ENDSARS: THREE YEARS ON AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED

Three years on from the riotous protests of 2020, Nigeria’s young people remain as frustrated as ever. The situation which inspired the protests remains largely unchanged.

In 2020, a storm which started in Ughelli, Delta State, and  washed over Nigeria. The protest ignited by the death of a young man soon spread like a firestorm. From Lagos to Abuja to Port Harcourt, young people took to the streets. Galvanized by a grating sense of injustice, they marched on Nigeria for weeks. They demanded change.

The unprecedented protests soon claimed the scalp of the notorious Special Anti- Robbery Squad. But the protesters were not done. Neither were their protests.

The government panicked and sent security forces after the protesters. On October 20, 2020, blood flowed at the Lekki Toll Gate. Viciously at first. Then freely, as gunshots provided background sound.

The country was horrified. But not as much as its friends elsewhere. Having no fear at all, they expressed their horror. Lagos State empaneled an inquiry. The Nigerian army refused to appear. Despite evidence of shocking complicity, it rebuffed the judicial inquiry.

Intervening years have witnessed whitewashing and attempts at same. However, the attempts to whitewash the truth have failed. As have those made to rewrite history.

As he sought re-election earlier this year, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, under whose watch as governor the atrocities were committed, attempted to spin history. According to him, Nigerians should snap out of the events of the day.

Three years on from a massacre, nothing has really changed about Nigeria. Not the high-handedness of government. Not the desperation of its defenders. Not the disillusionment of its young people.

Three years on, there has been no conclusive justice, no consoling judgment. But there is more impunity. Trigger-happy security personnel remain ever eager to throttle those who refuse to gawk at the government.

In the three years since Lekki, Nigeria’s young have moved from despair to utter hopeless. The election of February 25 only served to reinforce the hopelessness. That litigation stemming from the election is now at the Supreme Court tells a difficult story.

In a country of very long memories, it is nigh impossible that people will forget the massacre at the Lekki Toll Gate anytime soon.  The government will welcome that amnesia. But it won’t just happen anytime soon.

Nigerians will remember. Nigerian youths ill-advisedly described as “lazy” by Muhammadu Buhari in 2018, will remember.

It is a tragic irony that the same country that snuffed life out of innocent Nigerians three years ago remains critically starved of options.

There are no jobs, no good schools, no good leaders, no security whatsoever. Life in Nigeria is chillingly and familiarly depressing.

What can Nigerian youths expect from a country that steals and slaughters its young? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Nigerians have not taken to the streets in those numbers since Lekki. This is despite the travesty of an election and numerous poverty-inducing scandals. But memory is such a powerful thing. When mixed with blood, it is irresistible.

There would always be something haunting about October 20, 2020. There would always be something that sends tremors to Nigeria’s corridors of power about the day when the gates of death opened under driving rain.

If as a country, Nigeria is perceived to lack justice, it is about days like these when all that is left is a foreboding sense of injustice and the disturbing direction Nigeria is taking to nowhere in particular

In the years following the massacre, a chilling silence swarmed the land, along with a stygian darkness. But there has since been a lift. Nigerians saw it in some of the awareness that washed over the country as the election approached, awareness sharpened by anger at the way the prodigious promise once shown by the country has petered out.

The way young people nailed their colours to the mast in the last election means that even if Nigeria is yet to get it right, there is hope for the future.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,

Ikewilly9@gmail.com