Nigerians shine your eyes

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

During and after the ENDSARS protest, we kept telling Nigerians the entire outing was the handiwork of the opposition. We told them that the opposition was already kick-starting its campaign for 2023, the only way it is capable of winning elections, but Nigerians failed to see beyond the veiled rhetoric of the forces behind the protest.

Now, the fowl is finally coming home to ‘crow’. About a year and a few months ago, a well-orchestrated social media campaign was launched to hijack the Segalink’s planned ENDSARS protest and turned  it into a deadly attack aimed at the very soul of the country. For weeks running into months, the country boiled as we continued to register huge destruction to properties and institutions across the country; directed attacks against targeted individuals became obvious with time, leading to mammoth destruction of state-owned properties as well as personal properties and businesses in Lagos State and several other states across the country. Till today, the state of Lagos is yet to fully recover from the impact it suffered during the ENDSARS outing. Prisons gates were broken down and the streets became littered with criminals across the country; a miscalculation that is today affecting the country negatively as crime rate increases in most of these states and places.

How do we explain the emerging realities now that another election year approaches, and these individuals who spearheaded the protest could no longer hide behind the curtain of activism as they resume their role as projectors of PDP and ground forces for politicians within the fold of the party? Rinu Oduola kick-started Bukola Saraki declaration for 2023 via hosting of the former Senate President on her Twitter space; Aproko Doctor now meeting with the same politician; how does it sound? Soon DJ Switch may join the train, Mr. Macaroni would follow suit; and soon, they would all line up behind their sponsors as they make another attempt to take power from the ruling APC. 

Nigeria did not only suffer property destruction, but equally suffered huge damage to its name and dignity of the country as a big blow was dealt the country’s human rights record. The campaign, as anyone who followed the media then, must have observed, was so strong that it secured coverage of CNN, BBC and global corporate media outlets in the spread of the fabricated lies of a massacre that never happened. That time, we did everything possible to get Nigerians to align with reality and see beyond the curtain of the overall planned drama all to no avail. It spread like wildfire; scores of innocent civilians and security personnel were killed until by some divine intervention, some form of sanity was restored. 

We were more worried about the fact that the ENDSARS outing, in its entirety, was not aimed at stopping police brutality, as it seemed to appear, believed, and supported by the multitude; but rather a politically calculated outing to destroy a legitimate system and enthrone an illegitimate one. At that time, we repeatedly pointed out that the mobilisers of the outings were no other than the same ground forces of PDP and individuals who openly worked for the candidature of Atiku Abubakar in the 2019 general elections. We unsuccessfully tried to established the relationship between PDP, Atiku and the Rinu, DJ Switch, Mr. Macaroni group; and that the social media exchanges among the suspects were getting deleted even as we tried to salvage some to establish the needed link, the facts of the matter, but unfortunately the minds of most Nigerians were made up to accept whatever messages, narratives, or propaganda from the opposition, even as wrong as they were.

It was all about the 2023 presidential election; the Nigeria nation was turned abruptly to a huge destruction field, where anarchy replaced orderliness and rationality, and patriotism was freely put on hold to set the stage for the political relevance of some individuals, groups and political party. They had concluded the only way the ruling APC could be unseated from power is by creating public distrust between it and the Nigerian public; the ENDSARS outings was an arrangement to create a tsunami of resentment against the ruling APC. Just as we knew those who were behind the maddened destruction of the country, then, they still remain the suspects; the financiers of the attack on the country. 

These people, and the unrepentant and power desperate PDP took advantage of the joblessness, idleness, the high rate of poverty and the resultant indignation among the Nigerian youth demographics which is the majority in the country, and turned them into a willing tool to pick up arms against their country, for a cause they understood not more than the glimpses of the propagandised information of hatred against the sitting government. They were suddenly informed of SARS brutality that defined the many years of their darling PDP and ironically, the same SARS was acceptably mobilised by many of their beloved politicians across the divide in the recent past, in states across the federation, yet, the atrocity of SARS was put as if it was the handiwork of the Buhari government. They just agreed APC and Lagos state must be brought down because they were told so. Police stations, built with tax-payers money were razed down; government buildings were touched, innocent officers in the services were gruesomely murdered, and prison doors thrown open for criminals to return back to the streets. 

But then, how much should we blame Rinu, Macaroni, DJ Switch and their cohorts, when in reality, it was our system, our society that turned them into overnight celebrity, praising and urging them on even as they wreak havoc on the sanctity of Nigeria’s territorial integrity and survival without caring about the motive of those who were beating the drums behind for them to dance.  I blame the societal system that has grown to equate their hatred for individuals with hatred for our common heritage and country, and have literally concluded that destroying the country as they did during the ENDSARS outing is the best way to attack perceived individual enemies.  

I blame the system that has lost it outrightly; equating politics and unbridled support for politicians with the wellness of the nation, and raising citizens who would go out all the way to any length, inclusive of causing havoc on the system to please their chosen parties and political figures. We should all blame the society that teaches us to worship politicians as the only means of surviving in our own nation. 

How else could we celebrate the miscreants who spearheaded the destructive ENDSARS as much we  did and are still doing without caring about what damage they have inflicted on our collective system; unremorsefully justifying their actions and drumming increasing support for them despite the revelations that came from the eventual submitted report of the panels set up across the country. 

What strange and fake activism is doing and would do to this country might eventually become our undoing if we do not retrace our already strayed steps and also arrest the demons operating in and via the self-styled fame and wealth-seeking individuals who are parading themselves as activists across the country. What a business or racket, as it is aptly called in street parlance, has activism become in the country; bunches of men and women who denigrate their own country with scathing criticism and fabricated lies; individuals who are only configured to speak evil of the country and its leadership, while conveniently ignoring whatever sacrifices that are being made to reposition the country for the better. In most cases, they do not even bother to ever proffer better alternative solutions. A bunch of bigoted, abject, and parochial critics. 

I think it is time Nigerians who have been used by Rinu and her fellow PDP agents could now wake up from their slumber, shine their eyes, and redirect their energy to more worthy causes. It is time for us to all know that the ENDSARS wasn’t a cry against police brutality; that the fake massacre story was an attack on two main targets: APC and their headache President Buhari

The lesson from the fresh revelation is simple. If these people, PDP and its power drunk members and power seekers could for political gains, try to set up the country for the magnitude of destruction we witnessed during the ENDSARS protest, how can we turn around to still consider them worthy of our votes and support in 2023?

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA !