Editorial

The alleged massacre of peaceful protesters by the Nigerian Army at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos on October 20, 2020, seems to have become the proverbial  bone in the throat that can neither be swallowed nor spat out. The sad incident comes with a cocktail of both local and international ramifications.

Amidst the reports, alleged live streaming, videos, documentaries, assumptions and permutations about the scale of the incident, the United States Department of State last week came out with a report that there is no verifiable evidence on the reported massacre at the toll gate, following the #EndSARS protest that rocked the nation last year, and which ultimately led to the Nigerian Army being deployed to the venue to disperse the protesters.

This position is in tandem with the Lagos State government. Governor Babajide Sanyo-Olu made the point while opening the door for further evidence of fatalities amidst hysterical theories of morbid stories.

The US report said “accurate information on the fatalities” from the shooting remain fuzzy because, apart from “Amnesty International which reported 10 persons died during the event, no other organisation was able to verify the claim.” In essence, the US report disputes the allegation of a ’massacre’ at the tollgate on the said date.

While this is somewhat comforting, given that no human deserves to die while protesting in a democracy, the report is very telling of all that needs to change in our system. As a sovereign, we wish we can run a system that might not be perfect but one that democracy and its tenets can be respected. The right to protest is part of the civil rights that citizens can exercise in a democracy. But, like most other rights, this is not absolute. This is why it would remain debatable whether bringing in the army to even shoot into the air to disperse peaceful protesters was not avoidable.

Without doubt, the cocktail of contradictions and denials after the reports of the shootings did not help matters. For instance, the Nigerian Army initially denied any shooting at the toll gate and claimed the video footage was photoshopped, only to admit a week later at the investigative panel that it had deployed soldiers to the toll gate. The governor did tweet that it was beyond his official jurisdiction to order the army to any action.  A month later, the army admitted at the investigative panel that they had deployed their personnel to the protest venue with live and blank bullets. However they did not admit shooting protesters.

There was also the so-called live-streaming of the incident by DJ Switch on her instagram page. Then, the CNN joined the massacre theory without evidence and made a hoopla over its fidelity to facts it could not prove. The US reports was a clear indictment of the network’s lack of deliberation in reporting. This is not helped by the fact that people see only what they want to see.

As we said earlier, it is bad that anyone died as a result of the protest. But then, to allege massacre, especially in a situation where there was no proof beyond some video shots, some by interested parties, which had since been discredited as having been shot elsewhere, could only have been an attempt to further discredit the Federal Government and Lagos State Government, may be due to the hardship in the land.

It is noteworthy that there has not been much reactions to the U.S. report apparently because those who might have feasted on it if it had been otherwise were deflated or disappointed by the content.

It is however important to stress that it would be a thing of pride for a country like Nigeria to build a system that can earn the trust of its citizens so that we do not rely on the expertise or lack of same of other countries, especially in unravelling a knotty issue like the EndSARS protest and its aftermath. What the Lagos State Governor said turned out to be the homegrown fact for which we had to wait for a foreign government to make an assessment. What the state did shows Nigeria can equally develop the infrastructure that can earn it the soft power that the United States exercises.

All said, we urge the Lagos State #EndSARS panel to expedite action on its assignment so as to bring a closure to the matter. We know that even when that is done, its report would still be a source of disputes by people on both sides of the divide because people will always believe what they want to believe.

The most important lesson in all of these is for the governments at all levels, but particularly the Federal Government, to ensure that the conditions that fuelled the protests are addressed squarely. We do not see much of that happening now; we seemed to have returned to business as usual. There must be genuine attempts to reform the police even as conscientious efforts must be made to fix the economy. This is the only way to avert another mass protest in the country.

Editorial

What seemed an assassination attempt on former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Chukwuma Soludo, in his home town of Isuofia in Aguata Local Government Area of Anambra State on March 31, underscores, once again, the serious crisis of insecurity in most parts of Nigeria today. Anambra State had hitherto enjoyed a large measure of peace and appeared to be insulated from the various acts of violence in which most of the South-East states, like other most other states in the country, are embroiled. The import of the abortive attack on Soludo only shows that no state in the country, no matter how seemingly secure, can afford to be complacent in its attitude and disposition to the safety of lives and property within its territorial jurisdiction.

Perceived as a strong contender in the forthcoming governorship election in Anambra, slated for November 6, this year, on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Soludo was engaged in an interactive session with over 1,000 youths from Isuofia at the town’s civic centre when the assailants struck at around 5.30pm. While Soludo escaped from the venue unhurt, three of the policemen guarding him died during the gun battle between his security details and the attackers, while the state commissioner for public utilities, Emeka Ezenwanne, was whisked away by the gunmen.

Giving an insight into the seriousness of the situation, Soludo in a television interview a day after the incident said, “When it was all over, it took several minutes, 10 or 15 minutes of continuous gun battles going back and forth of stopping and starting again. By the time we came back, we saw three bodies lying in a pool of blood. They were the three policemen. May their souls rest in peace”. We agree with the former CBN governor when he declared in the interview that “no political office should be worth the blood of a chicken let alone human life”.

Professor Soludo was in the town for an interactive session with the youth presumably to listen to their perspectives and sell his programmes to them as part of his efforts to actualise his gubernatorial aspiration. We expect all political aspirants at all levels to seek to win supporters through intellectually engaging the electorate and persuading prospective voters of the superiority of their manifestoes, vision and competence to perform in office compared to their fellow contenders. The kind of cowardly and barbaric attack, which disrupted the Isuofia meeting and caused avoidable bloodshed and loss of lives, would appear to have been perpetrated  by those who cannot confidently present their persons and plans to the people, and thus seek to eliminate their opponents through violence.

Even then, we urge the police and other security agencies not to jump to conclusions but to investigate the incident thoroughly, pursuing all leads. It is noteworthy that some arrests have already been made. However, it is important that all suspected persons be brought before the law to ensure that justice is done because these kinds of violent acts have become a recurring feature in our polity because their perpetrators are confident that they can always get away with their crimes.

It is unfortunate that three policemen lost their lives in this dastardly attack in which the attackers seemed to have got away all too easily without any casualty on their part. But, the rate at which policemen in particular are being killed in different criminal incidents across the country raises serious questions as regards the quality of their training and equipment. In this case, Professor Soludo only just luckily escaped, because it takes alertness for policemen on security missions to properly secure the people they are detailed to protect. It seems many policemen are distracted at their duty posts, with some of them becoming participant observers at events rather than concentrate on their duty of providing security.

The lesson from Soludo’s narrow escape is that all our political elites must work concertedly to proffer and implement ideas that will help guarantee security of lives and property. In the final analysis, no one is safe when pervasive insecurity has become the norm as it has in contemporary Nigeria.