I think that all well-meaning Nigerians should unequivocally denounce the wanton looting and destruction of private and public property currently the norm in our country, and an aftermath of the #ENDSARS protests. Two wrongs will never make a right. As much as I support and agree that Nigerians have an absolute right to protest, those protests gets undermined whenever we allow elements of regression to hijack a good cause and turn it into what we observe went on in Nigeria. At this juncture, I think the prudent thing to do will be for the protesters to take a break but keep their eyes on the ball by watching the actions of the federal government as it relates to their promises to reform police. Our children should stay off the street to allow our police and the military to clear the streets of these persons undermining the achievements of the protesters. We cannot continue to endorse these gruesome images of mutilated dead bodies peddled on social media because it affirms the stereotype that Africans are truly barbaric, which I know is to the contrary.
Our Mindless Disregard for One Another:
It should no longer be news to anyone that our crop of elected officials is about the most inhumane people on the face of the earth. To think that these boneheads could stockpile palliatives meant for the struggling masses in whatever guise is unconscionable. How can someone justify stockpiling perishable items for later distribution to the masses? Do they understand that these items may be destroyed or expire? The audacity and mindless regard for the lives of their constituents for one of them to say that he was waiting to distribute the palliatives on his birthday? While another intoned that he was storing the palliatives for the next natural disaster and after these materials have well expired or spoilt. No wonder our youth act with total disregard for life and property. It is simply because they are ruled by folks who act with total disregard for their wellbeing. Such is our dilemma folks, and we need to begin to think about how best to change that narrative. No wonder when a member of the house compared the lives of Nigerian to those of cattle, no body batted an eye to her stupendous assertion. We just went about our business like nothing happened.
Our Security Outfit and Crowd Control:
We need to rethink the crop of leadership currently managing the affairs of our security personnel. To think that they live in a burble and oblivious of how other nations manage protester and even looters. Even with the White House under siege by protesters, the US military did not deploy use of lethal force to disperse the crowd. They employed a more humane method by use of tear and chemical gas, rubber bullets and share show of police force to get the job done. I believe Nigerians should never forget or forgive our Federal government for their use of lethal force on unarmed and peaceful protested at the Lekki toll gates. There is no better indication that these leaders do not possess the minimum qualification to lead any arm of the security forces, and that change needed to be affected quickly. Even in the aftermath of their decision to attack the protesters, these same security forces left their posts and dispersed due to the citizens organizing and coming out massively to challenge the killing of their colleagues by the military. Even some the so-called security personnel joined the looters with looting and destroying property thereby showing the rot in Nigeria. Truly, Nigeria Jaga-Jaga for real!!
The Two Things More Powerful Than Politics:
As things whine down and we go about our various businesses of either rebuilding of starting back from where we stopped, we should never forget the historic nature of what our youth did this October. There are two things that have proven more powerful than politics, one is Social Media and the other is our Vote! We should make sure to keep the pressure on our federal government through the use of social media to make sure they live up to their promises of reforming the police, scraping this new contraption called SWAT and looking critically at the make up of police leadership. Our demands should not stop with the #ENDSARS campaign, it should include other issue such as the bloated salaries of our elected officials, decentralizing and creating state police, providing consistent electricity to Nigerians and paving our roadways for interstate commerce to thrive. We must, as part of continuing the protests, flood social media with reminders to our elected officials that we will resume protesting if they do not provide us with a timeline on when these promises will be met. The Nigerian youth started this fight on the streets of Nigeria, now we need to move them to social media and continue the fight there. The second thing more powerful than politics is VOTE! Our vote is so powerful that its impact lasts for four years. To date, we have been misapplying this power by electing individuals who do not have our best interest at heart. We have used this power to give access to some unscrupulous elements who have done nothing but steal and pillage our financial resources for themselves. The time is now to rethink how we apply this huge power of ours!
Our Children Are Now Our Teachers:
We as adults have to understand that our children have indirectly told us that we have failed them. That we, as their parents, have been unable to provide them with a stable environment to live out their lives which drove them to risk their lives in an effort to assert their rights. As much kudos as I give them, we need to understand that they cannot do this on their own. They need every right-thinking Nigerian to join their cause by making sure we vote our conscience and not our stomach in the next election. To reach our potential, we must all go beyond tribal and regional sentiments, this issue of Igbo vs Yoruba vs Hausa/Fulani, and vote in people who we know are qualified for the jobs and have our interest at heart. In fact, it is my suggestion that a good place to start is to make sure that anyone who is currently an elected official does not get our mandate to go back. They have taken enough and should leave leadership to a new crop of individuals who may be more willing to help us project Nigeria to the next level. So #VotethemAllOut.
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