The siege on Lekki tollgate (LTG) in October 2020 by EndSARS protesters, the massive destruction of Lagos State economic interests that followed, the disobedience of lawful court order by Peter Obi’s obedient supporters that seized the LTG during their October 1 Lagos rally to mark the second EndSARS anniversary when the youths have to be dispersed by the police with tear gas, are all indication of how those who have an axe to grind with Lagos believe attack of the LTG in view of its contribution to the prosperity of Lagos is a legitimate weapon of war.
Yet, Lagos is the only state that gives succour and hope to millions of Nigeria youths whose future was mortgaged by the same set of politicians that sold to themselves and their cronies Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b for a paltry $1.5b just as they sold off through dubious monetization policies, properties kept in their care as national patrimony for our the youths.
EndSARS October 2020 protest against SARS which Amnesty International said was involved in over 82 cases of brutality including ‘hanging, mock execution, beating, punching kicking, waterboarding and other violent tactics’ enjoyed massive support of Lagosians.
That perhaps explained why Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu was able to secure the president’s consent through The Presidential Panel on the Reform of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, which according to a Punch report promptly “approved the five-point demands put forward by EndSARS protesters”. However, when the governor on October 13 went to address the youths where there was an ongoing “sharing of weed, food and drink” according to Odumosu, the Lagos State Police Commissioner, they were pelted with pet bottle and pure water sachets. Lionized by politicians and their sympathetic media, the youths started to make other political demands.
The governor declared a curfew leading to a confrontation between the youths and the enforcers. Despite Governor Sanwo-Olu denial of a massacre after visiting hospitals and mortuaries after the confrontation, the media continued the false claim of a massacre, of military truck ferrying dead bodies away and of “Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) that cleaned up the Lekki toll gate scene immediately after the incident of October 20, 2020”.
The false narrative by the media only inflamed passion leading to further arson and looting of police stations and sacking of banks and malls in the Lekki and Surulere areas and public lynching of six policemen. To show the war was against Lagos, the hoodlums ignored old Lagos buses and went after new ones burning 23 big ones 57 medium size buses costing about N3.9b.
Those exploiting the EndSARS protest to wage political war soon revealed themselves with Bode George, former PDP Deputy National Chairman at a press conference attended by PDP party chieftains and members calling for the dismantling of the toll gate.
As if to confirm the target of those egging the youths on, the TVC and The Nation owned by an APC stalwart were torched by arsonists just as Lagos based media concerns of PDP stalwarts such as Ben Bruce’s Silverbird TV, Dokpesi’s AIT, Nduka Obaigbena’s Arise TV, James Ibori’s Daily Independent newspaper and Kalu Uzor Kalu’s Daily Sun newspaper were all spared. One of the PDP sympathetic channels soon offered its platform to Oba Akiolu’s political opponents who was opposed to his ascension to the throne to literarily justify the burning, looting and desecration of the Oba’s place.
The panel of investigation set up by the government was undermined by some members of the panel. Thus government white paper on the investigative revealed that “The inconsistencies and contradictions in the entire JPI report concerning the number of persons, who died at LTG on 20th October 2020, and their cause of death rendered the JPI’s findings and conclusions thereon as totally unreliable and therefore unacceptable.”
For instance even while the JPI attested to the fact that there was nothing contrary to that of Professor Obafunwa, that only one person died at LTG of gunshot wounds on 21st October, 2020, names of nine protesters allegedly killed sprang up on pages 297-298 without the JPI offering explanation regarding circumstances of their deaths. And the JPI Report also went on to award compensation to only one (1) out of the alleged nine (9), listed as ‘deceased’. But precisely because the report did not uphold their false claims, it was a matter of “we told you so”
The LTG was also the target during last week’s second anniversary of EndSARS protest. For the media the enabler, it was the same game of subterfuge. First they failed to tell Nigerian that the group was dispersed with tear gas because the youths reneged on their undertaking not to cause traffic gridlock under the bridge. They claimed a journalist was brutalized only for us to discover it was not true. Viewers were misled to believe there was a gunshot with the reporter later claiming he only spoke of a shot.
More than this, for the benefit of their viewers, one of the demonstrators, a woman who was interviewed at the LTG ground zero claimed she came with her other children to pick the body of her son from the same LTG on the morning of October 21, 2021. It is either they forgot the tale about “Three trucks with brushes underneath brought to the Lekki Toll Gate in the morning of October 21, 2020 to clean up the scene of bloodstains and other evidence” or they believe we are all suffering from collective amnesia.
For the youths, I don’t think much lesson has been learnt. Their focus seemed to be about re-occupying LTG while expecting a different result from their past effort which ended in ruins. Rather than repeating the same folly, I think, a better way of remembering youths who paid the supreme sacrifice for a better Nigeria, whether 1, 6 or 9, in numbers, would have been to present to the public, their pictures, that of their parents and siblings with a short stories . Unfortunately, this was where those TV stations that for two years insisted on their massacre narrative, have failed the youths and the nation.
One also expects our youths, to have come to terms with the limit of street demonstrations and the social media, as weapons of social change with the experiences of the Arab world. Arab Spring started in Tunisia. Today Tunisia is ruled by a dictator. Libya, Gadhafi’s paradise has become a land where life is nasty brutish and short. Egypt is ruled by a modern day pharaoh. Syria is at war. So is Yemen. Demonstrations and protests have been going on in Sudan for over a decade.
Our problem, the youths must know, is political. With the help of the British and in spite of our own self-serving leaders, we were able to overcome this with the 1957 constitution.
At the London 1957 Conference, Zik who could not get his unitary system had insisted 17 state be created right in London insisting that “the smaller the states the better for the federal unity of Nigeria” with Awo, saying “it will be a backdoor reversion to a unitary system. The weak state will be subordinated to the federal government and nothing less than glorified local governments” (Awolowo’s Autobiography P.190)
The picture painted by Awo is what today haunts us. To return to 1957 or ‘Path to Nigerian freedom” we need an elite consensus. The route is not through LTG or the streets. For a guide, our youths to whom tomorrow belongs, can take a cue from our founding fathers. Ahmadu Bello disbanded his Mahaukata (madmen) violent group, Zik abandoned his violent Zikist Movement and Awolowo called to order his Remi Fani-Kayode-led violent Mosquito Squad and embraced dialogue.