Police in Nigeria reversed course and now say that protesters are free to demonstrate in the capital Abuja.  This comes after the uproar caused by the police commissioner’s ban on demonstrations calling on the government to do more to recover the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamist insurgents.

Commissioner Joseph Mbu on Monday appeared to forbid protests, claiming that they posed “a serious security threat” and because of intelligence that there was “infiltration and hijack of otherwise innocuous and peaceful protests by some criminal elements having links with insurgents”.   Past protests often targeted the perceived indifference of President Goodluck Jonathan. 

Leaders of the #BringBackOurGirls movement said they would challenge the ban in court, and on Tuesday filed a complaint.  Mbu changed his tune on Tuesday.

“The Force has not issued any order banning peaceful assemblies or protests anywhere in Nigeria,” Mba said, adding the caveat that “citizens are strongly advised to reconsider their positions on the issues of rallies and protests in (Federal Capital Territory) until the existing threats are appropriately neutralized.”

The Islamist group Boko Haram kidnapped the teenage girls from their boarding school in Chibok town in Nigeria’s northeast on 14 April.  Boko Haram’s leader threatened to sell them across the border as slaves.