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  The Nigerian government seems not to be fighting its most important wars against insurgents and terrorists. It is rather fighting against its vibrant youth population who have only committed the ‘crime’ of demanding for better governance and organising themselves well in the process. The Nigerian government is expending effort into victimising youths, who are channelling their political energy for the first time in the last 20 years.
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On Monday, 7th December, a second wave of the #EndSARS protests took a foothold online and got people doing processions in some cities in the country. No sooner than this information filtered into the media that the police trooped into flashpoint locations in order to prevent gatherings of any kind. Evidently, the order from the office of the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, must have emboldened the police, even more, to use firearms against peaceful protestors. The president himself, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), have also been recorded to have given stern warnings to nobody exactly that he will not allow any form of the #EndSARS movement to fester again in the country. While the president may still be speaking as if he is still a military man, he may have forgotten that he is perjuring the oath of office which he swore to that the fundamental rights of Nigerian citizens will not impinge. In a very ruthless and illegal manner, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has kept the bank accounts of major actors of the #EndSARS protests frozen. People are still hunted and picked up under trumped-up charges of terrorism for their role in #EndSARS. Soldiers are beating and harassing young folks for indecent dressing in a fashion reminiscent of the War Against Indiscipline (WAI). The judicial panel of inquiry into the atrocities committed by the defunct police unit, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), was literally thrown into an existential crisis when the legal department of the Nigerian Police Force challenged their legitimacy in court.
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Yet, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, has maintained that no evidence of a crime committed by the SARS is worthy of prosecution and so they can go scot-free. While the president and his close associates have been presenting themselves as if they are against the progress of Nigerians, it will be worthwhile to also question their patriotism at this rate. All of these coordinated attacks on the persons and the collective intelligence of the ordinary patriotic Nigerian. The political elite is scared of the potential the Nigerian youth activist is yet to fully wield and this is why they keep bullying, threatening and victimising the youth into another round of silence. Featured Image Source: Quartz
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This article was first published on 16th December 2020

adedoyin

Macaddy is mostly a farmer in the day who also dabbles into technology at night, in search of other cutting edge intersections. He's on Twitter @i_fix_you

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