It has been four years since the Nigerian flag was stained with blood at the Lekki Toll Gate. October 20, 2020, will be marked in memory as the day the government took aim at the youths of its own country. Unarmed protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate waved flags and sang the national anthem, only to be met with gunfire from the armed forces.
Nothing has changed since the #EndSARS killings. Fast forward to 2024, Nigeria is still awash in blood. This year alone has been a parade of police brutality and extrajudicial killings. In August, Inspector Collins Wilson shot three people dead in Abuja while trying to cover up for his girlfriend, who had stolen a mobile phone.
On October 16, 2024, Oyetade Temitope left home to go to Oshodi. Some policemen flagged down the motorcycle he was on, accusing him of being a ‘yahoo boy,’ because of the tattoos on his skin. He denied the accusations, but they persisted, and he was threatened with being shot. Fearing for his life, Temitope ran and was chased by the police officers. In the process, he fell into a canal at Water Tipper Garage, along the Mosan Okunola-Ipaja traffic route, sustaining fatal head injuries and was unconscious. He later died in the hospital.
On October 17, just a day later, a young man, Ifeanyi Smith Ojinnaka was murdered in cold blood by the police, under the Artisan Bridge in Enugu state.
These are a handful of more recent atrocities of the police. There are a plethora of other cases.
Their blood, like so many before them, has seeped into the concrete of a nation that has grown too accustomed to the sound of gunfire from the police, against the citizens. And the machinery of justice is weaker than the laws it aims to uphold.
The government promises reforms with one hand while steering the country deeper into chaos with the other. Each new death is met with the same old song: investigations, detentions, promises of reform, and panels of judicial inquiry. But the reforms never come. Instead, more bodies pile up.
The recent August #EndBadGovernance protest was yet another record of atrocity by the police. Scores were killed across Nigeria by the army and police. Eight protesters were shot dead in Borno and Niger States. Three were also killed in Kaduna State, and two in Jigawa State. In total, more than twenty-two protesters lost their lives during the protests. More than one thousand were arrested and detained. This was supposed to be a hunger protest, protesting the economic hardship in Nigeria.
What hope is there for a nation where police brutality is the norm and justice, a mirage? The answer lies in the fists of the people. The memory of #EndSARS and the Lekki Toll Gate shootings must not fade. It must burn brightly, fueling the embers of fierce resistance by oppressors in uniforms. This is not only about the deaths of 2020 or the entire killings by the police; it’s about dismantling a dysfunctional system that has made brutality the norm in Nigeria.
On October 20, 2023, Amnesty International reported that three years later, over 15 #EndSARS protesters arrested in 2020 are still being arbitrarily detained without trial in Kirikiri Medium Correctional Centre and Ikoyi Medium Security Correctional Centre in Lagos. Realistically, this number is below the actual count of those still in prisons, as many #EndSARS protesters have been languishing in prisons since 2020. I call on the government to take it upon themselves to release the protesters, as they were only exercising their fundamental human rights.
May the souls of those who lost their lives during the #endsars protest continue to rest in peace. Amen.
