Media Rights Agenda (MRA), yesterday, urged Federal Government and security agencies to protect journalists covering the protests against hunger, scheduled to begin today, noting that as citizens exercise their right to protest unpopular government policies, it is imperative that journalists are able to report the events without fear of harassment or violence targeted at them.

In a statement issued in Lagos, yesterday, Programme Officer, MRA, Esther Adeniyi, urged government and security agencies to adopt and implement specific measures to protect journalists during the protests, including ensuring their physical safety, respecting their right to gather information, and preventing any form of intimidation or violence against them.

According to her, the call became necessary following recent events, where journalists faced undue harassment, obstruction, and violence while performing their duties with relevant authorities taking no steps or measures to ensure their safety, including during critical moments of public demonstrations.

Quoting Principle 20 of the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa, adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in November 2019, which it said had been given judicial seal in Nigeria by a Federal High Court in Abuja, MRA said the Government had an obligation to take measures to prevent attacks against journalists and other media practitioners and to take effective legal and other measures to investigate, prosecute and punish perpetrators of such attacks.

MRA sounded the note of caution, just as an Australia-based woman activist, Amuche Nwakor, asked governments and security forces in the country to ensure safety of women, children and the vulnerable, as Nigerians prepared to begin nationwide protests today.

Nwakor, who also called on the organisers of the protests to be civil, peaceful and decorous during the exercise, restated that it was not worth shedding the blood of any individual.

Speaking to The Guardian in Enugu, she stated that protests were part of the weapons allowed in any democracy to ventilate the misgivings of the citizenry on the policies of the government, stressing that it is the duty of those in authority to make it work.

Nwakor, who noted that it was unfortunate that the Federal Government allowed things to get the point of provoking the citizens into embarking on protests, said any responsible government should use it to better the lots of her people.