Human rights activist Ibrahim Garba Wala, widely known as IG Wala, has published an open letter addressed to activists Omoyele Sowore and Martins Vincent Otse (VeryDarkMan), explaining why Northern Nigeria cannot join the wave of anti-insecurity protests that swept through major Nigerian cities on Democracy Day.
The letter, dated June 14, 2026, comes days after separate protests were held in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt and other parts of the country, where thousands of Nigerians took to the streets to demand government action against rising insecurity, banditry, and kidnapping across the country.
On Friday, June 12, hundreds of demonstrators under various banners—including Sowore’s Take It Back Movement and VeryDarkMan’s Ratel Movement, marched through Abuja to demand decisive action against rising insecurity, the release of kidnapped school children, and improved governance.
Armed policemen reportedly fired tear gas at protesters marching toward Eagle Square, disrupting what was meant to be a commemoration of the 33rd anniversary of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election .
Sowore, the former presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), was allegedly hit by tear gas at close range and collapsed at the scene, with videos circulating on social media showing supporters rushing to provide assistance .
“Today, operatives of the Nigeria Police Force deployed a strange gas at the protest ground, at close range which entered my lungs and left me struggling to breathe before I eventually collapsed,” Sowore later wrote on his official Facebook page .
VeryDarkMan led a separate demonstration around the Defence Headquarters, Airport Road and later Nyanya, demanding immediate government action to rescue kidnapping victims still held captive by terrorists across the country.
Protesters under the banner #NigeriaUniteAgainstTerrorism also marched in Abuja, though organisers of that group distanced themselves from calls for regime change, insisting their mission was solely to demand peace and security .
“We are not asking anybody to leave government. We are not saying an end to any government. But what we are saying here is that Nigeria should live in peace,” one protest leader declared.
The North’s Silence Explained
In his letter addressed to “Comrades from the South,” Wala offers a nuanced explanation for why Northern Nigerians have largely failed to join structured protests against insecurity and bad governance.
IG Wala is a human rights and anti-corruption advocate who has been active in Nigerian civil society for years. In August 2025, he formally declared his support for the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and unveiled The Handshake Movement, a political platform designed to rally Nigerians toward building stronger institutions rather than idolising individual leaders .
More recently, in June 2026, Wala criticised the judiciary over what he described as “impossible bail conditions” granted to former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, arguing that requiring multiple grade level 17 civil servants as sureties and original Certificates of Occupancy for properties in upscale Abuja neighbourhoods amounted to “punitive, pre-trial incarceration” .
But in his latest letter, Wala turns his analysis inward, addressing the structural barriers that prevent Northern street-level protest from achieving the same ideological clarity seen in Southern-led movements.
“The ultimate tragedy of the North is that our streets have learned to replicate the predatory patterns of our leaders,” Wala writes.
According to Wala, when protests break out in Northern cities, “the ideological clarity of the movement collapses instantly into a desperate scramble for calories. A hungry street boy does not see a manifesto, he sees a grain silo, a warehouse, or a storefront. To him, chaos is the only window through which he can forcibly extract what the system has denied him.”
He drew a parallel between elite corruption and survival-driven looting: the political elite see appointments as “a God-given license to loot the public treasury,” while the dispossessed see broken storefronts during protests as momentary opportunities to loot basic commodities. “Both see opportunity only through the lens of taking,” he wrote.
But while the elite remain secure in their high-security enclaves in Abuja, Wala notes that “the fire on our streets only burns down our own local commerce, further decimating the struggling middle class and trapping us deeper in the dust.”
Wala argued that Northern Nigeria’s structural deprivation has been weaponized to inoculate corrupt leaders against organised accountability.
“Because acute hunger bypasses civic discipline every single time, our leaders know they can survive any organic uprising,” he explained. “They know that the moment we attempt to demand better, the sheer volume of economic desperation will turn our protest into an unstructured raid for resources.”
He further argued that leaders “pray for this chaos, because the moment a window is smashed, they instantly rebrand our genuine cries for survival as ‘thuggery,’ ‘vandalism,’ and ‘sponsored lawlessness’ — completely erasing the legitimacy of our pain.”
Wala concludes with a message of solidarity to Southern activists: “We are not indifferent to the chains we wear, we are simply too weakened by design to help you break them.”
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