When you listen to what some of our lawmakers have said in the aftermath of the #EndSARS protests, you will wonder if they feel any remorse for failing the youth or if they even care about fixing the rot in the system to make being a Nigerian dignifying for the masses. Lagos lawmaker, Mojisola Alli-Macaulay has joined some of her colleagues to profile the youth unfairly for staging a peaceful protest, insinuating that unemployment is no reason to call for protests.
The lawmaker representing Amuwo Odofin constituency 1 of Lagos, Thursday, said most Nigerian youths are high on drugs all the time during plenary, implying that the #EndSARS protesters who were making legitimate demands from the government were acting under the influence of hard drugs. How so?
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Did she pause a while to recall that several notable personalities not only in Nigeria but across the globe, lent their voices in support of the Nigerian youth during the #EndSARS campaign? Those who endorsed the campaign couldn’t have been supporting hoodlums high on drugs, could they?
Mrs Mojisola also touched on the issue of unemployment.
She said:
“It is not unemployment that should be the reason why youths should come out and begin to misbehave. There is unemployment across the world, even in the United States.”
Really? How does protesting against bad governance translate into misbehaviour? In other words, our political leaders do not care whether or not the youths are gainfully employed. Even though unemployment was not the main reason for the protest, the high unemployment rate among the youth is enough reason to stage a peaceful protest if that is the only way to get the government to listen up and create jobs for the youths.
“Why can’t we look inwards and look for solutions to our problems?” – She said.
Looking for solutions to Nigeria’s many problems was the very thing the youths were doing out there on the streets during the #EndSARS protest before the peaceful protest was hijacked by hoodlums – something our leaders do not want to admit.
No doubt, sponsored hoodlums disrupted the protest but, there is no denying the fact that the #EndSARS protest was a genuine campaign carried out by aggrieved youths striving to fix the system with clarity of purpose.
But different lawmakers in Lagos are coming up with all sorts of narratives to discredit the genuine efforts of the youths who only wanted to be part of the solution to our problems. Rather than accept the bitter truth that the government at all levels have failed this generation, they would rather, change the narrative to suit their selfish interests.
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