October 20 may not be enough to remember the deaths of peaceful protesters at the hands of the country’s security agents. The depth of the wound may even widen when public officials begin to speak about it, denying, pretending, struggling to make coherent sentences when talking about the shooting that happened at the Lekki toll gate that Tuesday, October 20, 2020.
Before then, the #EndSARS protesters had unified demands, and concerned agencies like the Nigerian Police were already making promises in that light, except that President Muhammadu Buhari went on national television to announce that unscrupulous elements had hijacked the protests, and they could not be condoned. He avoided the shooting at the Lekki toll gate, and focused on measures his government has put in place as per the violence that brought out after that Tuesday night.
This has left too many questions like ‘who ordered the shooting?’, ‘why send soldiers to peaceful protesters?’, ‘why did they shoot at all?’ and so on. On a lighter note, Nigerian youth asked Babatunde Raji Fashola, a Nigerian lawyer, former governor and current Federal Minister of Works and Housing, how he became Sherlock Holmes in an instant. Fashola had led a team of other public officials who gaslighted the whole of the country.
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“We found it!” Fashola and his cohorts must have screamed in their heads, when they found the handheld camera which was obviously planted where it was found. We will recall that cleaning had happened, and scrap dealers had overrun the Lekki toll gate, so there was no way a camera that conspicuous would be missed.
#LekkiMassacre is the hashtag highlighting that Nigerian youth have not forgotten the events of the shooting on the night of October 20, and the way the Nigerian government has failed to answer the questions outlined earlier.
For years to come, the trauma of the shooting and deaths of peaceful protesters on that night will stay fresh in the minds of many Nigerian youths, and the 2023 general elections is now used as a tool.
Election periods present opportunities for the citizenry to change the leadership of the country. Also a period when the citizenry know if intending leaders have an agenda in place to address the core issues the country is facing.
Police brutality has been a pandemic, and extortion may not have left the dictionary of the Force yet. This was the crux of the protest – indiscriminate killings too – and the shooting showed the world that the Nigerian government cannot allow citizens exercise their fundamental human rights.
Nigerian youth now ask that the next president address these issues and answer the so many questions that has haunted them since October 20, 2020.
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