A lot of nothing.
“This is not current affairs, this is history. We are at crossroads compatriots, the forces we fight have shown us what they have in the last few days, we should remain more united and even more resilient. We have seen what our unity has done. Let us do this now and now alone! Let us do this for the dead, let us do this for Jimoh Isiaq and many others whose names we know not. Let us do this for their families and friends that will never forget, let us never forget.”
The excerpt that started this article was from my last article on the End SARS protests. Through that piece, I told well-meaning Nigerians the need to remain resilient in the struggle for better governance that had the face of “End SARS”. I told Nigerians to keep on even in the face of all the attacks by government to sabotage their efforts. Another part of that writing reads; “Dear fellow citizens, we know our enemies, and we know their mode of operation. The greatest weapon we have against them is the truth. We must remain focused, and in our unity and resilience, we will outlast them”. I made this statement to encourage people to keep their hopes alive in the struggle. At the time of putting those words down, I had no knowledge of what we see today, I couldn’t imagine it.
I couldn’t imagine that men of the Nigerian army will open fire on unarmed citizens of the federal republic of Nigerians singing arise o’ compatriots and waving the Nigerian flag. I just couldn’t imagine. I am lost for words to describe how I feel about that god-awful incident that happened on the 20th of October at Lekki tollgate, Lagos. But here is what I think.
Before stating my thoughts, let us not forget the title of this piece; a lot of nothing. A lot of nothing is what the speech of President Buhari on Thursday was. Never, even with all the negatives our country is known for have I thought of us getting to this point we have found ourselves. What we are experiencing now in Nigeria is a total lack of leadership. The speech of the president even though it was all nothing managed to do something, it managed to make Nigerians more furious, this is evident in the increased chaos and instability across the country.
‘Let them eat cake” was all the president said, and amusingly, Nigerians found “cake” in warehouses all over the country. Videos from those warehouses where citizens in multitudes fought for their “cakes” were depressing, to put it mildly. I don’t know what you saw, but all I saw was “sorrow, tears, and blood”. Empathy Alfred Adler defined as seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another. The president’s speech lacked empathy, more than anything, it showed anyone that cared to see who the president was. Is showed that the president’s reality was totally different from Nigerians’, it showed that the cries of Nigerians do not get to Aso rock, better still, as the president’s cronies say, they arrive there as wails. It showed that the president does not have the capability to feel what Nigerians feel every day. That speech was what president Buhari is.
Now to what I think about the Lekki massacre. Firstly, I think we are at a very critical point, whatever happens now defines this whole fury. Mindfulness must be our watchword. Winston Churchill opined, “the farther backward you can look, the father forward you are likely to see”. At this juncture, we need to look deeply into the past in order to see what we need for the future.
The happenings until this time have shown us that police brutality is not the major problem. If really we respect the souls that have been lost, we must get this now and get this right. Police brutality is not an isolated problem in our country, therefore, there is no amount of government policy or round-table dialogue that can create real and sustainable change. Treating police brutality as an isolated problem will been dealing with the effects of the main problem without thinking about the causes.
Like I stated earlier, we need to take a deep look at the past and get the things we need to get it right now and in the future. If the heat in the nation presently isn’t transformed into energy to power the change we need now, I’m afraid we will be looking at 2060 or thereabout to get a phenomenal heat like this again. Everything we do now matters.
To end with, we need to do away with the tension and chaos across the country, nothing reasonable, I believe can be done in this state, I pray for peace for the families and friends of the fallen heroes, their labor shall not be in vain. Mindfulness must be our watchword. Remember compatriots, now and now alone!
