#ENDSARS Protests: Nigeria Kills Her Youths, Betrays Self

 Consider this teaser please: Could any of President Muhammadu Buhari’s media handlers please explain to us what the President’s nationwide address of last Thurs­day evening achieved? What ex­actly was his main point? What was the main take away point for any one?

See it this way, the nation had been blanketed by a peaceful protest for over 10 days. In those 10 days, no fight was raised by the protesters. No single build­ing was torched. Oh yes, they blocked some roads sometimes, such as the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport junction, Abuja, reduc­ing the traffic into the airport to a trickle.

I encountered them, young ones, starry eyed, gyrating to their own music, calling atten­tion to national woes, the sort that should never have been al­lowed in any country worth that name. I simply turned to the direction I was coming from, executed an hour long trip and entered the Airport from the op­posite direction.

Then on Tuesday night, yes, on that Bloody Tuesday, the army, yes, the Nigerian Army and not a crazy and crazed foreign invad­ers, descended on harmless pro­testers who had been encamped there for the previous 10 days. The result was another event that has darkened the already sooty history of Nigeria’s Hu­man Rights abuse. But this time, Nigeria out did even herself; with no provocation whatsoever, the military opened fire on youthful protesters who had defied the curfew imposed by the Lagos State Governor. No, they were not arrested. No, they were not teargassed. A hail of bullets was trained on them, yes, just like that – in the Federal Republic of Nigeria that is under a democrat­ic government.

Then, when the President got ready to address the nation two days after the massacre, what he left most people with was this: “Sadly, the promptness with which we have acted seemed to have been misconstrued as a sign of weakness and twisted by some for their selfish unpatriotic in­terests”.

Despite whatever could have been on his mind, nothing could have been more rancorous for a nation that had been in mourn­ing two days before his address.

You could analyse that quoted sentence for a decade and come up with unfortunate inferences. The nation had been expecting Buhari to say something worth­while about the Lagos Tollgate Massacre. But he not only refused to mention that sordid event, that unfortunate part of his speech I quoted above made him appear to have been gloating. Could he actually have been suggesting in any way that the government’s attempt to contain the Lekki Toll­gate gathering of protesters was a sign of strength? No, it was not. It was not a sign of strength for soldiers to shoot innocent and unthreatening civilians. It is an unconscionable act.

Viewed another way, that sentence was most unfortunate because, even a day after it was made, Nigeria was still burning. From Wednesday, several spots were on fire and Buhari cannot deny that. With the real protest killed by the shooting of the real protesters, the way became open for hoodlums, who had been kept in check by the genuine protest­ers, and Police stations began to be attacked. It is surprising that neither Buhari nor anyone among his media handlers could understand that it was the gov­ernment’s job to provide security cover for the protesters so that they could not be attacked by hoodlums. It failed to act along that line. The protesters protect­ed themselves until hired hands began to attack them here and there. As the public space be­gan to be reduced against them, the shooting at Lekki, Lagos, happened. The genuine protest evaporated and hoodlums took over. Buhari made his threat on Thursday, on Friday, hoodlums told him by their acts of arson across the nation that was wrong. Even on Saturday, in Garki Area 10, in Abuja, Nigeria, capital city, the Police had to be called in to foil an attempt to loot a store that allegedly contained Covid-19 Palliatives. Were people not dis­turbed from pursuing their legit­imate duties during that time the Police took that action?

Ah, what a shame; all things bright and beautiful, Nigeria kills them all. Last Sunday, I had written that the problem with that much-hated police unit, Spe­cial Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, was the same problem with all Nigerian security (and armed) agencies; impunity. Impunity made the security agencies to deal ruthlessly with citizens like an army of occupation, like a hard-hearted colonising force during a war, instead of agencies funded solely for the protection of Nigeria and Nigerians. Anoth­er problem: the authorities that ran such outfits failed woefully to reform them simply because their hearts and souls were also wedded to impunity. Lastly, I posited that impunity was Ni­gerians’ favourite sin; all would be involved in it as long as they were convinced they would get away with it.

Then, starting from Monday, the protest and protesters and Nigeria were betrayed as the protests and the controlling of it by the security agencies became not only violent but totally bru­tal. Writing this, I feel personally betrayed. For once, I had written my column for this week in time. It was ready on Monday October 19th and it gushed with pride at the fact that the youths were peaceful and peaceable, had dis­dained ethnic divides that have bedeviled the Nigerian polity.

That column which is now on hold, had a celebratory title: “#endSARS protest: Rejoice for the giant (the Nigerian Youth) awakes.”

Ah, I borrowed that phrases from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka’s anthem. The article on hold started by correcting one terrible impression; that the ini­tial #endSARS protest, before it was hijacked by hoodlums, both of the governmental and street hues, was the first time Nigeri­an youths had nationalistically and effectively. I wanted to point out to those who hold such a wrong impression that this was the THIRD TIME. The first was when the “otu ikolo” (youth or­ganisations) of the Anioma vil­lages of the present Delta State organised themselves and gave hell to the British colonialists. A fight ensued and lasted for 31 long years. That was the first popular uprising involving a vast area, after the British had clamped its authority on any part of Africa. The second was the civil disobedience organised by the Zikist movement from the 1940s; it was pan-Nigerian and totally nationalistic. I will bring up that piece next week, if events permit.CHECK THIS OUT

Now, our attention has been forced to focus on the theme of the killing of our children (the youths) and another self-betrayal by the Nigerian nation.

In my column of last week, I remembered Chinua Achebe de­crying Nigeria’s suicidal refus­al to learn valuable and useful lesson from events; saying that while Japan snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the World War II, Nigeria snatched defeat from the jaws of its vic­tory in the Nigerian Civil War. Achebe’s real anger was that the leaders did not view Nigeria as one entity in 1970 and so failed to leverage on the scientific and technological gains Biafran sci­entists had achieved.

This time, we have again striven mightily to snatch de­feat from the jaws of another victory. The youths who were on the streets protesting the total disregard the security agencies have for Nigerians, including the dehumanised agents them­selves, had remained peaceful. They did not attack anybody. They avoided the religious and ethnic rancour that had terribly divided and devalued Nigeria. There gave ample notice that they could be harbingers of a better Nigeria, a one united country, were tribe and tongue should not define anyone. They were also calling leaders to or­der.

And then, as though someone switched off a light, it all van­ished. The promise had been betrayed. The people who were out in the streets fighting to enhance the human dignity of every Nigerian, and those who were supposed to guide them and so were allowed to bear arms, meted untimely deaths to unfortunates in the streets of the cities and villages, in broad daylight and their deaths being videoed and shared so casually that the lives of Nigerians have become cheaper in a matter of three days – Tuesday, Wednes­day and Thursday – than before the protests began.

Writing this, I remember Chinua Achebe again. In 1979, he became the first to receive the revered Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) – the highest academic award in Ni­geria, instituted in 1979, and which has so far been conferred on only 70 distinguished acade­micians. His acceptance lecture was titled “What Has Literature Got To Do With It?” The “it” being development. And he replied that the “it” had plenty to do with Lit­erature. He said that “people tell stories and stories tell people.”

Watching events since the murder (murder?) of the protest­ing youths at the Lekki Tollgate, Lagos, and elsewhere across Ni­geria, how a gun would go pua and a human being that God cre­ated would bite the dust, I have also been noting how the story has been changing. At first, the youths were nothing but Nige­rians. Then, according to some version of events seen on online videos, some well-heeled persons in SUVs were seen arming some scoundrels and directing them to go and attack the peaceful pro­testers.

In no time, hoodlums took over. And Nigeria started burning. And it burnt and burnt and burnt. No, I do mean only the buildings and cars that were torched, I am most of all worried by the ethnic and linguistic hues that the pro­test, once peaceful protest, has now been dressed in. And the result? Nigeria has once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Why? Because of the acts of impunity of those who armed the rascals and tasked them, even paid them really, to attack the future of Nigeria. That changed the story of the 2020 protests; though national­ist at the beginning, it has now turned ethnic because people chose to tell false and terrible stories and those stories fed lies to the people. How do we beg Achebe for forgiveness … because we have failed to learn from his remarkable insights?

By the way, what was Presi­dent Buhari thinking when he said in his speech: “Sadly, the promptness with which we have acted seemed to have been mis­construed as a sign of weakness and twisted by some for their selfish unpatriotic interests”. Gosh, did my President not know that the protest has been going on online since 2017?

It started in 2017 as a Twit­ter campaign using the hashtag #ENDSARS, and it made the same demand: to disband and reform the police unit. And did my President not know this? I feel like screaming!!!