Nigeria is once again engaging in a needless acquisition of negative publicity around the world with television stations and news agencies Tuesday broadcasting images and stories of government security agents, some in hood, blocking elected legislators and journalists from gaining access to the National Assembly.
It is at a time the government itself is making effusive appeals for the assembly to reconvene.
The global news agency Reuters which has a worldwide television service broadcast a headline story titled, “Nigerian security forces temporarily block lawmakers from entering parliament.”
Other global media agencies have also been publishing similar stories about Nigeria, the failure of government to respect court orders and increasing resort to use of armed security agents to emasculate the legislature in Africa’s most populous nation .
The drama began earlier Tuesday when the plain cloth security men began blocking access to the assembly as members of the opposition PDP gathered at the gate as news made the round that there was a plot to forcefully remove senate President Bukola Saraki and his deputy.
Some of the commentators wondered why the security agents can stop the elected representatives of the people can be stopped from entering the people’s parliament.
The Reuters report said an aide to Senate President Bukola Saraki was among a number of people who tweeted pictures and video from outside the National Assembly building. One showed the arrival of police outside the building and another showed a man, described as a senator, talking to a man flanked by an armed man.
Saraki, whose Senate role makes him Nigeria’s third most senior politician, is among a group of lawmakers who have quit President Muhammadu Buhari’s ruling party over the last few weeks and joined the main opposition.
The defections precede presidential and legislative elections early next year.
Buhari plans to seek a second term in the February 2019 presidential vote but the loss of influential figures and divisions within his party could cost him support from powerful patronage networks and among voters.
