By George Ozalla
Barrister Kelechi Nwokeogu, no doubt is a vibrant young energetic lawyer, legislative consultant, policy analyst, legislative draftsman and well experienced youth leader who fully participated at the just concluded emergency Town Hall Meeting convened by the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Dr Tajudeen Abbas and co-funded by the European Union, supported by YIAGA Africa and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation.
Well articulated and eloquent Barrister Nwokeogu who used the medium to bare his mind to a select media correspondents when accosted at the Temporary Chamber of the House of Representatives, National Assembly Complex Abuja, venue of the Town Hall meeting.
While fielding questions from newsmen in order to ascertain his take on the planned nationwide protest and the town hall meeting vis a vis government’s persuasive interventions so far to avert the proposed nationwide protests slated for Thursday 1st, August, 2024.
Nwokeogu first and foremost unequivocally admitted the existential glaring fact of the harsh economic situation biting so hard in the country and therefore urged government to seriously rise to the occassion to address genuine demands of citizens as it concerns their basic welfare as enshrined in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, he went further to state categorically that citizens also has the right to peaceful assembly and protests while at the same time taking into cognizance the rights of others.
Barrister Nwokeogu who hails from Imo State, South East Nigeria stated that the planned protest scheduled for tomorrow is a fundamental right of citizens of Federal Republic of Nigeria to engage in such protest to show their dissatisfaction with happenings and of course, the state of the nation which should be encouraged or supported by any well meaning individual, he went further to state that however; while we believe that it is their fundamental right, it is also important to note that there is no right that is without any form of limitation, there is also corresponding responsibility to every right of Nigerian citizens he enthused.
And, I want to say at this point that if Nigerian youths wants to go to the street tomorrow to protest, it must be a peaceful demonstration, violence should be eschewed, killings, burning of people’s property and of course, taking of human lives should not also be seen in any form, so that we don’t have a repeat of what we experienced during the endsars protests and again on the part of government, it’s our expectation that they will not roll out armoured tankers and guns to intimidate the Nigerian youths that may hit the roads tomorrow to protest if the protest should hold or continue to hold, the Nigerian government should make sure that the Nigerian youths who should be on the road are protected and given maximum protection that they deserve to express themselves and of course, call for urgent interventions from both the national assembly and other arms of government.
Some of these things that the youth and of course Nigerians are agitating for should be critically looked into.
Barrister Nwokeogu later delved into local government autonomy matter and praised the Supreme court for its landmark judgement, according to him,
“I want to also say that further steps should be taken to ensure that this financial autonomy that the Federal Government through the judgement of the Supreme court delivered will continue to stay and one of the ways to ensure the incentives of the good side of this financial autonomy is also to ensure the implementation of what I called political autonomy in the sense that the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) should also be empowered through a legislative action, through the amendment of the relevant electoral laws in Nigeria to empower Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) to be in charge of conducting local government elections across all the states of the federation, because if we have the financial autonomy and various states electoral commissions continues to conduct these elections for Nigerians, definitely we have a saying that: “he who pays the piper dictates the tune”.
In fact, state governors will also have a way of influencing various electoral commissions to conduct it in a manner that it will only favour particularly the ruling political party in various states, and then again one more important thing we have talked today is how the youths can be encouraged to participate in the electoral process and issues of democratic governance!
“I want to say that it’s only when we have the enabling environment and the political will to make sure political parties do not scare away young talented people with leadership potentials to contest positions by way of high cost of nomination and expression of interests forms we will continue to remain where we are because take for instance Imo State where I come from a political party is charging about one million naira for counsellorship position and as high as three million naira for chairmanship position,” he concluded.
