#ENDSARS NIGERIA:
OF PEACEFUL PROTESTERS, PRETENDERS AND THE REST OF US
Samuel Enyi Otsapa.
For some three weeks, events in Nigeria rented social media spaces, television channels, newspapers and magazines air around the world. With the hashtag #ENDSARS, Nigeria’s youths and young people began calling for the disbandment of the Nigerian Police Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad otherwise known as SARS. And because protests often take a life of their own, protesters; on the streets and on social media platforms, began asking for other things with hashtags such as #ENDPOLICEBRUTALITY, #ENDBADGOVERNANCE, #ENDCORRUPTION, etc.
Although SARS was established some twenty-eight years ago (the unit began in Lagos in 1992 and became nationwide ten years later, in 2002) to tackle the growing cases of armed robbery and crime, it’s cup became full, as Nigerians are won’t to say, with the killing of a young man in Delta State by a member of the squad. The outrage that greeted the death of this young man by SARS reverberated across Delta State, Lagos State and many other states, including the federal capital territory, Abuja.
The killing of the young man in Delta State, like that of George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA, triggered several protests across Nigeria, but particularly in Southern states where SARS brutality and extortions is daily encountered. Scores of Nigeria’s young people; friends and family members of past victims of SARS brutality and those who were sympathetic to their story and pain, began protesting for the disbandment of the unit. For the most part, the protests were well coordinated and peaceful across Nigeria because for the protesters, Nigerians deserve better. For the protesters, they are tired of being judged and summarily ‘sentenced’ to brutality, extortion and abuse by members of an elite police squad whose salaries are paid from their taxes. For the protesters, it was time for SARS to be scrapped and this time, unlike in the past where such promises were broken, they want it done.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP) and President Muhammadu Buhari acquiesced to the five demands made by the protesters and immediately announced the disbandment of SARS and the transfer of it’s officers to other units of the police. However, this announcement did not stop the protests as the protesters, knowing the kind of country they live in, demanded to see actions because mere promises was not going to be enough this time. Thus, the protests continued and in a country with a potpourri of centrifugal forces, the protests were highjacked by pretenders cum hoodlums who, hiding under the platform of the protests, began killing, stealing and destroying. The actions of these group led to prison break ins and the freeing of prisoners in Ondo and Edo states, the touching and vandalisation of private houses and business premises in many states and the FCT. For these pretenders, the protests should not end because through them, they ‘legitimately’ and freely engaged in crime; the reason why SARS was created in 1992.
As the protests wager on, both the peaceful protesters and the pretenders inadvertently stumbled on warehouses containing food items designated as Covid-19 palliatives meant for Nigerians and branded “Not For Sale’. And before one would shout Robin Hood, the millions of poverty drenched, frustrated, long-suffering and hungry Nigerians, here categorised as The Rest of Us, stormed the warehouses to ‘corner’ their own share of the proverbial national cake. And while this group were preoccupied with breaking and entering of warehouses across Nigeria to ‘scavenge’ for food stuffs such as rice, indomie, spaghetti, groundnut oil and salt, the pretenders also went in for food and for television sets, air conditioners, drugs, motor cycles, car engines, windows, doors, refrigerators, etc.
Of all the discoveries occasioned by #ENDSARS protests, the most touching and most damning is seeing pictures and videos of Nigerians; men and women, old and young, breaking the gates, fences and doors of warehouses across the country so as to fetch for themselves basic food items that were originally meant for them as Covid-19 palliatives by CA-COVID. Apparently, the food items have been in these warehouses and the private homes of some politicians for months while the people remain in hunger made worse by the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In Lagos State, one member of the House of Representatives, who would no longer be seen as Honorable, kept these food items claiming he had planned distributing them to members of his constituency on the occasion of his birthday. Huh? Did he bought them with his own money such that he’d wait for his birthday to share them? This is the wickedness and selfishness that is typical of most public office holders in Nigeria and the reason why the protests did not end with the announcement of the disbandment of SARS.
Whether you are a peaceful protester, a pretender or the rest of the hungry lot, one thing is clear: Nigeria’s politicians and leaders are the main problem with the states and the country – and we belong to one, two or all of these categories mainly because of them. We peacefully protested because of them. We are pretenders/hoodlums because of them and much more depressing, we are food scavengers because of them. And until we realize that we must sanitize the polity through electing only compassionate leaders, we would not have learnt anything from the #ENDSARS protests and the 69 Nigerians who have died from it would have died in vain and their blood is on our heads as it is on the heads of the thieving, selfish and wicked political leaders.
