My Romance With End Sars Protests

”Whoever does not flare up at someone angry wins a battle that is hard to win” — Buddha.

When EndSars began, I was a bit skeptical about it. Although it was a hashtag that Nigerians used to express their grievance, it still did not carry a lot of weight. Most people, in my opinion, rode on the trend, just get more attention. However, After Wizkid tweeted about it, more and more people joined the discussion. My skepticism grew. This was a serious affair, I thought. Wizkid had tweeted three times in a single day and it had attracted a lot of participation, and soon the whole of Nigeria was talking about EndSars. Yet, Wizkid’s language in the tweets was angry and biting. He called the President an ‘old man’, which a lot of his fans rationalized as a truthful fact, after all, the president was indeed an old man. However, ‘old man’ as Wizkid has used it was a derogatory remark.

Wizkid also threw shades at a colleague, Reekado Banks for daring to promote his song, which he featured the Star Boy during the period. Wizkid called him a fool to the excitement of fans. Yet, Wizkid had retweeted tweets about his song during the EndSars periods. I guess it was okay if Wizkid fans talk about his products but it is not okay when Reekado does. So yes, I did have my criticism of the foundation of the movement. It did seem like the people who were asking that the people who demanded that the police stop brutalizing them were brutalizing others. It is not the same? I guess that means one brutality is okay and the other is okay.

Anyways, I pushed my skepticism aside and joined the movement. After all, it was the first time in history Nigerian youths were coming under one voice and it sure seemed to be leading somewhere. This could be it. This could be that unifying bond that would eventually bring about change.

I was reminded of my doubts when a few days later, I came across a post on Twitter. By now, young people had begun to meet on the streets and had begun to protest, demanding change. Cool right? I came across this post. It was a video. A protester, a young man, was being lynched by other protesters. The story was that he hit a woman, another protester, during the protest. It did not make any sense to me and I was silent about it. How do we demand that the police are responsible for their actions if we are not? The policeman should not brutalize an armless youth but it is okay that you can? I was insulted in the social media space, which is amusing these days.

“So what should they have done,” other social media users demanded.

“Demand that he apologizes,” I wrote.

“So somebody beats a woman and all that should be required from him is an apology,” another social media user asked, attempting to show the rest of the world I was insensitive to the woman’s plight. I realized then that majority of the people were using the protest as vengeance. It was never about getting a solution to the problem. It was about pacifying injured egos. Strategies as this always backfire. Yet I could be wrong. The protest seemed to be gaining international attention, even though international attention has hardly led to a long-lasting change.

When Rivers State youths announced that they were joining the protest, I expressed fear. By then, the protest had gone on for ten days. If you know anything about Nigerians, meeting for a protest for ten days which had not led to major violence is a big deal. I feared that Rivers State youths, known for their violent nature, would spoil the streak we had achieved. It is important to realize that this was after Hoodlums had attacked protesters in Alausa, Ikeja in a bloody mess. It was obvious that the hoodlums had come from the government as some of them came in Lagos State buses. Also, the police and military stood by while hoodlums attacked innocent protesters. It was impressive how the protesters took the experience. It was after the attack that many protesters started advocating for better treatment of Nigerian police by the government and cleaning up protest grounds. It was as if the protesters realized that to teach the government how to be peaceful, we had to teach them the language of peace. Therefore, I was afraid that the River State youths would jeopardize all that work of self-control we had attained in the protest. I did express my fear, and as usual, people were quick to point out how insensitive I was. They said Nigerian youths have a right to be angry. Yes, we do have a right to be angry. However, we do not have to act on the anger we feel. We can let the anger direct a more strategic reaction, or we can act on total blind rage. One of these options would bring about dire consequences for us. We have a government that would do anything to make sure we stay oppressed. If it got into a violent situation, it would become a game, and like all games, it would be about the validation of the ego.

However, my fear of Port Harcourt youngsters was not justified. I was both ashamed and proud, and so the struggle continued.

My excitement was cut short when convicts were let out during protests in Edo State. The reports were confusing, and who let the inmates out is a mystery to date. Yet the ploy is obvious. The government did not like the protests, and they were getting afraid that the protest was working. They had to find a way to put an end to it. Their first attempt was in Alausa, Ikeja where hoodlums attacked the young protesters. If protesters found themselves getting hurt and even killed during the protest by people who were supposed to be ‘other protesters’, then this might scare the real protesters away from the street. This might also give the protest a bad rep. What the government did not see coming is the response. Instead of the protesters responding with violence, the people responded with more peaceful protests: giving meals to the police, picking up litters, singing the national anthem, hiring private security.

Yet the government would not give up. If they could not scare away the protesters, then perhaps they could discredit the protest. This is when the prisoners in Edo State escaped. The story they told was that protesters had broken inmates out of the prison. However, there was no evidence that the protesters were involved in the jailbreak. Nevertheless, there was no evidence that they did not. It was no news by this time that people, whether genuine protesters or under the guise of protesting, were burning down police stations across the country. In the instance, we were not sure about anything.

The plan of the government worked. The incidence divided the protesters. Did protesters break the prisoners out? Who broke the prisoners out? The media, who are dependent on the government, did not make the issue easy. Some of them reported that the protesters did. Others protested that it was perpetrated by hoodlums. Either way, nobody so sure for a fact who did. With the protesters divided, the government swiftly attacked. The protest movement was beginning to wear the face of a riot. It was the plan all along. protests are always being quelled by the military. For instance, The Jos protest of 2001 where over 1000 people were killed in two weeks ended when the military came into the picture. The government’s plan was simple: Make the protest look like a riot. After the jailbreak, people got angrier. The government was playing dirty, and now was the time for Nigerians to play dirtier. This was exactly what the government wanted. We began to play right into their hands. More youths grew into violent tantrums and the protesters argued among themselves: Are these protesters or government-sent hoodlums. In all of these, the quest for police brutality to end was forgotten.

I remember I talked about it too. It was the time to realize the government’s plot and start a strategy of our own. This time, we needed reps and spokespeople who would start to control the media perception of the protests. At the time, it did seem like the government was too much in the control of the media.

With the protesters confused, the Nigerian government added their last stage to their plan. We had now fallen into the confusion of being seen in the media (whether true or false) as miscreants who are wreaking havoc. They began to warn that we back down the protest, knowing full well, and also hoping that we would not. And when we did not, they announced a curfew, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Protesters were too blind with rage to realize the games the government was playing. They were not eager for solutions anymore. They wanted revenge. They wanted to go head to head against their government. They made statements like “You no fit kill us finish,” in anger. They had forgotten that they were dealing with a government that had watched with arms folded as entire communities were stripped off of their wealth, lands, and lives. They were daring the government who had shown time and time again that it had no respect for them. So the government announced a curfew meant to start at 4 PM on Tuesday at 11 AM on the same day. Nigerians would have to strain themselves to keep such a curfew. This alone was supposed to tell well-meaning protesters that the government was up to something.

I scrolled through Twitter, reading tweets of Nigerians deliberately defying the government.

Sowore Soleye tweeted advising protesters to remain on the protest grounds till well after four. They wanted to show the government that they ready for the consequences. However, when people say they are ready for consequences, it is often anger speaking, and rarely does anger solve anything.

Of course, nobody expected that soldiers would show up at the protest grounds with the intent to kill, but we are dealing with a government that has been described as the Devil, and when you want to eat with the Devil, use a long spoon. The genocide that happened on Lekki Toll Gate made that Tuesday the saddest day in Nigeria in a long while. I felt a deep loss. Perhaps what made more a lot sadder is the fact that the people who were killed and injured might have faced another destiny if we had realized the importance of strategy and intelligence gathering. Carter J. Nolal who teaches military history at Boston University wrote:

The strategic depth and resolve are always more important than any commander. We saw such depth and resilience in Tsarist Russia in 1812, in France and Britain in the First World War, in the Soviet Union and the United States during the Second World War, but not in Carthage or overstretched Nazi Germany or overreaching Imperial Japan. The ability to absorb initial defeats and fight on surpassed any decision made or battle fought by Hannibal or Scipio, Lee, or Grant, Manstein, or Montgomery.

We did not have a strategy, and so we were doomed from the beginning. We thought that the expression of rage was enough to win the fight against corruption. We were wrong. We remember how Sowore was arrested for his RevolutionNow movement. It died because there was no strategy. You do not plan a revolution while opening your hand to your opponent who has had extensive military experience.

Blind rage has hardly won a societal cause in history. It was blind rage that put Nelson Mandela behind bars. It was a blind rage that demarcated the difference between Martin Luther King’s movement from Malcolm X’s. King’s movement was far more successful. X seemed to have spent more time looking down on King.

If we had strategized, we would have realized that we cannot win a direct conflict with the government. Emeka Ojukwu, who had more resources than we did, tried. Three years-long battle that was more about ego validation than it had to do with the health of the people, three years-long battle that had scores of death, and still the Nigerian government won. What can you possibly bring to the table that Ojukwu, a military expert and a governor, did not have? As the writer of the Art of War, Sun Tzu, puts it:

“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot be victorious.”

Right now, spirits are broken. We are grieving. I hear more people insist on still putting up resistance. I assure you, now is not the time. We have been severely wounded. It does not make any sense of fighting a healthy opponent when wounded. Now is the time to nurse our wounds and learn from our mistakes. In film writing, which is a huge part of my vocation, there is the initial defeat that the protagonist faces out of ignorance. He is defeated because he does not know his antagonist, and so he is defeated just like we have faced temporary set-back because we did not realize that our government is willing to kill us all if that’s the only way they get to keep power. This is where the tenacity of the protagonist is tested. He does not back down, just as we would not. And when next the Phoenix rises, it would be motivated by his rage and would fight with the strength of his education.

We always have had an advantage over our enemies. Power-hungry people are never clear-headed in a fight. Their every move is not to solve, but to always prove a point.