Tunde Bakare, serving overseer of Citadel Global Community
Church, formerly known as Latter Rain Assembly, has commended #EndSARS
protesters for their “resilience”.
Young persons across the country had hit the streets to
demand a reform of the police as a result of excesses, particularly by the special
anti-robbery squad (SARS).
Following the protests, Mohammed Adamu, inspector-general of
police, disbanded SARS while the federal government promised to accede to the
demands of the protesters, appealing to them to leave the streets.
But the protests continued until armed men in army uniform opened fire on the protesters.
In a state-of-the-nation address on Sunday, Bakare said:
“The Nigerian state has blood on its hands”.
He called on President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that those
who ordered armed soldiers to fire on innocent citizens are fished out and made
to face the full weight of the law.
“In the past week, we witnessed with great sorrow the
desecration of our nationhood as Nigeria’s armed forces stained the banner of
our nationhood, the Nigerian flag, with the blood of our children, the Nigerian
youth, to whom our founding fathers charged us to hand over a banner without
stain,” he said.
“All across the nation, there is a wave of people movement.
It is a wave of citizen engagement championed by the so-called ‘ordinary
Nigerian’ who has proven in extraordinary terms to be by no means ordinary. It
began in Edo State with an awakened and resolute electorate defying the
political establishment to make their voices heard and their votes count. In
the past couple of weeks, that wave has been transformed into a tsunami of
people movement led by our young people who have had enough of the horrendous
brutality of the now-disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). I believe
that this wave of people movement is the physical manifestation of the birth
pangs heralding the New Nigeria.
“As I observed the End SARS protests, I could not but
conclude that we are witnessing the crescendo of an era and the beginning of
another. Ten years ago, when we convened civil society organisations under the
umbrella of Save Nigeria Group (SNG), our objective was not to be the voice of
the people, but to restore the voices of the voiceless in a nation where social
mobilisation had been frozen for too long at that time. Ten years later, the
End SARS protest has assured me that a generation of Nigerians has arisen,
armed with clear and unmistakable voices, refusing to dim their lights or turn
down the volume of their requests, because we have entered the era of ‘Soro
Soke.’ I salute the courage of this unbreakable generation; I salute the
resilience of every Nigerian youth, named and unnamed, who has stood up to be
counted in this momentous era.
“No degree of brutal repression of protesters can quench the
flame of protests in the hearts and minds of the Nigerian people. Your bullets
may drive them off the streets, but your bullets cannot pierce their spirits or
puncture their resilience.
“One can understand why the younger generation would so
heavily indict preceding generations. At independence, we inherited a promising
nation, but we are bequeathing a predatory nation to the young generation. We
inherited a nation whose structural foundations were built on principles of
true federalism, a nation in which the diverse groups had the freedom to
determine their destinies, but we are bequeathing a unitary nation, federal
only in name, in which sub-national expressions are suppressed by an
overbearing centre.
“We inherited a
banner without stain, but we have introduced a new colour to our
green-white-green: blood red.”
Bakare, who said the country needs leaders who listen to the
people, condemned the violence that trailed the protests.
“We need sensitive leaders who are not ashamed to shed tears with the wounded and who can tell the broken, ‘Your pain is my pain, and I will do everything in my power to lift your burden,” he said.
On violence, he said: “Rather than destroy, we must build;
rather than revel in attacks on tangible and intangible infrastructure, from
buses and police stations to palaces and state-owned cyber assets, we must
protect our common patrimony. Instead of accepting a status quo that appears to
leave us no choice but to go through the backdoor, we must build enduring
edifices of open governance using such bricks as the Freedom of Information
Act. Our conduct should at all times be moral, ethical and legal, moderated by
the reality that there are no shortcuts in nation-building.”
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