What exactly is the problem with Nigeria, Is it a failure of reason or the incurable penchant to stir away from reality and glorify wrong doing? This was not a fight of civilians against police, it was not even a fight by design.
Isn’t it pathetic as unfortunate as it were that lives we yet even have the statistics or have inquired into days after the killings were lost in numbers and the media focus only on loss of property belonging to the class that created the problem, this could have been anyone’s life including a passerby in a brainless moment, the police inclusive.
Was the protest not also asking for police welfare in overtones? This is a government of confusion and they have succeeded in replicating confusion cross establishments.
Most property destroyed by the thugs they recruited now labelled ‘hoodlums’ belong to private sector. Who is a hoodlum? who created the hoodlum? who use the hoodlum? Ok, it’s very bad but the hoodlum was also very hungry, he saw an opportunity and responded naturally, apologies, but I wont blame him more than I blame who created him; think of him as a robot that responds at the touch of a button but best as a human being that responds to stimulus.
Events of the past few days show that our Government has no remorse or interest to investigate lives lost, no organized condolences to families of the deceased, no respect for the dead absolutely, rather we should dress in rags and weep because TVC News complex was torched and palliatives that their endemic avarice in a pandemic could not share at the right time was taken by the beneficiaries anyways.
They could not manage simple logistics in 6 months to distribute rice and noodles in a 6 mile radius for any state in Nigeria on the average, but they could distribute thugs in official security vehicles (the very reason for the uprising) at the snap of the finger to deploy their trade mark confusion and revert to blame hoodlums, again! who are the hoodlums and who are the real looters? When food runs out in the hood, the hood-rat that hates spotlights will discover streetlight neibourhoods at the risk of it’s life for one night of survival (Victor Okorie).
I don’t mean to play the devil’s advocate but let’s analyze this for the sake of conscience and spirituality, is it possible this peaceful protest by the way became possible in what seem an impossible Nigeria because rich kids were harassed by SARS when they wear their dreadlocks and tattoos and lives have to be dragged to the streets to die because they have to sustain trending fashion and ego? does SARS harass youths in the villages and farms of Okigwe, Zamfara, Jos, Southern Kaduna and Tivi land where by the way private property were also reported lost in this meyhem? No! I think BH and HM own these jurisdictions. Is the target of SARS not metropolitan kids who expectedly can bail out with huge sums by intimidation without prosecution and because business is good, could it not be the reason why SARS upgraded to urban kidnapping?
So when the urban kids now woke up to reality with #END SARS with commendable energy that could have helped nip the bigger and more inclusive issues in the bud (how about #End Bad Governance in Nigeria, #End Insecurity PMB). Haven’t they downplayed a huge Nigerian problem to their specific perhaps selfish intervention, ignoring the mortal injury and of course they have the resources to do so and expect the ‘hoodlums’ to just stay calm and sleep?
Society doesn’t work like that, these are also citizens of the FRN that reserve the right of consultation, they have been deprived a lot already, some could not get basic education, hence lack self awareness but within them domicile the potentials of engineers that never became, doctors that will never be and lawyers on the wrong side of the law. You can’t be separatist among your own and expect a successful revolution, we are not just cohabiting with them, we live with them as integral members of the society.
The élite youths who organized this protest should have respected these guys and get their buy in, they should have got them on their side before the government did but don’t get me wrong, am most grateful to them for standing up at all, what ever the motivation or branding, something has to spark off an inferno.
Nigeria has been a country where military and paramilitary of all brands even without uniform or identification has brandished weapons from cradle day, this is already mental intimidation and a brutality of the psyche before the physical. There is an international legislature against these practices that our banana republic lacks appetite to prosecute and this is were the effrontery to open fire on armless harmless civilians is nurtured.
Now Government should get the message right; there was a peaceful protest, youths were killed for making legitimate demands, long overdue demands for that matter, in the process the wickedness of our government was graphically exposed, Now Government owes the state an apology and a roadmap not promises for a better Nigeria, period! we have an institutional damage to repair, let’s focus on the mortal injury and stop worrying about broken warehouses.
My respect to all that lost their lives in the protest, civilian, police or military, they haven’t died for nothing, I pray their blood achieves the youth mandate with this irresponsible government and system of things.
Engineer Victor Okorie.