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ENDSARs AND THE MILITARY: FACTS, FICTION AND PROPAGANDA BY Nelson Okoh

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Since the country’s independence in 1960, the Nigerian Army has played crucial roles in sustaining the unity of the nation. On several occasions that the military has been called upon, it continues to defend the nation’s sovereignty. One of such occasions was in the late 1960s when officers and men of the Nigerian Army laid down their lives to keep the country together. Thousands of Nigerian soldiers reportedly lost their lives during those dark days of Nigeria’s history. The Nigerian military has, as such, always been at the forefront of defending the fatherland even at the risk of losing the lives of officers and men, who are fathers, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters, like every other Nigerian. In recent years till date, many soldiers have lost their lives fighting Boko Haram insurgents in the Northeastern part of the country.

The latest effort of the Nigerian military to keep Nigeria together, restore peace, and maintain internal cohesion in the country was during the ENDSARS protests that turned violent. The protests would have consumed many more lives than it did and would have taken the nation into sheer anarchy, except for the quick intervention of the Nigerian Army. Peace in the nation was on the verge of being eclipsed until the military, deploying standard rules of engagement, restored sanity to the nation.

The ENDSARS protests had started as peaceful as they could be on 8 October 2020, with the protesters demanding the proscription of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The protesters drafted a five-point demand which they said must be met before they would return to their homes. In a couple of days, the Federal Government responded to their demands and immediately disbanded SARS. That was the beginning of critical reforms in the police, and all the perpetrators of evil in the name of SARS were to be brought to book, as President Muhammadu Buhari announced. Other measures were to be put in place as ensured by the Federal Government.
But like the President stated in a later address to the nation, the promptness with which the government acted was misconstrued for weakness, and the organizers of the protests, egged on by various persons and organizations with other interests, advanced the protests to dimensions that forcefully prevented people in various parts of the country from going about their legitimate businesses. That was the first violent streak to the protests, and it was that way for several days.

Major highways in the country were blocked, and parts of the country were grounded. The ‘peaceful protests’ so-called were essentially and tactically violent from their early beginnings. The obstruction of national peace was bound to breed more violence. This soon became manifest in the attack on the Rapid Response Squad (RRS) in Lagos, the violence that accompanied the jailbreak in Benin, the attack on the Osun State Governor that almost led to his death, amongst other demonstrations of violence. As is common with mass protests in various parts of the world, hoodlums and hooligans seized the initiative and embarked on a sinister agenda.

The unfolding trend of escalating violence warranted the imposition of curfews in various parts of the country, starting from Edo and followed by Lagos where violent encounters among hoodlums, many of whom could no longer be separated from the other protesters, had got to a head. In spite of the curfews, protesters still went about their campaign and the blockade of various highways. The main theatre for this breach of law and order was Lagos where protesters gathered at the Lekki Tollgate on Tuesday, 20 October. Their non-compliance with the curfew was soon greeted with a response from some military operatives on the invitation of the state government.

It is particularly instructive to see that military operatives were sent to forestall the breach on law and restore peace and order. Even though the protesters made demands for police welfare, the police at that point had become grossly maligned by the youths on the streets, and had become objects of physical attack by the people for whom they had always provided protection. Only the military could restore order to the polity at that point. According to the Nigerian Army and the Lagos State Government, military operatives fired several rounds of blank bullets to merely disperse the protesters. The ensuing stampede resulted in injuries to a couple of protesters.

Segments of the electronic media however reported a different story supposedly influenced by an IG live stream video by one DJ Switch, who claimed that soldiers shot directly at the protesters, killed many of them, and carried their bodies away. There were no pictures of bodies or corpses on the ground or in any of the numerous videos or television footages of the incident. Numerous cameras captured a soldier shooting and people running away in different directions; they captured two soldiers returning to their vehicle after the shooting; but they didn’t capture any corpses on the ground, or a soldier carrying a dead or living person. There was much frenzy as horrid pictures and videos linked to the shooting immediately went viral to corroborate unfounded allegations.

A Nigerian BBC reporter in Lagos stated thus in her later accounts of the incident:

“The sight of the Army got the protesters angry and agitated… I was there with my editor and we saw the Army open fire; of course, not on the protesters, but into the air.”

The BBC reporter confirmed that the protesters detested the intervention of the Nigerian military because they wanted the trend of violence, destruction and looting of private and public property to continue. The protests were probably designed to snowball into a mass revolution. In the crowd of protesters in various parts of Lagos and Abuja were members of the RevolutionNow group, including their leader, Omoyele Sowore. At the background were Femi Falana, Femi Fani-Kayode, and others, egging the protesters on via Twitter and some Nigerian TV stations. The demand of the protesters had changed from the five points around scrapping SARS and ending police brutality to eight points, and then to 23 points summed up in regime change, #EndBuhariregimenow, as Femi Fani-Kayode was twitting. These were the hijackers of the protests, and their agenda was beyond ENDSARS.

Speaking virtually on Channels Television on the same night of the incident, Professor Pat Utomi reported that he heard numerous gunshots from where he was in his house and had remarked endlessly to a friend visiting from America that, “the soldiers are killing our youth; they are killing those children.” Pat Utomi was not there and did not see anything. He only heard gunshots. But such statements that could not be substantiated further drove the ‘alleged massacre narrative’ into the realm of propaganda, and across boundaries.

The patriotic duty of the military that stalled the drive into anarchy was painted in different unpleasant pictures by a coalition of a segment of the media, a segment of organized civil society, a segment of some religious organizations, and some of the leaders of the protests all of whom share similar political tendencies in present-day Nigerian politics. The objective, as could be deduced from the sum of fictionalized narratives around the Lekki incident, was to vilify the Nigerian Army, and to get as many Nigerians as they can into a similar frame.

20 October 2020 will go down in the annals of Nigeria as a dark day because of the coordinated fake reports that emerged in the social media and some other traditional news channels, stating that Nigerians were massacred. It may be difficult for anyone to decipher the whole truth of that fateful day because of the pandemonium everywhere. But that does not warrant the outright falsehood that has pervaded the airwaves and cyberspace about the Army. Except for the intervention of the military, the country would have been up in flames.

Perhaps, it is apt to describe the role of the Nigerian Army during those protests as that of the “restorer of sanity,” as stated by a youth group. The March4Nigeria described the military, on their role that fateful night, as “heroes of our democracy.” The group held that the military played a commendable role in restoring sanity across the country. “The military showed that its loyalty is to the nation’s democracy,” said Kabir Matazu, the group leader.

According to him: “The recent happenings in Nigeria indeed portend great danger as our dear country went on the brink with the ENDSARS protests that were initially peaceful until some elements infiltrated our ranks and hijacked our peaceful protest to their advantage. The military has shown its unalloyed commitment in ensuring that those against the interest of Nigeria do not have their way.

“It is also sad that some of us allowed ourselves to be used by those same elements after the government had accepted the five demands we put forward towards bringing an end to police brutality in Nigeria,” he added.

Despite claims from some news media that the Lekki shootings recorded many fatalities, people who were said to have died soon came out to debunk the claims. Three weeks after the incident, no individual or family has come out to say that they lost their loved ones in the alleged massacre. During the stampede that ensued, some youths were injured while others scampered to safety. The injured were taken to hospitals, received treatment, and were discharged. However, the biggest falsehood that emanated during the peak of what was falsely termed the “Lekki Massacre” was the figures of casualties that were being bandied around.

The narratives had to be highly exaggerated to make them more interesting and to evoke more anger against the military and the government. Characteristic of Amnesty International in its unending propaganda and war of falsehood against the Nigerian military, it claimed that 38 people were killed at the Lekki Tollgate, yet it could not show the world the photos of any of the dead bodies. While the NYTimes, and a journalist from Euronews’ partner network, Africannews, reported that at least 12 people were killed, The Punch claimed that seven deaths were recorded. Nairametrics put the figure at two, quoting the Governor of Lagos State. Yet other figures of over a hundred fatalities were bandied by Quartz.

To highlight the propaganda of the mischievous elements among the organizers of the protests, several persons who were reported to have died on the night later came out to dispute the news of their “death”. Nollywood actress, Eniola Badmus, was reported to have been shot by the “soldiers,” but she has gone on air to say that she is alive and was even nowhere near the scene of the reported shooting. One Iraoya Godwin was said to have died as a result of the shooting, which again was refuted by the subject. One Onyinye Francis also responded to a post by Yemi Alade on Facebook concerning a lady who was reported to have died at the Lekki scene. She dismissed the claim, stating that the lady in question is alive and that the death scene was merely a dramatic presentation they had prior to the incident.

The 81 Division of the Nigerian Army, Lagos, has repeatedly explained that soldiers did not shoot at the #ENDSARS protesters; rather, the personnel acted within “the confines of the Rules of Engagement for Internal Security operations.”

In a statement by the Acting Deputy Director, 81 Division Army Public Relations, Major Osoba Olaniyi, “the allegation of a massacre is untrue; at no time did the soldiers fire at the protesters.” But the truth of the Lekki incident continue to run counter to the narrative that mischievous elements in society wish to bandy, which stresses that their goal was to cause anarchy in the country.

Unfortunately, Nigeria has become a country where rumors and fake stories have taken the place of true and authentic news. There are significant numbers of people who search for or create fake news, and many people tend to believe whatever they see or hear on social media, even when the objective is to create panic and anarchy. Fake news and the hate and propaganda that come with it are elements of cyber warfare not just against the Nigerian military, but also against the Nigerian state.

It is a war to be fought by the military in its defense of the nation’s sovereignty, but it is also a war to be fought by every true citizen for the soul of the nation.

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