By Abanikanda Olumoro (Uk)
CITIZENS COMPASS –One is flabbergasted to read or listen to some occupants pretending to be more Lagosians than the indigenes claiming the protectorship of the former Colony and capital of Nigeria, and doing so with hypocritical motives to profile some fellow Nigerians for stigma. It is unacceptably wrong.
They are using the “ebi npawa” mantra that is now rampant in the land to blackmail the criers, who are truly hungry but will not be expected to complain. They say there is hunger in the land and, truly so, they are attestably hungry, poverty afflicted and, it is said a hungry man, as an angry man, can spark into protest at any time.
Their blackmailers know this imminent yet inevitable protest but are using a case scenario that is general for the entire country to rope the Igbo living and doing their legitimate businesses in Lagos to say they want to, again, launch a protest to destroy the state like, according to them, they (the Igbo) did during the EndSARS protest of October 20, 2020. This is unfair an accusation to make against fellow citizens.
Criers over hunger in Nigeria cut across the entire country. Afterall the other time, Northern Nigerian traditional rulers raised alarm as impact of the economic policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in one year has been unbearable for their subjects particularly the restive youths, who they said had been pacified all along not to spark into violence.
So, there are same tendencies in the South East as people question, what kind of economic reforms would make people now begin to jump into their early death and the President, who plonged them into the crisis, would insist saying, “There is no going back?” It has never been this bad for Nigeria and its citizens but those in positions of authorities, who benefit from from the system unlike the masses that bear the brunt, want the poor public to believe it is global problem. How global?
How do people, who live in mansions of N20 billion each, urge the common man with barely a space to rest his head to be the one to sacrifice and endure hardship situation of over 40 per cent inflation, while they as the cause and beneficiaries flaunt the common wealth of the people in hard currencies? This isn’t a holy reform of the economy but a wicked one against the entire nation.
So, to say, “If there is any campaign for uprising or protest we won’t allow protest to take place in Lagos, Lagos is no longer capital of Nigeria,” is a talk unpopular. Perish it.
Yes, during EndSARS, over 300 BRT buses were destroyed, but the grand cause for the protest was known to all, especially those that are now screaming as if they care about Lagos for the good of Lagos people other to steal the patrimony and take it back to their own states of origin to benefit their own people to tge detriment of Lagos natives.
Pertinent, however, to say that the EndSARS protest was a mass movement and a coalition of people whose composition included mostly Yoruba of South West origins and who co-led the movement with South East and South South youths. So, leave Igbo out of this. If people say they are feeling hardship and difficult, they deserve their constitutional right of freedom of expression. If they choose to protest as the only power the masses have to express displeasure with a failing government, why not?
How much of lesson from the violent situation of that EndSARS have these propagandists and their sponsors worked upon in order to ensure that no repeat of such most deadly protest situation reoccurs either in Lagos, Abuja or anywhere in the country? Was it not after the EndSARS the non-indigenous South West Yoruba – occupying political power of Lagos – still went ahead in 2023, less than three years after, to run an election that was characterised with violence, deprivations, disenfranchisement, using thugs to suppress voters and this making it impossible for the people to perform their civic right of voting the candidates of their choice at the election? Thanks to United States Department of State for attesting to this in a major report, recently.
Lagos continues to be a centre of control for hoodlums where a thug collecting unconstitutional taxes at motor parks and various bus stops are so much more powerful than the police, the constitutionally recognised security agents for ensuring security and safety, still these occupants of Lagos believe they are Igbo doing it. How possible could that be? How many motor parks in Lagos have Igbo as chairmen, and how many of the land grabbers or those that used Oro (occultism) to chase people away from performing their civic rights at 2023 elections are Igbo? They are all Yoruba either from Ekiti, Ogun, Oyo, Osun or Ondo.
So, perish the wrong notion of saying the “Igbos attitude is to bring Lagos down if they can not to control it.” Do not say so. Do not speak for Lagos. Let the owners of Lagos speak for themselves and they have been speaking saying “We know who are our problems but they are not Igbo. They are Yoruba who are non-indigenes of Lagos from other South West states that are grabbing our land, inflicting hardship on us and ate making it impossible for us to run our state by ourselves.”
They are the ones who are running this anti-Igbo propaganda saying, “Not only is Lagos no longer the capital, South West is not Nigeria. The economic problems affect people countrywide, let every protester go home to protest in his state and zone as they do during Christmas, Sallah and other national holidays.
“Absolutely, let them go and protest in their local governments, let them loot shops burn houses and destroy properties there, we won’t allow venomous hatred of igbos to manifest in lagos. And if they insist on burning shops vehicles etc let’s start from Alaba, Festac town and Ladipo markets.”
The above words are not of Lagos indigenes but of Yoruba from other South West states, whose rights to live and do business in Lagos is no more than that of Igbo they are projecting for ethnic profiling.
But, why and how on earth do they think that we will believe all these elements of propaganda they are pushing to the public and believing it is the better way to prevent an imminent mass protest? They are the people in politics who are living larger than life and shortchanging everyone.
Let me conclude my write-up this way, that as long as any protest is lawful, it should not be impeded. It is a right that is guaranteed in the Constitution as amended. Freedom of movement is a constitutional right enshrined not only in our Nigeria’s Constitution but also allowed in our legal documents. We cannot allow political thugs, street urchins and propagandists masquerade as Lagos State opinion moulders. No. That is responsibility that should be left to owners of Lagos State to handle. Let them speak for themselves.
