The October 2020 story
Arise, o compatriots…
For over three years, we had been complaining of the Special Anti Robbery Squad. But they had been torturing Nigerians for longer. People like me had seen both the negatives and positives of them. Like in the university, if thieves attacked a hostel, and we called the police, they never came, but if we called the SARS, they always came running.
More so, if we woke up and we had been robbed, if we reported to them, they always found the thieves. Today, I am forced to wonder if that was an investigation or some kind of familiarity between them.
Also, I had watched them take boys from the hostels for no good reason and watched these boys return with swollen faces, and broken minds. That is what they do to you, they break your body, then they break your mind. That is if they are in a good mood and you have enough money to bail yourself out of their mess.
If you do not have enough money, you will be shot down, and your body was thrown in a river. If your family paid enough, you will get a decent burial and they will get closure. What do you call the arm of the government that plays judge, jury, executioner, criminal and law enforcement all in one? FSARS.
Nigeria’s call obey…
Three days worth of hashtags on Twitter, and a repeat of old news in better English later, we decided that it was time to take the battle of the walls of Twitter, and to the street. We decided to hit them where it hurts the most. We started a peaceful protest. We, Nigerian youths. Just like that, the sorosoke generation was born.
The first day of the protests had Rinu and Mr Macaronii on the Twitter trend. They went to the state government house and decided that they were going to sleep there until they got an answer.
The first sets of harassment began, but I guess the government thought it was enough to keep us away from the streets. They took their tents, turned off the street lights and left them out in the cold. Cold is nothing compared to the walls and the floors of the cells, the stench from your own urine and that of your cellmates. It is nothing compared to mosquito bites and the flies perching on the wound inflicted on you by the men of this group. They stayed in the cold for those nights while they were out there.
Seeing that they were serious, the government made another proclamation on Twitter. However, we were done listening to that nonsense. So, even when the 72 hours were over and it was time for people to go home, they were joined by a throng of youths who had had enough. My friend Rachel said ‘This is not the first time they are feeding us burnt dodo, this is time, we are deciding will spit it out’. She was not faffing around. We were spitting it out.
By this time, the protests had spread around the states of Nigeria, well except most of the northern states. Some of them said they were with us on Twitter, we did not believe them, we were right to. Abuja on the other hand was a different ball game.
They were beaten, teargassed, waterbombed and they always came back. They always came back. They were called the coconut head, because well, dia head strong well well.
My memory is fuzzy as I write this now on the 11th of February 2021. I wanted to write this a long time ago, but then trauma, the trauma from the events that unfolded eventually. It was way too much for me to bear, so I left this article. A mistake, because that trauma has now buried deep some of my most glaring memories. I had wanted them to be sequential, but that will no longer happen. As I write, some of the memories flurry in, and I place them where it looks nice.
I remember my first protest. I had just scrubbed my face and was about to lie in bed and continue my protest online when I saw on Twitter that there was going to be a protest in my vicinity. I immediately showered and entered the streets, took a while, but I found them. Halfway in, the messages began to come in.
Juwon: Are you mad? Did you go with your inhaler?
Nkem: Are you mad? Are you safe?
Ada: I am telling dad
Phebe: I know say you go go
I went live on FB, the comments were a little better
Richelle: I am proud of you.
Emmanuel Oriaku: Go on…
Jane: Go, Gail…
At the protest, I realised that I was running alongside people who scared me on other days, people I would usually need protection from. People who scared me. Here we were, running and screaming on the streets, ‘What do we want? End Sars!!!’
I remember one guy, his hand had been cut, I do not know what happened, but I immediately brought out my sanitiser and sprayed some on his hand. He tied it up and we went on screaming. I was screaming that the old generation was complacent cowards. Lol. I would apologise for these words later.
Scrubbing my face before going for the protest will turn out to be a bad idea, my face got sunburned really bad. I had to keep pouring cold water on my face till I got home.
A proclamation will eventually come from the president himself, I refuse to mention the name of that man. However, while he was making that proclamation, there were more reports of sars attacking people later. The sars he said had been disbanded.
I remember my second protest. By this time, the protest had run for a week. I and my friends, T, N and Bee got in a cab, scared to mention our destination, because by now, the government had been picking up people from the streets and locking them up. Despite that danger, we went.
I remember dancing at that protest and shouting myself hoarse
‘Fuck the fucking police, No justice, No Peace!’
I also shouted
‘Fuck the police, Make una end sars!!!’
My friends and I lost ourselves and found ourselves again and again during the protest. My allergies hit at some point, but there was medical care there for me.
Before I went on my first protests, the government had begun to fight back, and I think that was what strengthened my resolve to be out there, we needed the numbers. There were reports of beatings, and shoot outs. The police were shooting at us and they had already killed a few in different states. In places like Delta state, death brought more violence. In places like Lagos state, death made our numbers grow, we were blocking major roads. For every person gunned down, ten more rose in their place.
Some of us got arrested, and FemCo, spearheaded by Modele and FK Abudu had them released. They were working tirelessly behind the scene providing food, water, tents, drinks, legal aid, medicals and every other thing they thought we needed for this to be a success. We really needed a win.
The government sent hoodlums, quote me anywhere, I said it. They sent hoodlums, armed them and asked them to come after peaceful protesters. We fought them, we won.
They kept sending them, we kept winning. At some point, we had to hire our own security outfits, because the police had failed yet again, in their duty to protect us.
They destroyed cars in Abuja, we raised money and fixed those cars.
Then they burnt the cars, that, we could not fix.
I remember Jimoh, the guy killed in Oyo state. Nah, he was not a protester, he stood at some end watching the protest, and just like that, he was killed by the police. They shot and killed an innocent young man.
There was another, Ikechukwu, I think. He was a driver who went to ease himself, he never made it back to his boss, the policemen shooting at people in Surulere killed him. He died with his hands in his pockets.
I remember that the most aesthetically pleasing picture I saw at that time was from the surulere protest. You see, a sars officer, mad at the protests, had corked his gun to shoot at the protesters, the first bullet that came out went straight into the stomach of his colleague. He had his guts spilling out in front of him as he laid on the floor in pain. Oh, the joy that flooded my heart. You see, that is what Nigeria does to you. It takes and takes, till you are an empty, hollow being, dried out by anger and pain and all that is left is a shell of forgotten memories.
After my second protest, I got home and fell sick. My body had finally caved in. I was following the protests online, while I was throwing up and in so much pain.
One nation bound in freedom…
Whenever they asked ‘Who are your leaders?’ We said ‘We have no leaders’ This was intentional because we knew what the government would do to the said leaders and we wanted to save them.
I remember that at the protest ground the Muslims wanted to pray once, and the Christians formed a protective barrier around them. This really must have shaken the government, because they depended on our religious differences to separate us. They could not call it a Christian problem or a Muslim one. It was a Nigerian problem.
We were in unity, we were bound by the resolve to fight an oppressive system. We needed to fight, we were ready to be wounded, beaten, hurt. We took to the streets, agbero and calm, uneducated and educated, we all had a common enemy and we needed them dealt with, we were bound by this resolve.
We were not violent, we did not hurt anyone, we cleaned the streets after each day’s protests. We just wanted better governance, an end to a system that was killing us. That was all we were asking for. Yet, for this reason, we were beaten and shot at.
It was around this time that accounts got frozen, or was it earlier? It was around now that I began to receive strange calls, that my truecaller began to show me names I did not know, that I took down my company name from my profile. It was around this time that Segun Awosanya, called this movement an insurrection.
Peace and unity
October 20th, 2020.
The governor of Lagos state issued a declaration of a curfew by 1 pm which was going to start by 4 pm. He would later extend the time, but it would not matter.
I was in bed, going through my phone and checking on my friends, and asking those who were at the protest grounds to go home.
I came on Twitter to find out that a few hours later, the cameras at the tollgate, where the majority of the protesters were camped, had been taken out.
By 7 pm, the lights were taken out as well and a few minutes later, there were reports of gunshots from that area.
I rushed to Instagram and watched on DJ switch’s Instagram Live as bodies dropped while they sang the national anthem. I watched as they tried to save the life of a man who had taken a bullet to the thigh. I watched as people sang the national anthem and cried as the soldiers of the Nigerian Army shot at them. I watched as a man who died said ‘Don’t stop fighting’ as another said ‘Allahu akbar’ and passed on. As people died. As the Nigerian government massacred innocent Nigerians who asked for a right to live.
I watched it all happen. I was a witness. I and 14,0000 other people who watched that live feed.
I write this because trauma makes you forget. I do not want to forget and I hope you never do.
For so many nights later, I could not sleep. If I closed my eyes, I would see bodies drenched in blood. I will beg and say ‘let me sleep nau, please’, sometimes they would go away, other times they would not.
It would be important to note that one of the men who died at Lekki that night, his last words were ‘Peace and Unity’.
