The Lekki Massacre: Nigeria’s Deadly ‘State of Exception’
By: Akinyemi Oyawale
Tags: Nigeria, Endpolicebutality, Police Brutality, Lekki Massacre, Endsars

By Akin Oyawale, PhD.

EndSARS protesters in Lagos, Nigeria.

Blood on our flag, hunted like a stag; if Nigeria is cursed, we all are the source. ‘The labour of our heroes past, shall never be in vain, to serve with heart… m-i- ght … one nation bound in freedom, peace and unity’. Dying words of a young Nigerian who was martyred and soon became a past hero (only seconds separating him from singing to himself) by the bullets of the same agents that International Relations Theory tells us are their apex guardians; the military prevents external invasion and the police and other cognate agencies maintain law and order in the domestic sphere. Put together, they constitute the coercive elements of the Nigerian state against those who threaten the hierarchy of the Nigerian democratic Leviathan with anarchy-inducing violence — a spectre whose bones are eternally exhumable in even the most advanced states. On the night of October 20 at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos (the financial centre of Nigeria), the resilience and persistence of unarmed protesters against various forms of governance issues and primarily police brutality (epitomised by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad — SARS), triggered the infamous Hobbesian ‘Bellum omnium contra omnes’, translated as ‘the war of all against all’ pretext by the political class.

As Agamben (2005: 7) aptly notes, ‘the state of exception means that lawbreaking can be approved by the highest officials and go unpunished’. What transpires when the dusts of challenges to ‘regimes’ from ordinary Nigerians settle, is the carnage that is more often than not, orchestrated by the country’s own military and what makes these situations peculiar is that, ‘it is impossible to distinguish transgression of the law from the execution of the law, such that what violates a rule and what conforms to it coincide without any reminder’ (Agamben, 2005: 7). Extrajudicial killings of the unarmed unambiguously violate all known laws of civil and international relations and the government is aware that this cannot be openly acknowledged without risking further pariarization among the international community — if one ever existed. The point is to make a (non)violation indistinguishable.

Odi, Zaki Biam, Baga, Abonema, and Zaria, among others represent the major massacres under our civilian Leviathans since 1999. This is not about some ‘barbaric’ Third World (an anachronistic jargon) condition or a ‘post-colonial’ malaise. Trump was adamant about subverting an 1878 US law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal/state officials (inclusive of governors and the president) from using the military in domestic affairs, by invoking the Insurrection Act, another law, which permits the POTUS to deploy military force in exceptional domestic situations; a discursive production of the exception (the BLM protests and protesters) is what is required. In Africa, the ‘exception’ was up a notch under colonial regimes, especially with the subpersonhood status attributed to colonised — Black, Brown, or Yellow — peoples.

From smaller repressions such as the Iva Valley massacre to largescale atrocities such as the putting down of the Mau Mau uprising, there was little thought about the right to life of those unfortunate enough to look through the barrels of the colonial government’s largely native adjutants. What I’m saying here is that the state of exception is long-standing and no Western country can save Nigeria as this is a common feature of the modern state (the greatest ‘organised criminals’ in town according to Charles Tilly or ‘wholesale terrorists’ according to Noam Chomsky), from Washington DC to Beijing — it is only a matter of degree and rhetoric. All governments need to do is sanction the powerful signifier of security or law and order and things — mostly bad things — happen. For the EndSARS protest, protesters were ‘hoodlumised’ and ‘hooliganised’, making the exception permissible.

It’s a month since the massacre, and there is a face-saving exercise through judicial panelling or rather ‘panel beating’; ‘beating’ the truth via the circuitous joyride will likely produce the findings they seek. Amnesty International already confirmed 12 deaths. However, it is not whether people died or not, it is the fact that deadly force (by the army) was sanctioned against those who barely posed any immediate physical threat and were largely vulnerable. In a Roald Coarsean sense, if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything. This, we know but we live in a country of perpetual mysteries. How Nigeria’s minister for information and culture, Mr Lai Mohammed will sanction the same exception towards the CNN is up for debate. To the CNN, the regime’s Nigerian Online Commandoes (NOCs) are out to get you, at least virtually; you better watch your back. To me, this is the most recent ‘known unknown’ within Lai’s Paradox (not to be confused with the liar’s paradox).