TWO Octobers ago, thousands of protesters thronged the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos State and seized it as a symbol of their struggle against oppressive and venal policing and law enforcement. Unfortunately the struggle quickly metamorphosed into something more sinister and nefarious. The protests convulsed other parts of the state as well as many states in the country, but they were less impactful and significant as a social movement in the North. The regional dichotomy encouraged the Muhammadu Buhari presidency to suggest that the protests were designed to subvert his administration in order to bring it to disrepute. His suggestions exaggerated the impact and popularity of the protest, not to talk of its objectives, but the truth soon came out that the North experienced a slightly different but nevertheless still significant kind of policing.
Last Monday, the Lagos Lekki corridor experienced a watered-down version of the protests of two years ago. A more diminished crowd of nostalgic protesters again thronged the Lekki Tollgate to remind Nigerians that the protest had not yet experienced a closure. It was not altogether clear what they meant, for as it happened two years ago when the protest was hijacked by people with ulterior motives, last week’s reenactment again insinuated the variegated political undertones of the EndSARS protest. Two main planks of the hijacked protest and the anniversary are discernible. Firstly, the protest in 2020 became perfused with concocted and utterly unproven stories of massacre and dead bodies. But a little over one year of panel inquiry dominated and inspired by civil society and human rights activists negated the story of a massacre, distressingly suggesting that when the protest was hijacked it was perhaps for a thinly veiled political agenda.
Secondly, and closely leashed to the first plank, is the undiluted animosity of the EndSARS crowd to the regnant Lagos political establishment. When the protest broke out, it quickly became political. Barely two years down the line, it is even more remorselessly and undisguisedly political. The Lekki corridor, probably angered by the tolling of the Lekki Expressway, the only major tollgate in Lagos, has quietly begun to acquire the reputation of a rebellious and anarchical enclave. The corridor resents what its denizens say are the oppression and high-handedness of the law enforcement agencies of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), and the Police Force. The three agencies, say Lekkians, have stereotyped the corridor as an anarchical enclave of cultists, yahoo-yahoo boys, alias scammers and 419-ners, and all manner of drug lords and criminal masterminds laundering money through dubious fronts.
It is not clear whether the corridor harbours more drug lords and scammers per capita than the rest of Lagos or even Nigeria, but the daily raids by law enforcement agencies and their alleged high-handedness give the unwholesome impression that the corridor had become an irredeemable enclave. Recent raids have unearthed a number of high-profile drug lords and scammers to the embarrassment of law-abiding residents along the corridor. The stereotype will become reinforced, and protests by residents along that corridor may repeatedly be conflated with the angst of lawless drug czars and scammers resistant to security agents and desperate to create a community of people not answerable to the law.
But what is even more damning is the attempt by desperate individuals and politicians wishing to embed their objectives within the otherwise noble ideal of campaigning for law enforcement reforms. Before the protests, the law enforcement agencies, particularly the police, had become unmanageable, corrupt and unaccountable. Extortion, cruel use of torture and rights abuse were the order of the day. Two years down the road after the very turbulent protest, the reforms have still not come, and the law enforcement agencies have hardly budged beyond a notch or two. The 2020 protest was, therefore, justifiable, and the anniversary last Monday even more so, at least theoretically. But one of the reasons for the poor results from the protest is the simple fact that the protest was hijacked and politicised. It was conceived as an action to compel the federal government to reform its law enforcement agencies, but it quickly became an action against one man, a politician.
Sadly, the distortion of the EndSARS protest and objective persists, not only among the ordinary Lekkians, but alarmingly and disappointingly among clerics. In 2020, the clerics lent their weight to the protest, despite the obvious hijack of the incipient social movement, and despite the bastardisation of its objective. More worrisomely, and even openly, the protest is now being comingled with the course and objectives of the Labour Party. For instance, last week, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) national coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, who subconsciously functions as an LP advocate, advised Nigerians youths not to vote for the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for allegedly inspiring the killings at the tollgate. Forget the fact that the killings were not proved and had become apocryphal, but there is nothing anywhere to suggest that the police and the army accused of masterminding the killings were answerable to Asiwaju Tinubu. But many activists and Rights groups toe the infamous line of Mr Onwubiko. They tell themselves a lie, repeat the lie constantly in the fashion of the Nazi Party propagandist leader, Joseph Goebbels, and have begun to believe their own lies.
Just as in the beginning of the EndSARS protest in 2020, when the protest was hijacked by politicians, HURIWA and others, including, surprisingly the National Association of Seadogs (NAS), have become openly partisan and particularly pro-Peter Obi. All gloves are off; campaigners can no longer disguise their objectives. In fact, examined closely, the public will discover some other disturbing and divisive undercurrents in the Lekki Tollgate controversy. These will be exposed in due time. But for now, it is time the government began to take to task those using dubious accounts of events to incite the public. The constitution guarantees freedom of speech; it does not guarantee freedom to concoct stories and incite. If the campaigners allege, then they must be made to prove.
Atiku’s London photo ops
AFTER APC presidential candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu, PDP presidential candidate ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar is the most vilified. His political snafu last week calling on northerners to vote only him was followed by a snap trip to London. A report alleged that he did not just travel to London for the heck of it but because he collapsed from unstated cause(s). Asiwaju had been through all that, and had had to ‘give proof of life’ repeatedly. After every false report was rebutted, it was imagined that the APC candidate’s traducers would feel a sense of remorse for carrying libelous news about him. No, not a chance. Instead, the attackers had self-righteously doubled down and even felt justified in formulating subsequent attacks.
Alhaji Atiku has also had to produce ‘proof of life’ by organising photo ops in London and Paris, complete with the rambunctious Dino Melaye at a diner, and in another instance with a small coterie of foreign reporters. There is nothing wrong with copycatting, of course. If the PDP would exhume Sen Melaye, why, the APC can also match that unearthly method by recalling its own sarcophagi, of whom Femi Fani-Kayode, a former minister, appears to be the archetype and matching counterpoise. Sen Melaye is riding extremely high in reckoning in the PDP. Mr Fani-Kayode will be wondering when he would also be elevated to the stars from his current amorphous standing as a two-bit spokesman. But why is it that Alhaji Atiku, despite his best efforts, has not been able to shake off that glacial and foreboding look from his face?
There will be more foreign photo ops in the weeks ahead, and especially as the campaigns hot up. If Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike could junket abroad with his co-rebels in the PDP just to powwow, an exercise that could be done with as much effectiveness and panache within Nigerian borders, who would tell Alhaji Atiku not to produce foreign proofs of life. After all, the only candidate among the top three not producing any proof of life is Labour Party’s Peter Obi. Running perhaps a distant third, eclectic and often mundane, he seems content to be challenged to provide proof of idea and ideology because he has none.