The #Endsars movement, in all its purity of boldness and discipline, was a cry to retool the soul of this nation.
By Taju Tijani
On October 12, 2020, this writer was in Nigeria. I witnessed some of the #Endsars protesters. I had driven that day from Ibadan, my hometown in Oyo State, to Lagos. I ran into the protesters along Ikorodu Road. Precisely, in Maryland. Youths of all ages painted the skyline with riot of colourful placards demanding an end to the wanton pathological brutality of Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad. Fearless, pushing, confident, hopeful, and optimistic, the youths were all in one solidarity mood and lapping all the fun of the moment. I was ecstatic to see the so-called lazy youths in new identity.
The #Endsars movement, in all its purity of boldness and discipline, was a cry to retool the soul of this nation. It was a passionate and universal rebuke to the inanities besetting a 62-year-old defeated giant to rise and shine again. The youths realized that Nigeria had shipped into a Hobbesian time bomb of police brutality and governance of reckless impunity. They realized that Nigeria had become a democratically self-scourging nation where nothing works. They realised that most leaders in Nigeria are devastatingly illiterates when it comes to good governance.
The leaderless protests were smooth sailing. The jolliness, camaraderie, non-conformity, and the momentary air of freedom to express themselves was next to none in this republic of fear called Nigeria. They shattered the oft-held myth that our youths are cowards, lazy and could not organise themselves. Those weaknesses were laid to rest. From the side-lines, their fathers, mothers, aunts’ well-wishers, and uncles cheered them on. We in the diaspora organised solidarity protests across Europe and raised our fist in the air as a sign of mass support. It was a defining moment for the power of social media and its frightening influence – for good or bad.
The #Endsars movement was like a breath of fresh air. The Nigerian youths affirmed their role as agents of their own destiny. Following Franz Fanon, the protests demonstrated how, during the worst police clamp down, the masses could find the means of reorganising themselves under one common and cohesive objective of getting rid of their oppressors and emancipating themselves. Therefore, the #Endsars protest was a welcoming baptism for the birth of a more robust and sustained protest culture in Nigeria. When a country slips into dictatorship, it must attract protests as a fight back.
In its operational conduct, we witnessed how #Endsars brought together a committed band of focus-driven protesters: young, dynamic, reclaimers, mobile, affluent, communicative, and enlightened professionals who were absolute in their demand for a safe space for good governance. #EndSARS, though limited in scope, was a timely intervention to many of our unanswered questions. Like all great movements, #EndSARS started underground. The movement drew the sons and daughters of the rich, the poor and other tired Nigerians together to speak in one defiant voice for an acceleration of a new order.
#Endsars protest momentarily became Nigeria’s version of China’s Cultural Revolution — a radical, youth-led purge of police brutality, traditional subservient culture, and authoritarian impunity. The youths interrogated and deconstructed police brutality and its profiling of their tribes as Yahoo boys. The youths were out in full force to affirm their power and ability to delegitimise leaders they perceive as the problems rather than the solution to their existential struggles.
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#Endsars has turned out to be hugely redemptive. But that redemptive process is today construed as constituting “subversion”, “treason”, “insurrection” and an attempt to cause a forceful “overthrow” of a lawfully elected government. In a spin of breathtaking stupidity, protest is corrupted under General Buhari as attempt to overthrow his government. And the enemy of democratic freedom who entertained that asinine belief was none other than Mr. Mohammed Adamu, the former IGP, who, drunk on hubris, circled the wagon around himself and created an echo chamber where liberty to protest, agitate, refute, and fight with our placards were all banned with overbearing arrogance.
#Endsars was able to shine a healing light on the pain of our youth. It articulated the experiences of young millennial in the hand of our top heavy and high-handed police, trained to brutalise the people they were meant to protect. Protests are at the heart of every democratic governance. It allows for conversation, debates, and re-examination of the tenets of democratic practices, especially if government falls into the hand of an autocrat. Protests may then force or encourage a true democratic alternative against any exploitative, brutish, and authoritarian status quo.
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#Endsars aftermath in Nigeria was straight from the guidebook of a totalitarian and fascist regime – the seizure of passports, freezing of accounts, hounding, intimidation, threats, banning and other censors. These actions constituted the truest proof that General Buhari is prepared to put Nigeria in a state of perpetual autocratic lockdown.
I remembered when Adamu greenlighted badged up Police officers to commit gross human right abuses on defenceless Nigerians when the protests entered its most frenetic stage at Lekki toll gate in Lagos Island. He forgot so soon that his boss General Buhari was a serial protester. It was then hypocritical for Adamu to deny Nigerians that oxygen of relief that only protest could give. Police are meant to protect protesters not set on them like hounds and hyenas.
Then come black Tuesday – October 20, 2020. It was the day the old comraderies, chivalrous, and cheerfulness of our protesting youths turned bloody. It was the day the fluidity, freewheeling and vivaciousness of #Endsars collided with the irrational, brutish and intolerant Buhari’s assassins. As the cheering youths gathered around Lekki Tollgate holding flags they thought would insulate them against armed atrocities and singing the national anthem, then something snapped in the rank of the unknown soldiers invited by Lagos State Governor, Mr Jide Sanwo-Olu, now of shattered reputation.
Today Lekki Tollgate is ground zero and a sad mausoleum to the youths who fell to the bullets of nasty brutes in Nigerian Army uniform. There has been denial and counter accusation of who did what? There has been refutation of the number of casualties. At Lekki, Buhari’s intolerance was derobed, dehaloed and disgraced! Buhari, on that fateful day, succeeded in evaporating the remaining hope we all have in Nigerian democracy.
Lekki massacre and its aftermath have become hot topic for pundits who question our feral and gun-enabled democracy that trudges on right of citizens and confiscates their freedom to assemble, protest and agitate. Rather than encourage relational harmony, Buharist democracy is mapping alternative line of political impunity, lawlessness, and greater citizen marginality. We are faced with a leader who reacts defensively to any criticism of his incompetence and the handling of the affairs of state from repression to other countless failures of his administration.
Buhari’s reflex against protests is symptomatic of the toxic tribalism, militarism and human right violation that have been the guiding principles of his presidency. These evil principles came to fulfilment at the Lekki Toll gate. We shall not forget Lekki. Lekki is not forgivable for a leader who showed no contrition for the deaths of his own youths. Long live a revolution aborted. Long live #Endsars!!!
