Continued from last week
It is senseless that our Senators/ Representatives who sit only a few times a week, many of them being nothing more than bench-warmers who make no meaningful contribution to law-making and oversight, aside from chorusing ‘nay and yea’, are possibly the highest paid law makers in the world, our Senators taking home over $2 million per annum, with American Senators coming a distant second with $174,000 per annum, while a rank and file Policeman who stays on the road all day and all night, goes home with about $1,000 per annum! Look at the severance packages of Governors and their Deputies, who serve no more than eight years maximum and then retire to the Senate to earn fat salaries in addition to their scandalous pensions, compared to a Police Commissioner who has served the country for 35 years – I understand that the latter’s severance package is below $500! Reasonable Deductions I found it rather strange that President Buhari could refer to people who are obviously miscreants, as “so-called Protesters” in his address last Thursday evening.
We all know that those who went on the Looting Wednesday rampage, were definitely not the #ENDSARS Protesters. At Present, conspiracy theories, the blame game, and rewriting the narrative are in full swing, and though we should await the outcome of a credible inquiry, there are still some deductions which we can comfortably make based on the occurrences, and some pertinent questions which we can also ask: That the unknown soldiers had no business being invited to unleash violence on unarmed flag-carrying #ENDSARS peaceful Protesters; that neither the Police nor the Army (or other law enforcement) did anything to protect the citizenry on Looting Wednesday; that no Governor has control over the Army, or even the Police completely; that Lagos is the worst hit in terms of destruction of property (it was like a systematic terrorist attack); that it was someone or a group of persons who had the power, that commanded the unknown soldiers to move on the #ENDSARS Protesters, as rank and file soldiers could not have acted on their own volition; that it was only those who control the Police and the Army who could have directed that they intervene to stop the destruction on Looting Wednesday; that unlike the Ojora of Ijora whose Palace was protected by his subjects because he is well loved by them, the Oba of Lagos does not enjoy the same support of his people – his Palace was ransacked, looted and damaged, while Kabiyesi had to be spirited out of the place; that the Federal Government of Nigeria is paranoid, and views all exercises of our right to protest (Sections 39(I) and 40 of the Constitution – freedom of expression and freedom of association, respectively) as an attack on it, and an attempt to embarrass and destabilise them, or hound them out of office; that this Government, like most of its predecessors, has failed Nigerians and plunged us into extreme hunger and poverty, the consequences of which we saw play out on Looting Wednesday.
I concur to an extent with Learned Senior Advocate, Dr Konyin Ajayi, that the destruction that we saw, is ‘weaponised poverty’ – “poverty and illiteracy that has been growing in the last six years of this administration”, now making Nigeria the poverty capital of the world. That so many Government establishments were the primary targets of attack by the hoodlums, is ample evidence of the perpetrators’ feelings of hopelessness, rejection, despair, anger and contempt for Government and its officials. Unanswered Questions Why was a curfew imposed in Lagos in the first place, when the #ENDSARS protest had been nothing but peaceful? Who stood to gain from all this? In Abuja, we saw a videoclip which showed thugs sponsored by unknown persons of means, mobilising and conveying them in their SUV to Wuse 2 to disrupt the Protesters on the street.

We saw another videoclip of a Young man in Abuja, who held a press conference in which he gave the #ENDSARS Protesters 48 hours to vacate the streets, or else….. We saw a videoclip of thugs being conveyed in a Police van, earlier in the day on Black Tuesday. Who authorised the unknown soldiers to go to the Lekki Tollgate to disperse the Protesters? Was it the Chief of Army Staff? If it was him, who ordered him to do so, as Section 217(2)(c) of the Constitution only allows the Army to suppress an insurrection and restore order at the request of the President (and there was no insurrection)? Was the Governor of Lagos aware that unknown soldiers had been deployed to his State on Black Tuesday? Could the reason for the deployment of the unknown soldiers and thugs, have been to cause confusion in order to bring to a screeching halt, the protest which had lingered for longer than expected and was certainly a source of embarrassment to the Federal Government, especially as the whole world was watching and had come out in support of the #ENDSARS Protesters? Why did Government fail to protect the lives and properties of the people, on Looting Wednesday? In this day and age of advanced technology, videos of the rampage were circulating on social media as it was happening, and it would be impossible for Government to feign ignorance of it.
Whatever the reason for the mayhem of Looting Wednesday, it was enough to cause extreme public disorder, thereby allowing the President to ban the #ENDSARS Protest. The rights donated in Sections 39 and 40 of the Constitution are not unlimited, but are restricted by Section 45(1) of the same Constitution in the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health. Was that the reason behind the disruption? To orchestrate such a chaotic situation, that it would become the basis for invoking Section 45(1) of the Constitution to end the protest? Destruction of the Courts As a Lawyer, the court is my constituency, and it was heartbreaking to see how the hoodlums set fire and destroyed the Court of Appeal, the Lagos High Court (the oldest court buildings in Nigeria), and the Magistrates Court. Another sign of the common man’s disdain for the temple of justice, which they may feel has not done them well. All the vital case files and documents that were destroyed! God knows when the courts will be fit for purpose again. Certainly, this will affect the livelihood of those of us in the legal profession.
Particularly painful, was the wanton destruction of Nigeria’s only world class state-of-the-art DNA Centre and Forensic Lab. Conclusion The invasion and destruction of Government facilities by hoodlums which occurred on Looting Wednesday, has been described by some as “the 9/11 of Africa” – a terrorist attack on Lagos. It reminds me of the ‘Storming of the Bastille’ on July 14, 1789, when the French peasants invaded the Bastille, which was the representation of royal authority, marking the onset of the French Revolution and the rejection of the Monarchy by the French peasants. Beyond acceding to the #ENDSARS Protesters’ five-point demands, as a matter of urgency, Government must look into the demands for good governance by the Youths, and indeed, all Nigerians, and restructuring.
I advise the Youths to ensure that they all get their voter’s cards, take advantage of their strength, and organise themselves into a cohesive and formidable force – as the ‘Almighty 2023’ is almost upon us. Some mischief makers have sought to create more confusion, by adding an ethnic colouration to the events that transpired on Looting Wednesday, blaming the Igbo for what happened in Lagos – this seems ridiculous, and more like a plot to pitch us against ourselves. I wonder who stands to gain from orchestrating more chaos and enmity? Just as the #ENDSARS Protesters come from different Nigerian tribes bound together by their common legitimate demands, so also the miscreants would have come from different tribes bound together by thievery and bitterness resulting from poverty, hunger, illiteracy, ill-treatment etc. Undoubtedly, we need to concentrate our energies on healing and rebuilding. In other countries, such as South Africa, this was done via their Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because it is only with the truth that we can we start to genuinely reconcile. For Nigerians, indeed, 2020 has truly been an ‘AnnusHorribilis’.
Onikepo Braithwaite is the Editor of THISDAY Lawyer.