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It never easy to estimate the depth or extent of damage done by military rule. It's corrosions never go away. It's like we're in a civic #StockholmSyndrome - folks who get trampled by military abuses & misadventure often have an infinitely elastic capacity to ask for more abuse
It's terribly unfortunate that ppl who claim to be "constitutional" lawyers will justify soldiers ransacking a newspaper house, abducting journalists & confiscating computers, none of that procured with a court order or search warrant - basic niceties of rule-constrained process
The constitutional guarantee of free speech allows for limitation but that can only be done "by law reasonably justifiable in a democracy". Soldiers are not law unto themselves & it's not reasonably justifiable in a democracy for soldiers to go abducting ppl or ransacking media
Ppl are looking for all manner of ways to justify what @HQNigerianArmy is doing to @daily_trust. That's unjustifiable. If @daily_trust broke any law, there's @PoliceNG. If they allegedly ran afoul of internal security, there's SSS under the National Security Agencies Act
This isn't the 1st time @HQNigerianArmy is resorting to self-help & military vigilantism. Indeed, it's become a habit. From the #ZariaMassacre in Dec 2015 to the Abuja #ArbaeenMassacre last year, it seems they now consider themselves outlaws. Yet they want to assert law?!
@HQNigerianArmy By the way, many ppl who are incapable of exercising the basic intellectual obligation of reading the @daily_trust on Sunday story, are accusing it of "irresponsible journalism". Yet, when u read it, the only thing u can do is commend the newspaper for outstanding journalism
