By Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
In this country, there is always someone or something drawing a line in the sand and people are always expected to fall on one side or the other. Religion, politics, Soyinka or Achebe, 2Face or Blackface, (whatever happened to the latter by the way?) Man United or Arsenal (before Arsenal became a ghost football club) and if Tiwa Savage is vixen or victim.
These issues, some grave, others trifling, are often backed by passionate drama and arguments that sometimes end with blood. Like the time in 2007 when two Lagos friends, Anjorin Dodiki and Akeem Salami’s incendiary support for Arsenal and Bolton, who were playing at the time, turned to fisticuffs and one of them ended up with a knife in the head, like Arthur’s sword in the stone. Fortunately, he lived.
One of the grimmer issues that have drawn a new line in the sand has been #EndSARS and the Lekki shootings. Of the many things Nigerians should be ashamed of, Lekki and the handling of the protests and its aftermath should be one of the most preeminent.
It is no longer news that the Judicial Panel of Inquiry and Restitution looking into the incident at Lekki released its report this week. In it, it confirmed that 11 persons lost their lives that night of October 20 in Lekki while four others are still missing. That the authorities used excessive force and wilfully denied ambulances access to the scene to assist the injured. That what happened at Lekki “can be equated to a ‘massacre’ in context,” the report said.
The last year since the protests were brutally ended by military might on unarmed civilians waving the Nigerian flag and singing the national anthem has shown us up. Since then we have been debating if what happened that night was a massacre or not or if anyone was killed that night or not. Debates are healthy and questions should be asked about claims, especially ones that require scrutiny but the gloating by some Nigerians, which somehow found its way in muted or blatant tones in the media says a lot about us. Even from preliminary evidence, way before the report, it was clear that the shooting at Lekki resulted in deaths, even if it was not in the numbers originally feared and often projected by the protesters, numbers that technically do not qualify it as a massacre. However, the death of one person, especially at the hands of those sworn to defend them, should never be excused. Didn’t John Donne say in his famous Meditation XVII: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”
We all should be worried that soldiers, sworn to defend the country, could open fire on peaceful protesters and have habitually been doing these for years. Our continuous excusing of such savagery because we disagreed with the victims be they Shiites or #EndSARS protesters because we don’t like what they are demanding or how they are going about making these demands, should cause deeper introspection in us.
It had happened before, many times in fact. Yes, the Shiites had constituted themselves into a nuisance but did that warrant the massacre that was unleashed on them with at least 300 persons killed? Or was it OK to do the same to Odi and Zaki Biam or to those zealots who became Boko Haram insurgents today?
Nigeria must learn the proportional use of force, where necessary, if necessary. Being equipped with an army that serves as a hammer does not mean that everything, including the fragile tendrils of national euphoria, should be treated like nails.
This, ironically, is where the issue circles back to the police. I am not one to blame colonialism for everything..
