What happened to a legitimate protest becoming a flood of criminality is still surprising to me. I am watching right now on Channels Television the litany of the terrible aftermath of the protests across Nigeria. The looting seemed coordinated; or it was a mere mob action that just continued unabated. The manner in which the looting was done seemed more like criminals taking advantage of a situation that was meant for good.
What would one say is the connection between stripping a shopping mall of its goods in Lagos and a medical store of its medicines and equipment in Kogi State. What of tractors in Adamawa State? I just continued to find it all shocking.
It all started with breaking into so called palliative warehouses after the Lekki shootings. Then it became an orgy of stealing and pillaging in a frenzy across Nigeria. The truth is that no matter the reason given, WHAT IS BAD IS BAD. Under whatever guise, looting is a criminal act. Let us assume that truly the palliative food stuffs were hoarded, the right thing to do is to call out the government and bring it into the court of public opinion until it does the right thing. But going and looting the food stuffs by the mob is STEALING and daylight robbery. This does not do the cause of the #EndSARS protests any good.
This is the critical moment that the #EndSARS protesters would have shined forth, by coming out to disown this armed robbers hiding under the guise of a peaceful and well organised protests to steal and commit divers crimes. What this exposes is the fact that the protest appears to be a spur of the moment thing and does not have an organised leadership.
Be this as it may, those organising the youths through the social media appeared to have dissolved into nothingness in the face of the looting. If this same group of leaders have also come out to speak strongly against the looters, I am sure they probably would have been able to halt this shameful activities of armed robbers pretending to be #EndSARS protesters.
It is still not too late. Let the leaders that coordinated the first two weeks of the protests also come out to disown these people spoiling all the good works they did in the first two weeks and use the same social media to organise and get all the youths organise against the looters. This is because I will not like to believe that they support the shameful acts going on round the country right now.
In the same vein, I will like to call on all the people that have gone to loot people’s things, please, have some shame and return the goods you stole. Remember that some of these people you stole their goods are also struggling Nigerians trying to make ends meet. What point are you making if you end the business of someone that just want to start in order to cater for their families? What help are you rendering to the protest of the youths if you are giving them bad public image as looters? This nonsense must stop if there is still any shred of shame in you.
And as a citizen of this country, I do not expect that you will buy looted goods from these armed robbers. I am sure you are decent enough to not want to be a party to this looting by buying stolen goods. Seeing the pains of those whose shops were looted, some still paying bank loans, I am sure you will rather report to the police anyone trying to sell to you stolen goods. Indeed, this is the time to stand up and be counted by discouraging them from continuing stealing by refusing to buy their stolen goods and reporting anyone that you suspect is trying to sell to you stolen goods.
What these looters have succeeded in doing is to show that the government officials that have been looting government treasury are just like them. They are shameless and have no conscience; neither do they respect decency. The truth is that two wrongs do not make a right. Looting and destroying public or private property does not amount to the right way to fight the ills in the Nigerian system. Indeed, showing a better example is the way to shame the looting government officials and their apologists.
Now, let everyone of us take a side with the truth and decency by condemning the looting and at the same time encouraging the organisers of the protests against the ills in the Nigerian society to use that same structure to bring under control this hijack of its good intentions and taking a stand to continue to enjoy the public support it had at the beginning.
On a final note, I will say that no matter how long we try to run away from it, we must speak as a people and confront our fears as a country. What is bad does not have another name but that IT IS BAD. The way Nigeria is structured now is bad and breeds injustice. We must address these issues and confront them so that we do not end up losing control as a people one day. The recent sustained protests and the aftermath showed us that.
There had been different documents over time prepared to show our cracks. Let us be true to ourselves and face them and take far reaching decisions to tackle them. The 2014 National Conference is the latest and it is still gathering dust on the shelf. As long as we refuse to give a level playing ground to everyone in this country and walk in true justice, our cry for peace may remain in self deception.
If Chile 🇨🇱 could do it by taking a referendum to do away with their constitution full of inequality, so can we. We need to decide that we want to now write our own constitution and not an imposed constitution where our ‘We the people …’ will truly be by WE the people. Any Nigerian government true to itself and sincere in wanting to serve this great nation will allow the Nigerian people create a constitution for themselves that will give everyone equality. It is only then we can move from potentially great nation to a great nation!
God bless Nigeria 🇳🇬
#EndSARS #longrichprof #omolaranwabueze #readywriter01 #PPP #endbadgovernanceinnigeria
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