By Mike Kebonkwu Esq
Before the dust and furore over the #EndSars Judicial Panel’s White Paper report by Lagos government settles, let’s just remind ourselves that it is in our nature and character to double talk. The Lagos State government did not see the job of the Panel as thorough enough and the panelists do not see the government as courageous enough to take responsibility. We do not know who to believe. It is not unusual for government and its officials to give the alternative truth and version on any national matter when it is convenient. This is the same reason Nigerians were sold black sheep for change in 2015: we are simply gullible. Since releasing the report, controversies have trailed it even from the leaked version to the official report which I understand is not different from each other in any material particular.
One understands that the choice of membership of the Panel by the Lagos State government was based on public integrity perception of the individuals selected for the task which cuts across the spectrum of the society. The courage and broad mindedness of the state government was quite laudable. The #EndSars protest at the Lekki Tollgate was a needless tragedy caused by mismanagement by the State and federal government. The protest was an opportunity for the people to vent their anger on myriads of problems besetting the country, and rightly so. It was the Nigerian youth’s version of revolution similar to the Arab Spring which brought out the worst in us as unarmed, non-violent youths were viciously cut down by the police and security forces.
A symbolic angle to a protest!
The #EndSars protest exposed the integrity deficit of our government and its disrespect for rights and lives of citizens. It became crystal clear that even Mr. President himself has an over bloated and exaggerated sense of his own integrity and one can demonstrate that. Before becoming the President of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari was noted for austere, frugal personal life style which was one of his personal attractions to the electorates during the 2015 general elections and which he won handsomely. All the integrity pretensions ended and were buried with the victory after the epigrammatic circumlocution of “I am for nobody and I am for everybody”.
The President wears a façade which shows his thought line different from his personality and this is true of members of his cabinet. The President wears the medal of nepotism without qualms and he displayed this immediately on assumption of office when he berated critics that they should not expect him to give the same in measures to those who gave 95 percent votes as against those who gave him 5 percent votes.
General Buhari was the arrow head of the protest against fuel subsidy removal in 2011 which he then dismissed as phantom during the tenure of President Goodluck Jonathan who did not give leadership and rein in his wasteful lieutenants and ministers which became his albatross. General Buhari referred to the creative and restless Nigerian youths as lazy when his government could not create the platforms to provide job opportunities to empower them. In his first coming, Nigeria’s hospitals were ‘mere consulting clinics’, but thirty years after, on his second missionary journey, the hospitals have transmuted to mortuaries and the President has been in the lead on medical tourism.
While preaching integrity and frugality, his son who is not known to be an entrepreneur or captain of industry was having a lavishly funded wedding ceremony with money that could build modular refineries in Katsina and Kano states. The wedding was a stark display of integrity deficit of the President himself whether the wedding was funded by cronies and minions or from his own pocket. One could go on ad infinitum on the expose of our prevarication as official seal. No wonder our elders say that the fish begins to rot from the head. If you doubt this, go and ask the Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed.
On the #EndSars report and the White Paper, many people have dismissed it as a whitewash, castigating members as incompetent and even corrupt because the fund voted for it was allegedly mismanaged. Mr Samuel Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN), one of the panellists has gone out with mega phone to defend the report and his personal integrity and sacrifice of other members. I have personally known Mr Samuel Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa since his student days at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, operating from the same socialist platform, PACESETTERS which I had the privilege to superintend. He was a model as a student union activist, very disciplined. And as Public Relation Officer and later, the President of the Obafemi Awolowo radical Students’ Union government, he was exemplary. He is a man of unimpeachable character and integrity, an activist par excellence, given to public service. He will defend the cause of ordinary Nigerians with his blood whenever the need arises and, I dare say, we have very handful of his kind in Nigeria of today who will display the same altruism. I sympathize with those who do not know his antecedent where he is coming from before they castigate him and dismiss his contribution lightly.
I have not read the #EndSars Report or the White Paper beyond the newspaper reportage and commentaries on the tube. The report and White Paper have turned out to be as controversial as the incident itself when, from the beginning, there was denial all the way. The pertinent thing is that it is not in dispute that there was protest at the Lekki Tollgate on the 20th day of October, 2020. Whether or not it was peaceful or hijacked is another kettle of fish. Another point was that security people were invited; police and the military and they came with their weapons and the weapons were charged with live rounds of 7.62mm, full-metal jackets and not with chocolates. Yet another point is that there was shooting and the crowd was violently dispersed by the security men.
The storm which started gathering on October 15th, 2020, according to this aerial view from AFP/Getty
Again, shells of bullets were recovered and there was blood at the Tollgate. We are not told that Lekki Tollgate is an abattoir for slaughtering ram. It is also true that some hospitals in Lagos recorded huge inflow of patients with gunshot wounds while mortuaries received dead bodies in their numbers. Where did the corpses come from?
It was a common knowledge that during the protest, private investments and properties were destroyed as were public infrastructure built with our commonwealth. This, no doubt, was the bad side of the protest because the same thieving government officials will steal more in the name of fixing or replacing the damaged infrastructure. This was the failure of the state which should have deployed men to ensure that properties were secured but, instead, gave orders to shoot at citizens, our ebullient youths. The right to protest is a constitutional right and it is undemocratic and tyrannical for government to take it away through brutal crackdown and shooting of citizens and youths on a progressive revolution.
It is pedestrian in the main to say that the protest should have limited itself to police brutality and highhandedness. It had to be comprehensive as it was though, on the main head of police brutality which became its rallying point. We must not lose sight of the fact that we cannot build a nation on lies and falsehood. The Lagos State government has blazed the trail by the display of courage to produce a white paper on the report and we hope to see the implementation of what it has accepted.
After all, the federal government from experience has never summoned the goodwill to allow its White Paper to come out for scrutiny or implementation. That the government has agreed to make the day a memorial and toll-free at the Lekki Tollgate, is eloquent testimony of the admission of killing at the tollgate. It was by caused by government mishandling and mismanagement of otherwise legitimate protest about poor governance and poorer law enforcement by the Nigerian people. Truth may never catch up with the comprehensive lie which the State has come to represent. For those who served in the #EndSars Judicial Panel in Lagos State, they need medals for honest service. They are human and if we think there will be no mistakes and errors in their report, then we have elevated them to the level of angels and that is living a lie.
The author, a Barrister-at-Law from Koyen – Hi Kebonkwu Chambers in Wuse Zone 5, Abuja and an activist of yore, is reachable on 0805065075
