The use of music during the #EndSARs protests followed a long tradition passed down to young Nigerians who communicated through songs, the savage nature of those who hurt them and protested against that hurt in the very same breath—that they mattered and refused to bow to fear.
When young Nigerians gathered in the streets in protest last October, why did we feel so compelled to sing?
Was it a choice? Looking back, I think not. You could not choose to sing the songs that we sang. I will never forget my first day at Lekki on the twelfth day of October. A Monday that was so unbearably hot that sweat pooled under my chest, when I arrived at the scene of protest only after an hour spent convincing my mother and father that I needed to be there. Pushing past the red and white barricades, looking up at several youths hoisted on top of a platform, I heard them loudly sing:
How many people SARS e go kill o?
To this, the youths below responded in kind:
How many people SARS e go kill?
Ey, they go kill us tire.
Ey, they go kill us tire.
Eyeheyeheyeh they go kill us tire.
How many people SARS e go kill?
Angling my phone up to catch the group as they sang in unison, I was struck by both the simplicity and the necessity of the ask: how many people would SARS kill? This was a question that many of our lives depended on. But asking it also implied that the people we were dealing with were merciless and murderous, so much so that the number they had slain could not be counted or accounted for. We, in effect, communicated the savage nature of those who hurt us and protested against that hurt in the very same breath. We said that we mattered and that we refused to bow to fear, even in the face of the murderous.
Where did we learn this? Just what was the source of our bravery? It could be looked to as an isolated moment in history, as all things can. However, such an understanding does not do enough to highlight the historical weight of what took place in October. A braver and sweeter reality to consider is that in Nigeria, there is a tradition of singing against one’s oppression, a tradition of singing as protest. In the streets of Lagos, Ekiti, Enugu, Kano, Port Harcourt, and more, as we sang, whether we knew it or not, we were engaging in something that our ancestors have done, and have been doing, for a very long time. There exists, of course, the history to prove it.
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