Weekend Arena - Memo To Nigerian Youths Urging Them To Take ENDSARS Protests Off The Streets And To The Ballot Boxes...

The week has been a unique one indeed. The ghosts of the ENDSARS protests came to haunt the Nigerian state again in the guise of remembering those who lost their lives during the demonstrations.

From Abuja, Lagos to Port Harcourt, the buzz was everywhere. It has been one year since that eventful episode and the highhandedness, with which the government followed the memorial activities, is a pointer to the bitter taste it left in the mouths of the people in power.

Nobody tolerates a housefly after being stung by the bee.

I am one of those who believe that the protests clearly illustrate an ‘arrested development’ phenomenon. The struggle was going somewhere that could have brought the changes we desire, but it got truncated and left us more miserable. The heightened state of insecurity in the country is one clear watershed of the ENDSARS protests. Aside the lootings and attacks on security formations which saw the security formations losing an appreciable quantity of arms to the wrong persons, the incidents exposed the poor state of our security architecture. 

It clearly gave out a well-guarded secret that the security agencies have been poorly funded over the years and lacked the requisite resources-men and materials-to effectively contain coordinated attacks. 

 This emboldened the criminal elements, and they have sustained these attacks afterwards. Today, they are getting more daring and launching attacks on even military formations, something that was unheard of a few years ago, when the military only needed to flaunt their uniforms to instill fear in the criminal elements. For this reason, the government must buckle up and do all within her means, to restore our security agencies to that state by equipping them adequately.

 It is sacrilegious to imagine that the arms in the hands of hoodlum are more sophisticated than the ones with our security agencies! It automatically would inspire lack of confidence in state security, which is evident today.


It is this apparent lack of confidence in the ability of the security agencies that seems to be placing the orders from non-state-actors above those of the government as seen in the south east region. Most people are sitting at home out of fear, recognizing that when the hoodlums (who are taking advantage of the bad situation) strike, there will be no security agent in sight to intervene, although the government makes them available when there are important elections. Can you imagine deploying 37,000 policemen to Anambra for elections, when we would only need half of that to overrun the bandits in Kaduna? 

Well, this lack of confidence in the security agencies, by extension rubs off on whatever is happening at Abuja too. The security agent in Gusau, Aba or Ijebu-Ode is a mirror reflection of the government and the citizens will always paint them with one brush.

After one year, I must commend the REAL Nigerian youths, not the DEPRAVED ones, who have sold their souls to manipulators who use them for all sorts of vices against the progress of the country. The protest which started with outcry against police brutality, buoyed by the Black Lives Matter effect around the world was going well until the issue of good governance came to the fore; that was when hoodlums were smuggled in to truncate the struggle by the dark forces holding Nigeria down.

 The truth is that this style, this anti-dote, which involves unleashing paid hoodlums to disperse street struggles has come to stay. The script is well-rehearsed: Hoodlums would descend on dissenting voices while the state security agents look on helplessly.

In view of this, the Nigerian youths need to change their tactics. When the hunter learns to shoot without missing, Eneke the bird must change its flying patterns. The new phase of protests must come in the shape of orientation. The youths must rally round and recognise that the job of delivering the country squarely rests on them. Nigerian youths must be made to understand that power resides in them when they speak with one voice through their votes. 

They must be made to understand that the ruling class has divided Nigerians for too long with stories about tribalism and religion only for them to corner the resources of the country for their children, whom they encourage to marry along the lines of class, irrespective of tribe or religion. The youths must be mobilised towards identifying individuals with the knowledge and capacity to make a difference in the economic lives of Nigerians and put them in the relevant positions of authority for once, not minding their tribe or religion, after all, nobody gives anyone a discount at the market because of your name or tribe.

The next protests should not be on the streets but through the ballots.