japhet Omojuwa, led a march to protest the tragedy of citizens who died during a nationwide recruitment test conducted by the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) on Saturday, March 15, 2014.
A stampede among job seekers taking a recruitment test in the national stadium in the federal capital territory, Abuja, and many other centres nationwide had left about 18 job seekers dead and others critically injured.
The Minister of Interior at the time, Abba Moro, said the deaths and injuries occurred at five locations around the country. According to him, the applicants “lost their lives through their impatience.”
Tens of thousands had turned up to take the test. In Lagos and Abuja alone, 56,000 and 69,000 applicants, respectively, sat for the job test.
Although the unemployment rate in Nigeria at the time stood at just 23.9%, more than half a million people were invited to apply for fewer than 5,000 vacancies at the NIS.
In a reaction, popular blogger and staunch APC supporter, Japhet Omojuwa, mobilised some other loyal party supporters pretending to be concerned activists for a protest against Abba Moro, demanding his prosecution and sack by the Goodluck Ebele Jonathan administration.
To achieve this, Omojuwa, alongside Azeenarh Mohammed, Uche Briggs, Ikeolu Senbanjo, Tosin Adex, Calvin Lawan and Johnson Ogunmola attempted to dump seventeen coffins at the Minister’s house and office in Abuja.
Before this, they had first gathered at the Area 1 roundabout in the Garki District of the capital to plant a flag before marching towards the Federal Ministry of Interior, located about a kilometre away, to deliver the coffins, representing the dead applicants, to Abba Moro.
But while the protesters were waiting for the arrival of the 17 coffins, security officials arrived, ordering them to leave.
Omojuwa and the protesters, however, refused and instead, waving a big Nigerian flag, marched towards the Area 3 Bridge about one kilometre away.
In a speech before he was arrested, Omojuwa had said, “We are here to protest the murder of 17 applicants, who died during the Immigration recruitment stampede.
“We are waiting for one of us, Azeernah, to deliver the coffins made for the murdered applicants; we will take them to the immigration office.”
They were, however, released a few hours after their arrest and detention, and their phones were handed back to them.
An upbeat Omojuwa was quoted as saying, “They did not molest us; indeed, the SSS folks were very professional.”
After this unsuccessful attempt, Omojuwa and Azeenarh later went to the private residence of the Minister with a bucket of red paint to inscribe “murder” on the floor of his entrance. They were never arrested or molested for this
Meanwhile, an outrage followed the arrest of the protesters as many Nigerians said the clampdown on protesters amounted to a breach of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of peaceful protest.
A former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, while demanding the immediate release of the arrested persons, described their arrest as an attempt to gag the citizens from exercising their rights to peaceful protest.
“Learning to bear the pain of citizens’ protest is the hallmark of democratic maturity. Our government must learn this. You can’t gag citizens. I expect that officials of the Department of State Services have an acute sense of how angry citizens are, about the immigration tragedy, and so will nip anything that fuels it more!” she wrote on her Twitter page.
