Nigeria Will Not End Us- Reflections on #EndSARS
“Nigeria will not end me!”
These were the words of young talented Nigerian, Oke Obi-Enadhuze, shortly before he took his last breath. His voice spoke the fervent hope of countless young people some of whom were gunned down in cold blood by state security agents for having the audacity to ask to live with a modicum of dignity, of hope and prospects. There is mourning in Nigeria; last week’s #EndSARS protests have been painful and deeply evocative for all people to witness.
The reckless waste of young life is heartbreaking. It has more urgently quickened the commitment of Nigeria’s youth and human rights defenders to forge a new future for the country. It takes me back to the turn of this century when I brought my fight for that cause with me to Harvard Law School as a young battle-worn lawyer. When I was invited to share the experience of working for civil and political rights in a newly-democratizing Africa, alongside a generation who had valiantly challenged the authoritarian military rule, I regrettably could not at the time, overwhelmed by a deep sense of futility born of the multiplied trauma of witnessing gross human rights violations, and then being subjected, along with fellow Nigerians, to the state’s brazen denials of wrongdoing.
What could one say to the polite society of academics about these ‘hidden’ horrors? It was difficult to reconcile the freshly minted democracy the world celebrated with the state-sponsored killings, violence and internally displaced situations I and other defenders of justice witnessed under its authority. How could truth and reconciliation commissions like Nigeria’s Oputa Panel that were meant to unearth these crimes simply end in silence without action? How could the state simply shut the books and make nothing of the ‘truths’ that had been told, ignoring opportunities to reform state security operations in the true exercise of nation-building?
What of the pain that families dehumanized and impoverished by everyday injustice were forced to bear? I remember Mama Chidi, a client in our public interest law office at the Civil Liberties Organization whose son had been incarcerated for years for the ‘mistake’ of wooing the same woman a senior police officer was also pursuing. The young man and his neighbourhood friends ‘paid’ for it with years in jail without trial and his mother dedicated her life to toiling just so that she could visit her son in the cell. She used her meagre earnings and savings to pay the guards for access, bringing her son food which, she was never sure even reached him. In this Sisyphean trial, Mama’s tenacity was matched only by the indifference to her suffering by the policemen who detained has son, themselves victims of state neglect. There were many Mama Chidi’s and many other victims of countless injustices born of a dysfunctional system, a system whose only interest was siphoning public funds to feed elaborate patronage systems while chanting hollow litanies to democracy and “law and order.”
What could one do? Champions of human rights and citizens had once believed that our new democratic state would do things differently since it had traded its military fatigues for civilian attire. But it was merely a cosmetic change. The government’s shameless recourse to the kind of gaslighting that drained my spirits in my early youth resurfaced this week in response to the brutality that ignited the #EndSARS protests.
In this deeply rooted, far-branching, system that flagrantly exploited and brutalized Mama Chidi and her sentimental son, human beings do not matter and citizens do not exist, especially if they are considered powerless. That is the system our youth stood up to challenge. In the feudal gerontocracy that is the Nigerian political culture, these ‘uppity’ youth had to be brutally put down before they could demand dignity, hope, life. And put down they were.
On the 20th of October, 2020 in Lekki (a suburb of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital), protesters waving the flag and singing the anthem of a country they hoped would return their love — despite its historical antecedents — were met with fire from state security agents. The protesters hoped that Nigeria’s leaders would hear their simple demands for an end to police brutality and the institution of good governance. As pitiless shots rang out across Nigeria — just as crackdowns on protesters have spread through Zimbabwe, through Mali, through Cameroun, through Guinea, and Ivory Coast, and other African countries this season — they reminded us that the domineering character of the African State and its agents has not changed since colonial times. The ethos of using violent force against the people and extracting and looting the nation’s wealth and resources that is their birthright is the same as it was under colonial regimes. As they say, in French, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“same old, same old”). May the souls of the departed rest in peace, and may those who have lost loved ones and property find justice and recompense.
It is no coincidence that the Lekki protests, which disrupted the business of Nigeria’s most lucrative toll road, was the site of the most violent and calculated suppression of the #EndSARS movement. Brute force is the chief weapon of the state in Nigeria, delivered by the security agencies and hired thugs against citizens. In contrast to its brutal efficiency in suppressing citizen protest, the State in Africa is shamefully impotent in the ordinary exercise of basic good governance. It is incapable and/or unwilling to provide to the people the essential services for which they demand redress including primary healthcare, education, electricity, clean water, jobs, waste management and other fundamental utilities. Emboldened by “big guns,” it places no value on the lives of citizens, in fact, it views them as what Mahmood Mandami calls “subjects,” to be ruled by force, maneuvered as political pawns, and disposed of without compunction.
The Revolution Is Being Televised
Nigeria is mourning yet hope rises and resolve is born from, what the music legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti calls, the “sorrow, tears and blood” that the sanguinary soldiers are leaving behind. A threshold has been crossed. The Nigerian government had successfully quelled localized protests over the years mainly through hardline tactics. This time, however, the Nigerian State has to reckon with indomitable youth spread across a vast country, a youth of different tribes and tongue, all united in being tired of everyday killing and oppression by the police, and tired of a future without prospects thanks to decades of bad governance and “free stealing” from government coffers. This time, the concerns courageously and peacefully tabled by the young, determined and dispersed, protesters calling to #EndSARS are shared by a groundswell of Nigerians across class, age, gender, religion etc.– uniting the nation in both outrage and hope.
The same grounds where protesters peaceably gathered for two weeks served as prayer grounds for Muslim and Christian alike. Organizers of the protests-from young feminists, traders, actors, musicians, writers, clergy, students etc., professionals — led a coordinated, tech-savvy #EndSARS campaign while providing on-the-ground logistics like ambulance, security, legal and food aid at various locations. Ordinary Nigerians and companies also donated generously to the cause, despite being beset by the economic slow-down related to COVID-19. This vision of what a united and focused Nigeria riles a political class which has perfected Lugardian colonial tactics of “divide and rule” to govern over disparate peoples who remain consumed with rancour and sometimes bloody communal clashes while the ruling class siphons away the birthright of the warring groups. In these protests, we have witnessed the best of Nigeria: the boundless generosity and warmth of the people, their humour, laughter and creativity, indeed their Wakanda-like technical prowess.
The problem-solving competence of the protesters coupled by the global reach of their message further irritates Nigeria’s plodding and ineffective government which finds intolerable the young people’s demand not only for an end to police brutality and government corruption but also for more jobs, better schools, better hospitals, better infrastructure. These young citizens not only envision the possibility of a better life in Nigeria, but some could get it done and get it done cost-efficiently. The upstarts had to be put down. Brute force is the only response the Nigerian state has always mustered when bribes and blackmail failed. Yet, every tactic in the state’s playbook has failed, including this latest surge in violence and wanton destruction of private businesses by state-sponsored thugs.
The “Soro Soke” generation is here for the long game, armed with the intergenerational memory of repeated betrayal, not ready to entertain government promises and “go-slow” tactics. They demand immediate action in implementing legitimate democratic practices in policing and governance. They are ready to create a new narrative for Nigeria, for Africa. They inspire us who fought these same injustices in our youth to get back in the ring, to shake off our fatigue and continue to speak and work together more deliberately as active citizens to build this rejuvenated Nigeria. We, who are wiser now, join them with the knowledge that democracy is a daily struggle that demands unflagging vigilance.
Nigeria will not end us!
Ijeoma Nwagwu, a lawyer by training, is an educator and writer.
8:00 a.m., 25 October 2020.
