By Tochukwu Ezukanma
For long, we derogated Nigerian youths for their greed-laced indolence,
civil indifference and political passivity. With the #EndSARS protest,
which started, almost spontaneously, in reaction against the brutality
and bestiality of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the youth
earned the respect of the generality of Nigerians. For a protest that
was ostensibly leaderless, the youth demonstrated impressive
organization, orderliness, and peacefulness. Their speeches evinced
knowledge and versatility, and their stated objectives were
unassailable. They meticulously handled the logistics for the protest
and carefully tended the sites of the protest. Many us that, in the
past, disparaged them, for once, had reasons to doff our hats for them.
I was at the converging points of the #EndSARS protest at the two Ikeja
Underbridges: General Hospital and Computer Village. The two venues were
crowded with protesters. They were boisterous but orderly and peaceful.
The gatherings had an aura of a carnival. Music blasted from
loudspeakers, and was occasionally interrupted by announcements. The
protesters, mostly youthful and very educated, romped to the rhythmical
throbbing of songs by Nigerian artists. Some of the songs were just
entertaining, with romantic and platitudinous lyrics. Others, though
entertaining, had poignant lyrics that resonated with the protest. Their
lyrics brayed against official oppression, irresponsible leadership and
social injustice. These included the songs of the indefatigable
iconoclast, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, with their coarse, solemn and prophetic
messages, and Idris Abdulkarem’s Nigeria jagajaga; everything scatter,
scatter; poor man dey suffer, suffer; etc.
But what could have been wrong with such a magnificent spectacle?
Nigerian youths fired by patriotism, yearning for a decent life and
longing for social justice, and totally oblivious of tribal, religious,
political, and socio-economic divides, stood up in unionism in exercise
of their democratic right to peaceful protest. What was wrong with the
youth – the flower and promise of Nigeria – demanding accountability
and respect for the rule of law from the Nigerian Police Force and the
ruling elite?
Evidently, it did not sit right with the forces of greed and
insensitivity that have, for long, misruled the country, stolen and
splurged her commonwealth, treated the people with horrifying scorn, and
unleashed their tool of intimidation, repression and extra-judicial
killing (the Nigerian Police Force) on the people. These forces of evil
– the Nigerian ruling elite – for long, maintained its stranglehold on
the country by its artful manipulation of the masses: calling white
black; evil, good; and setting us against one another, along ethnic and
religious lines. The protest demonstrated unity, unity that straddled
tribal, religious, and zonal fault lines. It evinced courage, moral
courage to do what is right, irrespective of personal consequences. The
ruling elite was disconcerted by this strategically directed unity and
courage. They feared it will unravel their oligarchic grip on Nigeria.
Thus, there was the need to, first, discredit the protesters, and then,
attack them. The hoodlums that infiltrated the protest were sponsored by
government agents. There were footages showing them being dropped off by
government-owned vehicles and being directed by men that cut the image
of State Security Service (SSS) officials. The distinction between the
protesters and the hoodlums were dazzlingly obvious. The police could
readily differentiate the hoodlums from the protesters and could have
checked their criminal activities if they so desired. They allowed the
hoodlums a free hand because the ruling elite needed to cast the
criminality of the hoodlums as part of the protest. To rationalize their
planned attack on the protesters, they needed to tarnish their image.
Finally, on Black Tuesday, the Nigerian army struck, and murdered at
least twenty seven and injured more than thirty of protesters. That any
government could attack those youths, an epitome of our best and
brightest, and the cream and future of the country boggles the mind. It
was an anachronism, repulsively out of sync with the time. After all,
Nigeria is a democracy, and Nigerians have constitutionally guaranteed
right to self-expression and peaceful protests. Not even in the darkest
days of military despotism and obscurantism did Nigerians witness such a
barbaric onslaught on the innocent. Never before in the history of
Nigeria did a government turn the guns on peaceful, flag-waving,
national anthem-singing protesters. The attack was so surreal and
macabre; it seemed like a scene off a horror movie.
Outraged by the massacre and the shameless attempt by the federal and
Lagos State governments to deny and dissemble the massacre, other
Nigerian youths, less enlightened and more frenzied than the protesters
– “the hoodlums” – took to rampaging through the streets of Lagos,
looting, destroying and burning. They targeted government institutions,
and properties and businesses of those suspected of having encouraged,
or acquiesced to, the killing. Both the protest and the post-protest
rampage were palpable vents of anger, long-repressed anger. Nigerians
are angry, very angry at the status quo. They are angry at an evil
oligarchy that, in its cruelty, cupidity, and sordid designs, misruled
the country and systematically degraded her people.
If not urgently assuaged, this pent-up discontent and disillusionment
can become explosive. For the good of the country, the power elite must
recognize and address this smoldering anger. It cannot be addressed by
quibbling and sophistry, denials and alibis, brutality and repression.
It demands unflinching resolve and determined actions at fundamental
reforms that will ensure accountability, respect for the rule of law,
severe curb on official corruption and theft of public funds, principled
distribution of the national wealth, etc.
With their protest, the youths were speaking for Nigerians. Their
message remains clear, loud, and unequivocal: we have, for so long and
for so much, stomached the instomachable, tolerated the intolerable, and
suffered the insufferable. Enough is enough.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.