The CNN Report On Lekki Massacre In Nigeria Told It All
By Igbotako Nowinta
The gigantic electoral promise and hope of 2015 have been dashed. The Nigerian masses are being suffocated every second by bad and hopeless leadership. The leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress and other related bodies have been swallowed up by those who are only interested in adding more to their bulging pockets and stomachs. The masses no longer have friends here; life has become nasty and unbearable.In all of these nauseating dilemma and scenarios, tyranny or despotism, no matter how highly organized or sophisticated can never crush a people ready for freedom. Surely, the Nigerian people can never be crushed; definitely we must fight back; and we will fight back. Those who spilled the blood of peaceful protesters who were reciting the National Anthem; waving the Nigerian Flag, green-white – green at Lekki Toll gate, Lagos, will not be spared in the long run, because they have murdered sleep. Most painfully, we are in a country overflowing with terror and bloodshed; a country where citizens have become mere objects of ridicule, torture, wanton killings and misery. It is ironic, unfortunate and intolerable, that those who are supposed to protect fellow Nigerians are the once carrying a banner of oppression, horror, insults and deceits against them.
Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s current Minister of Information and Culture has become nothing, but a disgrace, worthless clown, national nuisance and perfect embarrassment to what we know as Nigeria today.
How could this man have the effrontery to threaten or sanction a media octopus like the Cable News Network (CNN), for reporting its own fact of the matter concerning the October 20, 2020 savage attack of defenseless #ENDSARS protesters at Lekki Toll gate?
Lai Mohammed must be reminded quickly that the CNN, is the first ever cable television in the history of the world running non-stop for twenty four hours; that the CNN is not a Nigerian media that could be silenced with the federal government hammer, twisted with financial sanction or outright closure; that in spite of its political and economic interests in United States and elsewhere, it is a reputable cable network known for in-depth analysis deeply rooted in painstaking and exhaustive investigations.
Lai Mohammed reminds me of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Information and Propaganda in Nazi German between 1933 and 1945.
Goebbels once said: “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which government can play…If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Adolf Hitler used Joseph Goebbels to the tilt, telling mighty and fabricated lies, and ended up manipulating the German press until the ‘Third Reich’ hit the rocks in April 1945.
l have equally carried out my own investigation, to know that the soldiers that were drafted to the Toll gate at Lekki, Lagos, on October 20, 2020, indeed behaved less professionally, and more like heavily intoxicated mad dogs against absolutely peaceful, civilized, organized and defenseless protesters, pragmatically vociferating their fundamental human rights.
If the soldiers were not even surprised and afraid of their own demented actions, on that fateful day, why did they panic, by packing the dead bodies they shot into a truck and ran away?
Eye witnesses who were living around the Lekki Toll gate have allegedly corroborated the fact that the soldiers displayed unspeakable barbarity in the senseless liquidation of innocent citizens who were using the #ENDSARS peaceful protests to get at the authorities.
They alleged that stray bullets that emanated indiscriminately from some of the trigger happy soldiers, landed on several other innocent individuals; even some floating bodies were discovered in a nearby river, close to the scene of the tragedy, days later.
The ongoing Judicial Panel investigating #ENDSARS protests and related matters, set up by the Lagos State Government, has been a can of worms, going by the way Brigadier General Ahmed Taiwo of the Nigeria Army has articulated his position concerning what transpired on that bloody night.
General Ahmed Taiwo, Commander of the 81 Division of the Nigeria Army, unknowingly has corroborated what the CNN has already made public, when he admitted that soldiers brought live ammunitions to the scene of protests at Lekki Toll gate.
Today, some British parliamentarians and other concerned forces across the world have shown genuine concern about the way the Nigerian Government is handling the post #ENDSARS issues and the Lekki Massacre.
They are visibly angry and fuming about the animalistic posture and idiosyncrasies of Nigerian rulers; they are saying enough is enough, because Nigerian masses have had enough, coming furiously from wicked rulers since after the civil war in Nigeria.
The CNN report about the tragic and unspeakable horror displayed by some Nigerian soldiers and the brazen, shameless and senseless manner that Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, and his comic and pitiable counterpart in Lai Mohammed are carrying on with the matter, has shown graphically that a chunk out of our current political masters in Nigeria are sworn enemies of the Nigerian people.
We daily see monsters as rulers who do not care or bother a hoot about the lives of the electorates, who gave them their mandates in the first instance.
What do we have here? We have a Commander-in-Chief, a sitting President, who after he was stridently ‘forced’ to address his countrymen and women, neither mentioned nor ordered a minute silence for the dead #ENDSARS peaceful protesters.
What a country; what a miserable rudderless civilian government? This blatant insensitiveness; this cruel ‘l don’t care approach’ being put up by the rulers of Nigeria against fellow Nigerians, has simply equated them as scoundrels and heartless criminals worse than the internet fraudsters or what we know as Yahoo boys flourishing in our midst.
It appears, that in trying desperately to defend the indefensible, the Nigerian government, led by retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari , is ready to sacrifice everybody, to continue to ride rough shod over us, whether we like it or not until the next presidential poll in 2023.
Truly, if this government is of the people, and humble enough, a simple apology by owning up to the tragic mishandling of the Lekki Massacre; and therefore adjusting to the reality of providing good, proactive, responsible and responsive governance would have at least soothed the extensively bruised nerves of victims, relatives and concerned Nigerians.
But, regrettably, we are seeing crude remorseless defense by government. The Lekki Massacre will never get out of our minds. The ongoing clampdown on notable #ENDSARS frontliners, such as Peter Eromosele, will not augur well for the health of the present federation, but rather escalate, compound and worsen the fragile situation in the country.
Who says Kigali, Afghanistan or Rwanda is far from us? Who says we must continue to condone, bear or tolerate this misnomer, called Federal Republic of Nigeria to our continuous peril?
Who says this irresponsible, unforgiving corrupt political masters will not push aggrieved Nigerians to unleash a most uncompromising and ruthless second wave of the #ENDSARS protests sooner or later?
Today, the cost of living is neck-breaking and horrendous; we are experiencing unimaginable cruelty; fuel is now N170; a bag of cement is N3, 500; a bag of rice is N42,000.
The All Progressives Congress, led by General Muhammadu Buhari has built new refinery in Niger Republic, and now daily pumping fuel into Niamey, while we are in a mess here; officially Nigeria has entered another recession.
The gigantic electoral promise and hope of 2015 has been dashed. The Nigerian masses are being suffocated every second by bad and hopeless leadership.
The leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress and other related bodies have been swallowed up by those who are only interested in adding more to their bulging pockets and stomachs.
The masses no longer have friends here; life has become nasty and unbearable.
In all of these nauseating dilemma and scenarios, tyranny or despotism, no matter how highly organized or sophisticated can never crush a people ready for freedom.
Surely, the Nigerian people can never be crushed; definitely we must fight back; and we will fight back.
Those who spilled the blood of peaceful protesters who were reciting the National Anthem; waving the Nigerian Flag, green-white – green at Lekki Toll gate, Lagos, will not be spared in the long run, because they have murdered sleep.
Most painfully, we are in a country overflowing with terror and bloodshed; a country where citizens have become mere objects of ridicule, torture, wanton killings and misery.
It is ironic, unfortunate and intolerable, that those who are supposed to protect fellow Nigerians are the once carrying a banner of oppression, horror, insults and deceits against them.
Where is the butcher of Bangui-Bokassa; where is satanic parrot and manipulator of Berlin-Joseph Goebbels; where is our own evil General-Sani Abacha? It is pathetic that dictators and dictatorship often don’t learn until it is too late.
I sincerely hope that the above will not be the certain fate of our present reigning blood thirsty tormentors?
