UPDATE ON THE DETENTION OF OSOGBO 7: DUNNEX AND TWO OTHERS NOW RELEASED FOLLOWING PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL OUTCRY
6/08/20

You will recall that the Movement for a Socialist Alternative (MSA) issued a call yesterday for solidarity action towards the release of Dunnex Samuel, a member of the MSA and student leader at OAU, who was arrested along with Mandate, Gift and four others, and detained by the Osogbo's section of the Department of State Services (DSS). They were arrested for converging for a #RevolutionNow protest in Osogbo, in about the same manner other protesters were arrested, dehumanised and looted by military men across the country. The seven and other protesters were opposing the rate of killings, insecurity, illegal arrests and detention, and poverty, which have taken to astronomic proportions under the Buhari's regime.

The seven protesters spent the night in the DSS custody, in cells notoriously acclaimed to be hell-holes, for exercising their democratic and lawful right.

Dunnex and two other detainees have now been released. This was following legal intervention from human rights lawyers and the upwelling of public anger against their continuous detention. Remarkably, #FreeDunnex trended on twitter and other social media platforms throughout yesterday; this shows the furious reaction the DSS action generated among average Nigerians. Socialist politicians like Mick Barry, of the Irish Parliament, and other socialists from Germany and the US also demonstrated a true spirit of international solidarity with the oppressed people of the world by making bold statements for the immediate release of the protesters. In particular, an Osogbo-based socialist-lawyer, Alfred Adegoke, played a commendable role in representing the detainees and securing the release of the three, which is worth mentioning.

However, the agitation for the release of the detainees is not over until the four activists remaining in unlawful detention are released from the Osogbo DSS hell-holes. We call on Nigerians and the international friends of human emancipation to now raise more loudly the agitation for their immediate release rather than relenting on account of this small victory.

The illusion of strength displayed by the Nigerian government yesterday, we hold, was possible because the vanguard of the oppressed people, the organised working class, has not yet merged its strength with the anger and passion of Nigerian youths and other oppressed people. We call on the labour movement to take its rightful position at the head of the emerging class struggle in Nigeria. The time is now appropriate for the merging of forces to bring to a halt the oppression and grand exploitation that Nigerians face in their workplaces, and the killings and banditry and corruption they suffer.

We place a call on the labour movement to call a day general strike against the oppression that Buhari’s regime is inflicting on the working people and poor. Now that the cross-sections of capitalist-ruling class in Nigeria have proven itself incapable of addressing fundamental economic and social issues, because of the man-eat-man nature of every capitalist society, it is important the working and poor people build a united and enduring struggle to displace capitalism, then construct a society that can seize social wealth to reposition our education, health, and industrial sectors.

Once again, we call on Nigerian workers, students, and oppressed people to join their voices with others demanding the release of the remaining four activists incarcerated in DSS cells. We also challenge the Nigerian left, socialists, and the labour movement to discuss the next stage of the struggle to reconstruct the country along lines that can abolish the artificial poverty about the country.

Signed,

Dagga Tolar
Spokesperson, MSA