Activist and Sahara Reporters publisher Omoyele Sowore challenged President Bola Tinubu to rescue the Oyo school abduction victims within 24 hours or resign from office during the Democracy Day protests in Abuja on June 12, 2026, as police fired teargas to disperse protesters at the demonstration site in the Federal Capital Territory.
Sowore, who led a contingent of activists and protesters through parts of Abuja, delivered a charged speech in which he linked the democracy that Nigerians were marking on June 12 with the immediate duty of the government to protect citizens from kidnapping and terrorism. He said a government that could not secure the freedom of abducted schoolchildren within three weeks had forfeited its moral authority to celebrate democracy.
Police fired teargas at the crowd as tensions rose between demonstrators and security personnel at a point during the march, with videos of the incident circulating widely on social media and generating sharp condemnation from civil society groups. SERAP, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, described the teargas deployment against peaceful protesters as unacceptable and demanded an immediate investigation into the conduct of the security officers involved.
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SERAP Demands Probe of Security Conduct
SERAP Executive Director Kolawole Oluwadare said in a statement that the use of force against citizens exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest on Democracy Day was deeply troubling and set a dangerous precedent for state responses to civic expression. He called on the Inspector-General of Police to identify and sanction the officers responsible for the teargas deployment.
The police confirmed that teargas was deployed but said it was a response to a situation that was becoming disorderly, with some protesters allegedly blocking roads and causing property damage. However, multiple eyewitness accounts and video evidence suggested the majority of the Abuja protest was peaceful before the dispersal.
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Furthermore, the teargas incident provided opposition politicians and civil society with additional ammunition to criticise the administration’s attitude toward dissent. Datti Baba-Ahmed described the action as a throwback to the practices of military governance, while Femi Falana said democracy meant nothing if citizens could not protest freely on the day set aside to celebrate it. Meanwhile, Sowore separately criticised former Defence Information Director Rabe Abubakar’s death in captivity, saying the killing showed the audacity of bandit networks and demanded accountability. Notably, the Democracy Day protest events have generated the most sustained civic mobilisation against the Tinubu administration since the EndBadGovernance protests of August 2024. Consequently, the administration faces a more organised and vocal opposition in the streets as well as in the courts and legislative chambers heading toward 2027.
ADC Faults National Assembly Democracy Day Recess
In addition, the ADC’s national secretariat issued a statement criticising the National Assembly for going on recess over the Democracy Day holiday without completing pending legislation on security, electoral reform, and the state police constitutional amendment. The party said the recess was an irresponsible use of legislative time at a moment of national crisis. As a result, the ADC is positioning itself as a more accountable opposition voice even as it navigates its own internal difficulties.
