By Citizen Agba Jalingo
To my understanding, the goal of today’s #OccupyLekkiTollGate protest is to return global attention to the effrontery to reopen the toll gate where Nigerians were murdered for expressing their freedom to gather in disagreement with their government, while investigation is still ongoing.
But the thing the Police are yet to decifer is that, though they have been trying hard to steal the Constitutional right of Nigerians to protest, they have as well been the hardest publicists for most of these protests and I say this from experience.
In most of these protest calls, the Police are usually the first responders just like they have responded to this call to #OccupyLekkiTollGate today.
They have already occupied the toll gate since yesterday in response to the call. Their presence there is for no other reason than the call to occupy the Lekki toll gate. Their trucks have blocked the isles. Their personnel have cordoned off the arena. The media is agog again and the world is also watching. Government has also mobilized huge resources to deploy.
The rest of us will join them and we will do our usual drama. There is nothing happening at the toll gate that is unusual. A good sense of history is what is missing. It is a flat graph. The pattern is the same. It’s all drama.
The police have always been part of our protests and they are part of this one too. They swell the numbers and create good images for media cameras and cell phones. In the past 20 years, I have not seen a protest venue that was announced that was not taken over by security agents. On the flip side, there has never been a time when the presence of security agents, no matter their number or armoury, ever deterred protesters in Nigeria, not even under the military did that happen.
The last protest at the national stadium, the police outnumbered the protesters in their hundreds. Armoured tanks were everywhere with personnel in tactical gear. The military formed a defence line behind the police. Protesters still wore national flags on their necks and sang protests songs right in front of the Police.
The Police lost their patience as usual and tear gassed, beat up, arrested, wounded and hauled several persons into Black Marias and took them to different Police detention facilities and later arraigned them before Magistrates.
Nothing different will happen todya. Stop exaggerating the drama. The Police will not see protesters coming and start shooting them dead. Even the military waited and came in the night like thieves.
They had to off the lights and off the cameras before they began shooting at civilians. I repeat, nothing is happening at the Lekki toll gate that is unusual.
Protesters will go there today. The Police will advance near them. They will warn protesters to go back. Protesters will ignore them. The bold ones will quote the Constitution for the Police in loud chants.
The protesters will maintain their line. The Police will keep harassing them while they sing protests songs. At some point, they Police will loose their patience as always start the violence by firing the first tear gas cannisters.
Some of the comrades will take off. They will be confusion everywhere. The Police will start beating and grabbing and stealing phones and hauling protesters into their trucks. Journalists will be snapping and running for safety as well. They will be scampering here and there and after that, calm will return.
The following morning Police will make it to the headlines for all the wrong reasons again, while protesters prepare for their day in court. It’s the usual cycle. Nothing will change.
The right to protest cannot be taken away by the person you want to protest against under any guise. It is the work of the Police to stop violence and if they are at Lekki to do that, so be it.
No protesters wants to do violence. But for anyone, including the Police themselves or those who sent them, to think that the presence of guns or tanks or human beings whose relations are among the protesters, will stop a protest, is a deficiency in a good sense of history.
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