#June12Protest: Gunshots as police disrupt peaceful protest in Ijebu-Ode

Some police officers in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, have repeatedly opened fire on peaceful protesters in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State.

Ijebu-Ode is one of the major cities of Ogun State, which is the home state of the late M.K.O Abiola, the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, in whose memory June 12 was chosen as Nigeria’s Democracy Day.

PREMIUM TIMES obtained a video clip capturing what appears to be a scene of protesters taking to their heels as gunshots sounded in the background.

It happened at Lagos Garage, Ijebu-Ode on Saturday, our reporter was reliably informed.

“They requested that protesters should leave and we resisted. Before we could say Jack, they opened fire to scare away the protesters,” an eyewitness confirmed.

The state police spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi, did not respond to calls and text messages as of the time of filing this report.

There have been reports on assaults on protesters in various parts of Nigeria.

PREMIUM TIMES reports earlier that a BBC reporter, identified as Micheal, was attacked by a police officer at Mokola in Ibadan, Oyo State.

The reporter, who works with BBC Pidgin, was slapped while trying to record the harassment of protesters by security operatives.

He was attacked by a police officer identified as S. A. Oke. The officer also seized the reporter’s phone.

This newspaper reports that many Nigerians have taken over the streets in peaceful protests against bad governance, public corruption, other forms of maladministration and the worsening state of insecurity across the country.

Like the #EndSARS protests which rocked Nigeria in October 2020, the June 12 protest, organised by some civil society organisations and activists with no particular central leadership structure, is billed to hold simultaneously in different cities across the various states of the federation, including Lagos State, Nigeria’s economic hub, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

With the June 12 protest deliberately planned to coincide with Nigeria’s Democracy Day, the organisers have called on Nigerians to boycott official activities lined up by authorities to commemorate the day, and join the demonstrations in their localities.

The protest, which organisers started planning weeks ago, aims to pressure the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to take on the responsibility of providing good governance and security of lives and property of Nigerians.

The last one week before the protest has seen heightened campaigns about the protests on various social media platforms following the June 4 ban on Twitter operations by the Buhari administration.