By Tochukwu Ezukanma
The event of “Black Tuesday” at the Lekki Toll Gate Plaza: the
shooting, killing and maiming of unarmed, peaceful, flag-waving,
national anthem-singing, youthful Nigerians by the Nigerian army is an
indelible moral stain on President Buhari. That blood-spattered
onslaught on innocent Nigerians was inexcusable and morally
reprehensible. What ghoulish logic could have motivated such gory attack
on Nigerian youths, whose only crime was that, in the hot enthusiasm of
youth, they dared to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to
a peaceful protest? Quite naturally, the killing angered, horrified and
frustrated the generality of Nigerians.
Not surprisingly, it triggered an anti-government backlash. Depending on
their means and circumstances, many Nigerians vented their anger and
frustration against this crime against humanity in varied ways. In their
anger and frustration, the youths are not backing down; they are
re-strategizing to continue with the protest, and still demand an end to
SARS, and for overall police reform, good governance and social justice.
In rage and disaffection, other youths, gruff and frenzied, took to
rampaging through the streets of Lagos, attacking police stations,
burning down government buildings, and properties and businesses
belonging to those suspected to have encouraged, or acquiesced to, the
shooting at the protesters. Stripped of youthful vigor and stamina by
age, I could neither join in the protest nor the rampage; I am venting
my anger and frustration on President Buhari with my pen.
Democracy does not guarantee the election of good leaders. Therefore,
despite our democracy, Nigerians still elect horrible individuals as
presidents. President Buhari is the worst of these horrible men ever
elected president in Nigeria. The election of Mohammadu Buhari to power
is one of the most egregious political blunders of Nigerian history. His
presidency has been disastrous for the country. As such, Nigeria is a
vast scene of confusion, a reality glaringly palpable in heightened
insecurity, spiraling crime rate, and ethnic and religious strife
bedeviling the country; worsening economy and its attendant deepening
and expanding poverty; suffocating levels of official corruption;
unprincipled distribution of the national wealth and social injustice;
arrogance of power and gross disregard for the sanctity of human life,
and its concomitant police brutality, trigger-happiness and
extra-judicial killings; etc.
Although the immediate spark of the #EndSARS protest was police
brutality, especially the cruelty and viciousness of a special police
unit, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the Nigerian masses had, for
long, been totally disappointed and disillusioned with the status quo.
The #EndSARS protest is pertinent, timely and laudable. With their
protest, the youths are speaking for the generality of Nigerians. They
are expressing our collective revulsion for an evil oligarchy that, in
its corruption, irresponsibility, avarice and snobbery, consigned a
disproportionate number of Nigerians to vegetating in desperate poverty
and groaning under a lawless and murderous police force.
In dealing with the protesters, Nigerians had expected patient and
thoughtful, not ruthless, methods from the Buhari administration.
Lamentably, its method was most thoughtless and ruthless; it was
downright barbaric. It ordered soldiers to attack the protesters. In
their shooting spree, the soldiers killed about twenty seven, and
injured more than thirty, protesters. The video of that attack was
heart-rending and mind-boggling. It showed the soldiers moving in, and,
at very close ranging, opening fire on the protesters. That mass-murder
of unarmed, peaceful Nigerians was unpardonable. It is a crime against
humanity.
For the most part, Nigerians were resigned to the Buhari presidency. As
for that staggering mistake of electing him to power, we found solace in
the belief that we reserve the right to be wrong and make mistakes.
Moreover, nothing educates more than a mistake; political mistakes are
necessary ingredients for political learning and experience. As for his
continued misrule and its attendant social disruption, we found
consolation in waiting out his presidency. After all, his term of office
will expire in May 2023. However, that unbridled murderousness at the
Toll Gate Plaza on “Black Tuesday” exposed added dimensions of
Buharism.
It incontrovertibly confirmed Buhari a criminal, culpable of crime
against humanity. He is a murderer, and his murderous hands are dripping
with the blood of the innocent. It evinced Buhari as an unabashed,
unrepentant, incorrigible tyrant. He remains psychologically trapped in
the past: his days of military dictatorship. His power derives from
popular will, but perplexingly, he, routinely, acts in defiance of the
popular will, and, behaves, as though, his power is predicated on brute
force, and must therefore be maintained with guns and bayonets. Africans
thought that their worst political nightmares were made manifest in Idi
Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko. That was before the debut of our
democratically elected tyrant, Mohammadu Buhari. The Buhari
administration seemed to have combined the worst of Amin and Mobutu:
wanton bloodshed and mindless kleptomania.
History has furnished the instructive precedence that the terror of the
gun cannot extinguish the awakened aspirations of the people. And that
those, in the deranging effect of power refused to acknowledge this
fact, usually, learn the hard way that brute power is the most
treacherous form of power, and that it has always betrayed those who
wielded it excessively.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.