Police grant access after initial seal off of venue hosting Soyinka, Falana, others

The Nigeria Police Force has granted access to the venue for a symposium, tagged, ‘Democracy, State Repression and the State of Insecurity in Nigeria,’ where Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka; and human rights activist/Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, are currently speaking on the growing spate of insecurity in the country.

The venue was initially sealed off by operatives of the Nigerian Police Force.

Reports say the venue was opened when Mr. Falana who arrived the venue for the symposium, met the venue on lock down by the force and subsequently demanded its opening,.

Reports say Falana said the move by the police was a violation of their fundamental Human Rights but police officials later informed him that they were only doing their job to ensure miscreants do not take advantage of the event.

The police however allowed people access into the venue of the symposium with every attendee subjected to a thourogh search.

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While earlier reacting to by the move by the police to block the venue for the symposium, tagged, ‘Democracy, State Repression and the State of Insecurity in Nigeria,’ conveners of the event, Coalition for Revolution, CORE, said the move to seal off the venue was unfortunate.

In a tweet posted by Revolutionary Towolawi Jamiu @jharmo, the symposium was organised to be, “A working consultative assembly of activists and organisations against the draconian development and the detention of scores of activists in the DSS detention cells.”

According to CORE, the event which was supposed to hold at 46, Ibijoke Street, Oluyole bus-stop, Oregun, Lagos was to dwell on a variety of demands from the Federal Government including: “economy for all,” “total system change,” “rationalisation of power sector and the probe of its privatisation,” among others.

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