Lekki Freedom Notes: 1
By: Abiodun Makinde
Tags: Endsars, Hillary Clinton, Freedom, Nigeria, Elections

Yesterday was an eventful day. A day filled with a lot of trepidation, emotion, and trauma. The reports, pictures, and videos of the loss of lives and properties across the nation are heart-wrenching and could easily trigger PTSD in fragile and sensitive viewers.

I am still unable to wrap my mind around the degenerate nature of the massacre at the Lekki Toll Gate. The masterminds of this heinous crime have played their last and final hand in a very predictable manner. Once they cannot find a way to come up on top in a negotiation they resort to the use of force and pressure tactics to tilt the eventual negotiation in their favor. It seems they all had the same playbook since 1966. I indeed commiserate with the families who have lost their dear ones. There are no words that can be offered that can bring enough consolation or reparation for your loss. We stand with you in this dark hour and offer our solidarity for the sacrifices your beloved ones made on behalf of a Nation in the throes of rebirth.

Where do we go from here? How do we ensure that this situation doesn’t plunge us all into a state of anarchy? How do we preserve the gains of the #ENDSARS movement while moving on to greater and more serious issues of national concern? These are some of the questions that have plagued my mind all throughout yesterday.

First, we are already witnessing the grand denial by the government and her agents about their culpability in the #LekkiMassacre. This is always the first step. Until an incontrovertible proof is produced, they will continually deny any involvement. Thankfully, there were live broadcasts and recordings of the crime perpetrated by armed military men against defenseless and peaceful protesters.

Once denial has proven illogical, they will switch to baiting ethnic and tribal differences as a means to cause unrest amongst the ranks of the protesters and the civil populace. The homegrown ethnic distrust and suspicion that exists between us naturally make us susceptible to this particular strategy. Turning Yorubas against Igbos or Hausas is an art that the ruling elites have mastered well. They just need to make a few whispers in the right ears and suddenly the machinery springs into motion and then our collective gains are scuttled for ethnic bickering and irrelevancies. We must resist the urge to once again become pawns in their game. We are all victims of Nigeria irrespective of our tribe or ethnicity.

Tempers are rising. The carnage is increasing. Supposed enemy properties are being targeted. The street is filled with the rubbles of vengeance. How did a peaceful protest, with little or no skirmishes degenerate into such a gruesome sight of arson and looting?

The simple-minded explanation of most people is that the protest was hijacked by hoodlums who are now responsible for all the carnage and atrocious acts. However, this explanation does not absolve the #ENDSARS movement from complicity simply because this agenda, that is now hurting the business and livelihood of many in the general public, was sneaked into the background of the protest. Unless we act rapidly, all the gains of the movement that endeared us to the Nation will be lost in the coming hours due to the reprehensible behaviour of those who are hijacking our collective mandate just to discredit us globally.

So in this situation, what can we do?

Turn our agitation into an asymmetrical warfare of wits and talents.

If there is anything about this #ENDSARS movement that caught the attention of the World, it is the high level hive intelligence and coordination that guided it. It was a hydra movement. As the government and her agents kept throwing one obstacle after the other, the #ENDSARS movement navigated all the traps and bottlenecks with enviable grace and intelligence because for the first time, the movement didn’t depend on the smartness of a few but on the collective intelligence and appropriation of the many.

We need to go back to this hallmark defining feature and rally ourselves into a different kind of protest. Our ranks are filled with great numbers of painters, cartoonists, song writers, performers, comedians, artist(e)s, dancers, software developers, web developers, app developers, visual creators, poets, spoken word artistes, speakers, graffiti artists, animators, scientists, technologists, lawyers, doctors, financial experts etc. Everyone can wage a protest with the tool of his or her trade. For a long time we have tried to use social media wrongly by making posts and sharing posts simply with hashtags. The effect and impact has always been minimal and that’s why our impact is being ignored by the belligerent leaders we have.

Imagine what will happen if a 1000 songs are released every week and uploaded to iTunes from Nigeria and they all have one single theme: #ENDBADGOVERNANCE or #ENDSARS as the case may be. If instead of buying food for protesters, the funds is channelled to advertising this new releases to a global audience via social media, within one month, we will most likely take over the iTUNES platform with content from Nigeria alone and the world will be forced to listen to us.

Imagine the graffiti on prominent walls in auspicious public places; the animations, cartoons and caricatures of the #LekkiMassacre, #EndSARS etc; the poems and poetry speaking about the dearth of meaningful and responsive leadership in Nigeria; the drama skits, the comedic jibes, the satires, the different web applications, the apps, the coordinated dress codes for the movement across all professional divides… the possibilities are endless and that is a kind of warfare that is alien to the Nigerian government and her leadership. They are not equipped to deal with this and cannot legislate us into submission because we won’t be breaking any laws whatsoever. Let us take this protest to version 2.0. We have fought on their turf and they did not play nice, let us take this fight into familiar territories and decimate their psyche. Then when the time is right we come back again and gather to make our demands.

This ability to disappear and reappear at will while nibbling at the enemy’s heels and pecking at her neck is called mobile warfare. They have called us keypad warriors and rightly so but we need to now show them what keypads are able to do. Let’s repaint the vista of the Nigerian state for the world to see the true colour of our leadership while allowing the beauty of our future to shine through the potentiation of our varied gifting and talents.