By Fr. Evaristus Offor
Has King Herod risen? Is Hitler back to his trade? Is the ghost of Idi Amin visiting Nigeria? So much blood! Our future leaders are being slaughtered by their so-called leaders and omnivorous force, who swore to oath to protect them. Oh, much blood is flowing upon the commands of commonwealth rogues, those blind leaders without vision and mission. How could a godly and responsible government be killing its children? Oh my God, how sad it is to behold children of this ugly country murdered callously by zombie police and soldiers who have ran away from the Sambisa. Hopeless military force that became hopelessly forceless in the face of armed bandits and Boko Haram. Are they not shameless to be killing innocent but unarmed youths? What shall the international comity of nations call Nigeria? How will the Church describe this country that eats up her children? Are peaceful protests no more a constitutional mix? It was jimmy cliff in one of his lyrics called on society to treat the youth right, before they will begin a fight.
My Unyielding Solidarity with EndSARS Project
Nigeria is the seventh-most populous country in the world, habitat to more than 200 million different ethno-religious citizens. Nigeria was badly and wickedly joined together by Lord Lugard regardless of its multifarious facets of life. Prior to its independence in 1960, all the ethnic communities were living separately in peace and progress, until the British colonialists came with the Sword of death and doom and the bible. Consequently, these peaceful communities were forcefully united as a country in 1914, without any form of concordance.
The country was then projected towards the North and in a sentimental way for the Fulani with a dirty mission to rule the rest of us forever. The hopeless and cantankerous nomenclatures, ‘’Born to Rule’’ was born in favor of Muslims of the North.
To cut the story short, the British created a country without soul and future and the system has since been moldy that lacked strong institutions and good-willed politicians and elite in general that could create a genuine nation. Ever since our so-called independence in 1960, we have been having it wrong and uncertain. We have had the pogrom of 1966 and revolution and counter coups as strategies to further the invasion and expansion of tribal and religious monopoly and hegemony. Northern Muslims have monopolized national political offices to the detriment of the country conveying meritocracy to hell. Besides, our different political leaders have created terrible socio-cultural and economic ogres and gobbledygook that have continued to threaten our common existence. Our youths are without jobs, parents are dying of hunger after non-payment of areas. We are being killed daily by kidnappers, armed bandits, armed robbers, ritualists, and cultists. Our farmlands have become fearful and killing enclaves for Fulani herders with the federal government doing nothing.
There is general insecurity that has brought palpable fear everywhere you go. We have been in the circles of ethnicity, tribalism, religious bigotry and nepotism. We are doomed living in the cell in a hell of oppression, marginalization, police brutality and rape, yet the governments have become blind and helpless. We have been shackled by the woes and brigandage of federal firms that give us epileptic power supply with throat-cutting estimated bills. Almost all the essential services have gone to the blues. Here in Nigeria, the youth is lost in the limbo of homelessness, joblessness and future-less in the midst of plenty. The youth is only good for political thuggery, assassinations, election rigging, yet they are not good to enjoy the largesse accruable to such nasty works.
The youths are dying in Sahara desert in search of meaningful life. Our youths are languishing and killed in foreign countries due to drug related offences. Our youths are doing menial jobs in foreign lands because drivers of our economy have refused to be kind and generous to them. Our youths are killed at the Sambisa forests fighting without outfitted weapons.
They are also killed during their so-call national service without frontiers of gain or reward by our corrupt and inept leaders in the name of tribal unification. This country has no agenda for the so-called ‘’Lazy Youths” by the federal government. The youth of this country, have been in and out of cell –in- a- hell situations, since our governments don’t think well of them. They are summarily killed by the police without any provocation. How could a leading political party murder gravely youths that campaigned, and voted for or rigged it into power. But thank God our Nigerian youths have newly aroused from an unfathomable snooze and commenced to take their destiny in their palms, becoming martyrs along the way. With the #EndSARS movement, our youths crave to an end to police viciousness and by extension total reform of the misgotten country of creepy leaders.
The current national protests these youths are indices of a country in dire need of streamlining of the federal systems that have no iota of concern for them. They are on the streets demanding for so many things calling the government to refashion the country they call their own.
The youth want a nation and not an empire misruled by political vampires. They are demanding for their rights in a society that did not have them in reckoning. Every year, hundreds of thousands of graduates are being churned out of the universities and many have stayed jobless after decades of mark off from universities. Hence, batches of youths who may perhaps be occupied in constructing the country have been engrossed in all sorts of criminalities due to frustrations.
The prevalent national remonstrations are undeniably a precursor that the country is nose-diving into oblivion, and extremely our youths are pressurizing for transformation in the so-Africa’s most populous and powerful country of extreme poverty. Over 60 years of independence, this badly knitted country has not found its feet in political, moral, and socio-economic balance. Out of frustration and lack of legislature’s’ inability to have checkmated the executive, our youths are now saying enough is enough.
For them, they can’t sit hands akimbo and watch this country arc into eternal muddle and hocus-pocus. Starting off their bloodless revolution, they first basically ordered the persnickety and non-caring President Muhammadu Buhari to disperse the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit due to its cruelty and carnivorous nature. Not daunted with the struggle for restructuring, the youths want a totting up of police reorganization and for the prosecution of leech officers. They want a new Nigerian nation and not a country where northern Muslims feel they are born to rule.
They want a nation with reason and conscience. Do northern political oligarchs know that in just a few weeks of these current protests, that Nigeria has lost a whooping sum of N700Bilion? If this were to be happing in western world, our doggy legislators would have spoken and called the Presidency to order. However, they are part of the evil against both the youth and poor Nigerians.
A blind executive and an insensate but corrupt legislature. In as much I support our youths in these non-violent protests for a new Nigeria, let them be prudent and wise. God save our youths and poor Nigerians. Please God change the hearts of our leaders and give all of them sense of the Sacred and good conscience. What we need in conjunction with the youths are justice and equity, respect to human rights and a totally reformed country.
Youths ensure that thugs and robbers don’t abuse these revolutionary trends. Nigeria is never a nation, and let’s stop living in a fool’s paradise. Speak Mr. President. Speak out so-called representatives of the masses. What kind of politicians do we have in this country? Has it truly become a ‘zoo or forest’ as Nnamdi Kalu calls it? Leaders prove otherwise and that you are truly human beings. A country, best described as a city engulfed with characteristics of a state of nature?
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