For all intents and
purposes, the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a democratic state, at least it
ought to be. Yet, when the elected president of the federation address a nation
in turmoil and steeped in grief and he alludes that his prompt response to the
demands made by the people who voted him into office – a demand for a life free
from the fear of being brutalised by the Nigerian Police Force no more – was
misconstrued as a sign of weakness and hence his decision to deploy the
military to summarily execute completely peaceful protesters, one begins to
wonder if the act if up.
If a memo was
passed around by the Nigerian Government where the end of the civilian
democracy was communicated, perhaps the handlers of the President should let
him know that some 200+ million Nigerians are yet to receive it. Maybe the
president had somehow missed the memo that it is no longer business as usual, a
memo which the mandate that Nigerians gave him when they forgave his past
excesses as a dictator and brought him into office as a democratic president in
2015 was supposed to communicate.
Not only did the
president take over 24 hours to address the country after the massacre of
armless protesters whose only crime was sitting on the asphalt on Lekki-Epe
expressway and singing the national anthem, but when he did address the nation,
he casually skirted past it with no regard whatsoever for the weight of this
tragedy |||READ
MORE