BY DR. DALHATU SANI YOLA
BACKGROUND
There is anger and frustration against prevailing systems and structures in Nigeria and a great majority of the populace are often dissatisfied with the quantum and quality of government response.
Lawlessness is pervasive all over the Northern states. For 13 years, Boko Haram terrorism has been decimating mass populations in Bornu, Yobe, and Adamawa reducing IDPs to undignified forlorn lives of sufferings and deprivations.
Herdsmen – farmer conflicts in Niger, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, and Zamfara have mutated into banditry, kidnapping, and mindless killings.
Lives and properties of Hausa – Fulani populations in Benue, Plateau, Taraba, South East and the South West are continually endangered by communal and religious violence.
Children from Northern states are regularly abducted, trafficked, and sold off in the South East where they were converted to religions other than that of their parents.
Drugs and arms proliferation, poverty and illiteracy, joblessness, and despair among women and youth have made everyday living extremely desperate in Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe etc while the rape of minors and the aged are menacingly rampant all over the North.
Ungoverned spaces across the North are practically demonstrated by deplorable road networks, collapsed educational and health facilities while the absence of electricity, portable water, and manufacturing industries have become common fare.
Most local governments exist only in name with State Governments and legislatures regularly denuding their constitutional powers.
The public now seemed resigned to mind-boggling corruption at MDAs, salacious emoluments for lawmakers, and injustices at law courts.
Public Universities have been closed for months and Government indifference is fueling speculations that the anguish of parents and students from ordinary homes are not a priority
NATURE AND CHARACTER OF THE END SARS UNREST
Nature:
Youths in the South started the protest against the excesses of some members of SARS demanding that the squad be disbanded.
More demands were later added including immediate release of all arrested protesters, justice for deceased victims of police brutality and appropriate compensation for their families, setting up an independent body to oversee the investigation and prosecution of all reports of police misconduct
Character:
Traditional rabble-rousers: CAN, media, Fani Kayode, Nnamdi Kanu, Asari Dokubo, Oby Ezekwesili, and Ayo Fayose inflamed the protests by spewing falsehood and hate speeches
Hausa- Fulani populations in the South West and South East are targeted, killed and their merchandise was stolen
Mosques and Muslim worshippers were made prime targets of attack by hoodlums in some states of the federation
As President Buhari reported, 69 people (51 civilians, 18 policemen) have been killed with 37 people injured. 205 critical infrastructure, corporate and private properties were attacked in 14 states. Firearms, including AK rifles, carted away from police stations. Several thousand inmates are freed from correctional centers
The military was widely alleged to have killed protesters at Lekki but curiously no corpse has yet been located
USA, United Kingdom, and United nations hurriedly rushed to admonish Federal Government against quelling the crises even though President Trump recently threatened to call out the military to checkmate the Black Lives Matter protests there and nobody quarreled with that proposition.
MY CANDID OBSERVATIONS
GOVT TIMIDITY: Government should respect the inherent rights of citizens to exercise their freedoms of association and protest against malfeasance by Government personnel and institutions. But it is equally obliged to protect the lives and properties of law-abiding citizens against molestation by ethnic bigots and religious zealots.
EndSARS protest: Kano IPMAN assures of adequate fuel distribution
SABOTEURS: The subversive role of ethnic jingoists, supporters, and financiers of the END SARS protests should be fully investigated and visited with appropriate sanctions. Government is duty-bound to uphold law and order. For peace and tranquil to prevail, no one person or group no matter how highly placed is sacrosanct. They should be sanctioned once they violate the law. It is called rule of law.
COMPENSATION In the event the Federal Govt bows to demands to pay compensations to END SARS victims and rebuilding Lagos, it must be ready to equally compensate and pay reparations to all traders whose legitimate businesses were vandalized during the protests as well as victims of Boko Haram insurgency, child theft, banditry, and kidnappings.
The North will no longer tolerate being consigned to second rate status. We are Nigerians too.
Dr. Dalhatu Sani Yola wrote from the Department of Political Science Federal University Dutse Jigawa State
