Free Nigeria Movement, a group of young people, has urged the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom to immediately impose visa bans on individuals responsible for the violence during the just-finished elections.
The young people demanded that the "UK and US governments remove the citizenship" of individuals who funded thugs to intimidate and obstruct the presidential election voting process.
On Monday in Abuja, they protested outside the British High Commission and the American Embassy.
The protesters demanded sanctions against Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, as well as all state electoral commissioners and other INEC officials who they claimed were involved in the alleged illegality that occurred during the 2023 election in order to express their displeasure with the presidential election's outcome.
Moses Ogidi-Paul, the group's convener, called on the Nigerian government to compensate all those who were harmed or prevented from voting in the general elections of 2023 while speaking to journalists during the protest.
"On February 25, 2023, Nigerians flocked to their voting places with one goal in mind: to cast their ballots and select the country's new leaders," he stated.
"Never has a citizen in either public or private service so severely mistreated our democracy. Prof. Yakubu Mahmoud has set a standard for impunity that will take many years of electoral greatness for our nation to lower.
He had promised the world at Chatham House and Nigerians that this was not the electronic transmission. Prof. Yakubu Mahmoud has mistreated Nigerians' right to free speech and lied to them. We declare him to be untrustworthy and demand that he be fired right now and charged.
"We, therefore, call on President Muhammadu Buhari to initiate processes and procedures that will bring Nigeria under the control of an interim government pending the resolution of all litigation pertaining to the conduct of the February 25 presidential election," the letter reads. "His commitment to free and fair elections is engraved in the legacy of the Electoral Act 2022."
