Why We Must Remember

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, A New Chapter for African Artefacts?. Buy the issue here.

It is now two years since the #EndSARS movement sent shockwaves across Nigeria. Election season is upon us and, as expected, politicians and their acolytes who put their pockets, interests and status over the lives of ordinary young Nigerians, have resumed their perennial attempts to ingratiate themselves to the voting populace. However, if Nigeria is to move forward, this election cycle must be different. More than ever before, it is important to recall the part that prominent political office hopefuls played (or didn’t play) in Nigeria’s most momentous civic protests since the return of democracy in 1999.

In Enugu State, where the current governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, is a senatorial candidate of the People’s Democratic Party for the upcoming elections, protesters have not forgotten. They remember how he turned his back on them and walked away when they took their protest demands to the government house. They remember that he took it a step further by tweeting a false account of events. Nneji Ebuka, a 25-year-old indigene of Enugu State, joined the #EndSARS protest with his cousin from the very first day the protests went offline and spilled into the streets. They marched in solidarity with thousands of young people protesting in other states across the country demanding protection from extortion and police brutality. He told The Republic that he experienced the worst betrayal of his life during this period. On the first day, the protesters arrived at the state government house only to be told that the governor had already left for an event in a different part of the state. ‘It was callous, and intentionally so,’ Ebuka recalled. ‘I remember wondering how the governor—knowing how agitated and wronged the youths felt and having prior notice of our visit—could afford to place another matter higher on his list of priorities.’

Refusing to speak to the deputy governor, the protesters came out again the next day to attempt to meet with Governor Ugwuanyi. ‘I’d be wrong if I said he came to discuss the reason for our march with us,’ Ebuka pointed out. On Twitter, protesters called out the governor for staging a pressing conference where he was addressing ‘supposed protestors’ who were in fact hired thugs on a day where there was no protest in the state. ‘The day before the fake video, the governor came to address protesters with hire thugs hoping to scare us off,’ Ebuka added.

The governor and his entourage stormed out on the protesters after a terse exchange ensued between him and music artiste Phyno over poor governance in the state. To the shock of witnesses, the governor’s media team later shared a short video clip from the meeting, spinning an entirely different narrative of what transpired. Neither the governor nor his team ever apologized for this lie. ‘As a matter of fact, they accused Phyno, Flavour, and the youth that came out to protest police brutality of being sponsored by rival politicians.’

Ugwuanyi has since attempted to launder his image and present himself as ‘a peace lover’, but youths like Ebuka who live in the state know him by the footprint he is leaving behind. They know of his silence in the face of massacred communities in Enugu. They have also not forgotten the land grab s between him and underprivileged communities, which somehow always result in people forfeiting their lands to him or ‘the state’. Above all, the youth remember that when they depended on him to resolve their most pressing issues he walked out on them and lied to the world about what happened...