It was not for nothing that the Northern Leaders of Thought (encompassing governors of the 19 northern states, selected first class emirs and chiefs and some other religious leaders), rising from their meeting in Kaduna last week, labeled the ENDSARS protest as an attempt to force a regime change against President Muhammadu Buhari.
Personally, I do not entirely align with that view, but when you patriotically lead a peaceful protest that gained a nationwide acceptance, rooting for a reform of the Nigerian Police Force and in particular the scrapping of the dreaded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), you should know that some unscrupulous politicians and other undesirable elements would want to cash in on that credible platform to seek to exact their pound of flesh on the government or in particular the police force.
Such undesirable elements include armed robbers, fraudsters, bandits and even terror organisations that have one axe or the other to grind with the government. Bad as SARS was (and indeed it was horrible), it has, truth be told, served some excellent purposes in reducing the rate of high crime in Nigeria, with many deviants abandoning high crime altogether owing to the fear of the torture or even death from the cruel hands of some hardcore SARS officials.
In the course of my decades-long career as a journalist, I have interviewed some SARS officials and they all tried to variously justify their acts of unspeakable aggression on the heigh level of unprecedented wickedness visited on victims of armed robbers all over the country. There is the story of a young man called ThankGod Ebos who not only robbed a couple of their precious belongings, but also followed that callous act up by violently raping the wife in the presence of her husband, after which he broke a bottle and allied it to destroy the woman’s private part, while he laughed as the victim bled to death. Any investigative story of the untold callous acts of armed robbers in Nigeria would reveal how deadly they have been, showing no mercy to their hapless victims even after dispossessing them of their belongings.
So, when the originators of the anti-SARS protests successfully rallied round the entire country to their cause, and after the federal government wasted no time in accepting the five demands of the protesters, wise counsel dictated that they should have suspended the protests and give the government some days, possibly even some weeks, to implement those demands.
There are of course people who justified the protesters’ unyielding attitude on government’s inability or outright refusal to implement terms of agreement reached with different groups in the past. But what do you say, in all truth, to a government that not only immediately accepted the conditions given by the protesters, but also followed that up by immediately fulfilling the number one reason for the protests, that is, scrapping of SARS? We may dislike the Buhari Administration for whatever reason, but the facts remain it exhibited tremendous goodwill by that example alone.
You don’t, for example, reasonably expect the government to overnight improve the salaries or welfare of police personnel, which include renovation of their barracks to make them more habitable, as the Nigerian Army has magically achieved under the leadership of its Chief, General Tukur Yusufu Buratai, even in the face of limited funding. But even for the army, it remains a work in progress as the leadership has taken it upon itself to keep improving the welfare of our troops on a sustainable basis, managing to achieve that by ensuring a regime of transparency and accountability buoyed by deep patriotism.
You should also expect that when you call such protests, it is bound to be hijacked unless you time it briefly and properly. So when the government accepted those conditions, the expectation was that the protests would be suspended immediately. Of course the youths could always come back to the streets if the government fails to honour what it agreed to do. Even those hoodlums some of us thought were sent by some elements close to government to disrupt the process will not have had the opportunity to do so, if the protest had been properly timed.
And because the protest leaders dragged the matter longer than it should, unscrupulous politicians and criminal elements cashed-in on the situation to advance their dastardly causes, taking control of what started as peaceful, organized protests to unleash mayhem on innocent individuals. A protest that seeks a better welfare for the police force ended up being used to kill tens of police men, burning down tens of police stations and looting of billions worth of private property belonging to individuals, many of who are not even related to government.
Libya and other places started exactly like that, and the end result was violent change of governments which the affected societies are regretting deeply today. The West that they looked up to, and which somehow urged them on, has practically abandoned them to their fate, and the few advanced countries that are still with them are only doing so to finish off what remains of the natural resources that God has endowed those countries that allowed themselves the liberty of untold hatred and intolerance for their leaders.
The next chapter of the protests is what happened at the Lekki Tollgate where thousands of protesters had gathered, refusing to yield ground even when the government of Lagos State imposed a 24-hour curfew. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu cried to President Muhammadu Buhari, asking for the army to be sent to maintain law and order, since Lagos was becoming lawless, with policemen under hiding almost everywhere, afraid for their lives.
The governor himself said he was called on phone by the Chief of Defence Staff, General Gabriel Olanisakin, who told the governor he was directed by the President to confirm whether indeed he needed the army to be sent to Lagos. It was courtesy of Governor Sanwo-Olu that troops of the Nigerian Army, who had initially kept their distance from the protests venues, got involved, though he later tried to somewhat disown the army when, being clever by half, he shockingly said he didn’t have the power to deploy troops. He conveniently forgot the power he has to ask the President for troops deployment, which he exercised.
Since then, those opposed to the Buhari Administration have taken the centre-stage, deploying the social media (and sadly, a few mainstream media houses) to unleash all sorts of misinformation and outright falsehood against the Nigerian Army in particular. Some have even gone to the extent of opening a register, asking Nigerians to sign for President Buhari to be taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was an action that prompted the Army Chief to underline Nigeria’s sovereignty by stating matter-of-factly that the fear of the ICC will not force the Nigerian government to allow unscrupulous individuals to use the platform of what started as a legitimate protest to impose a reign of terror aimed at breaking the Nigerian State.
The ICC has sadly, allowed itself to be used by enemies of different countries, especially in the Third World, to blackmail legitimate government and bend their hands to commit all sorts of illegalities. One wonders where the ICC was when leaders of America, British and a few other governments killed several thousands of innocent human beings in the false guise of uncovering weapons of mass destruction. Or what the ICC has done when President Donald Trump recently deployed the National Guard on innocent Americans peacefully protesting police brutality in that country.
Emergency Digest, a respected newspaper, writing on the Lekki Tollgate imbroglio under the headline: Facts and fantasies of the “Lekki Massacre” observes that it is “a weighty word that surely ought not to be used lightly or frivolously. When I checked, synonyms for the word, massacre, include bloodbath, butchery, carnage, death, holocaust, or slaughter. It refers to a large scale, coldblooded murder of human beings. One dictionary defines massacre as ‘an act of complete destruction’.
Did such an event involving deaths on an industrial scale occur at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos on the night of Tuesday, October 20? Repeated reports in the local and international media indicate that this was the case. What are the facts of the matter? The Lekki Toll Gate was one of the two major sites in Lagos of the massive #endSARS youth protests which had gripped the national and global imagination for two weeks till the night of October 20.
“Exceedingly well organized, focused and disciplined, the protesters had conducted themselves with remarkable decorum, decency and dignity in pursuit of their demand that the dreaded police Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) should be disbanded and fundamental police reforms instituted. Within days, an ordinarily obdurate Federal Government had acceded to their requests. SARS was disbanded and the other demands of the protesters accepted in principle. But then, the protesters introduced new demands. They were defiant and remained on the streets even though as peaceful and restrained as ever. The longer the protests lasted however, the more extraneous forces intervened and systematically hijacked the protests on a steadily expanding scale across the country.
“By October 20th, law and order had broken down in large swathes of Lagos. So bad did things get that Police stations were torched, policemen killed and police armories looted with criminals carting away arms and ammunition. Obviously alarmed, the state government declared a curfew. With the police under attack, it apparently had no choice but to request the help of the military in enforcing the curfew. The curfew was imposed to stem the descent to anarchy, which certainly was not the aim of the protests. Why, then, didn’t the protesters, in line with their law abiding stance, disperse in obedience to the curfew? Had they not at that point crossed the dividing line between legality and illegality? I think so. Were water cannons, tear gas canisters or, at worst, rubber bullets not available even if the protesters were to be forcibly dislodged?
“Condemnable as the shooting incident was, did it result in the mass murder of a large number of the Lekki protesters as the dominant narrative claims? A national newspaper claimed in its lead story that 49 persons were killed. Amnesty International reports, magisterially, that 12 persons died in the Lekki incident. The visuals that went viral, which I watched, showed men in the uniform of the Nigerian Army shooting into the air to disperse the protesters. Purported eyewitnesses offer dramatic accounts of soldiers shooting directly at the protesters reportedly with heavy casualties. I asked someone if undeniable large number of corpses would not be seen at the scene if a band of soldiers trained AK 47 machine guns directly on a large number of protesters and shooting them point blank at close range? He claimed that the soldiers evacuated the dead bodies away from the scene. In this social media age, would the same sophisticated mobile equipment that vividly captured the soldiers shooting, despite the lights being allegedly switched off, not also have recorded them evacuating dead bodies?
“The Lagos State governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who visited the injured in various hospitals as well as visited mortuaries in Lagos that night, stated in his broadcast the number of persons who were injured and treated at various hospitals which he named, saying that two were successfully operated on while two died subsequently. Many continue to dispute his account preferring alternative narratives utterly lacking in credibility. Happily, even as social media technology has grown in leaps and bounds enabling the medium to more effectively check impunity on the part of public and private authorities, there has also been tremendous advancement in the techniques and facilities for validating the authenticity of material emanating from the social media. PRNigeria, one outfit that has been doing a great job in this regard in Nigeria, has been exhaustively and clinically interrogating diverse claims on the purported Lekki Massacre.
“Its findings have been revealing. PRNigeria’s Editorial Team, according to the media outfit’s Assistant Editor, Mahmood Abdulsalam, found that “So far, most of the footages we have collected, over 100 in all, showing dead protesters and several others wounded, when we subject them to our reverse imagery testing tools, indicated they were not recent while others are manipulated images and doctored videos. We also observe circulation of old pictures of victims injured and killed during violent skirmishes, unrelated to the #endSARS demonstrations across the country”.
“For instance, PRNigeria found out that a Nollywood movie star, Eniola Badmus, who was allegedly shot in the stomach and died at the Lekki Toll Gate, had denied the social media reports. She wrote on her Instagram page that “Against all speculations about me being shot dead at the unspeakable event that happened at the toll gate a few hours ago, I would like to inform you guys that I Eniola Badmus is hale and hearty. I couldn’t make it there today to lend my voice on the #endSARS movement”. In another case, a young man, Iraoye Godwin, a native of Otu-Auchi in Edo state who was reported to have been killed also at the Lekki Toll Gate posted a video on twitter denying the report. Again, a photo of a man carrying a dead lady wrapped in Nigerian flag as posted by Yemi Alade was an image from a movie acted with the theme, “Heal our land, OH LORD”. According to the PRNigeria report, “There was also a video of one Lucia Adu who was celebrated as a martyr at Lekki Massacre after dancing in the clip. Some of the social media posts celebrating her ‘Martyrdom’ read: “She was dancing an hour before she was murdered by the Nigerian armed forces…a bullet hit her in the face and ripped half her face off”.
“Latest investigation shows that Lucia Adu died from an accident with a stationary truck on 20th October, 2020. This is also confirmed by a new fact checking twitter handle on #endSARS – http:/twitter.com/end SARSFctcheck”. The Executive Director of PRNigeria, Mr. Yushua A. Shuaib, a humanitarian worker and crisis management communicator who has worked extensively with the media, the security and response agencies over the last decade, reached out to media executives in various traditional and online mediums, whom he specifically named, to help in facilitating the gathering of evidence on the alleged massacre. In his words, “In fairness to the media and civil society groups, they all spoke about relying on eyewitness accounts mostly from celebrities and social media influencers without subjecting the information received to rigorous verification.
“There was also the admission that there was no authenticated footage of the said “massacre” at Lekki Toll Gate so far”. Continuing, Shuaib writes, “In the aftermath of this confusion, the largest social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, have continued to flag several contents containing the alleged images of the Lekki Massacre as false information, after these were subjected to scrutiny by independent fact checkers”. It was interesting watching Osai Ojigho, Country Director of Amnesty International in Nigeria, when she appeared on The Arise Interview television programme to speak about the organization’s claim that at least 12 people were killed at the Lekki Toll Plaza. As she rambled on extensively, the anchor of the programme, Charles Aniagolu, interjected saying “I think the point here Osai is that you’ve made some very good points there about the expectations of the people from the army and the government but people also want to be absolutely 100% sure about the evidence Amnesty International is putting forward with regard to these killings. Have you actually seen evidence of dead bodies?
“Can we understand how Amnesty International came to the conclusion that 12 people were shot?” Again, Osai Ojigho spoke at length on authenticated accounts of eyewitnesses, the claim that the soldiers reportedly prevented ambulances from accessing the site and also the fact that the Nigerian army had a record of such killings previously such as the shooting of hundreds of Shiite Muslims in Kaduna in 2015. Again, Charles Aniagolu was probing and insistent. He said. “Osai, I am sorry that I have to interrupt you but you are a lawyer and a lot of what you’ve said in the last few minutes sounds like circumstantial evidence but there’s got to be prima facie evidence when allegations are made against the Nigerian army and police. A lot of people will agree anecdotally with what you’re saying but they’ll still want to see concrete evidence either of dead bodies or families of dead ones coming out to claim their loved ones have been killed or the names of people who have been killed”. Osai responded that Amnesty International indeed has some names but will need the consent of their families to release such names!
“Can you imagine such utter nonsense, mischief and lack of seriousness? In the words of PRNigeria’s Yushau Shuab, “Equally disturbing was the fact that despite the increasingly widespread usage of the word massacre to describe the Lekki incident, no single family had stepped forward (even till date) to report the loss of a relative during the Lekki shooting”. So much for facts, fantasies and the Lekki massacre.”
The mistake some Nigerians are making is in seeing critical national institutions, such as the Nigerian Army, as an enemy, as if there are two national armies that we can choose from. Some politicians and enemies of state have succeeded in deepening false propaganda against our security services that sooner than later, unless we all resist their dastardly moves, these institutions are going to be destroyed, with the dire consequences staring everyone of us in the face. If we allow them to get what they desperately want, that is, violent break-up of the Nigerian State or forcing a regime change, not even one media house could continue to operate. The electricity with which to power our smartphones and engage in mischief on the social media space wont be there. It will all be about survival for only the few lucky ones.
Surely this is not my wish for this great country, but it remains a reality we cannot ignore, however deep our hatred or misgivings for the Buhari Administration might be.
Those who laid the foundation for our insecurity in this country, which the present administration is doing all its best to improve, are the very people who shared billions of dollars meant for purchase of arms during the last Administration. The next time the youths are engaging in any protests, it should be to the residences and businesses of these people whose selfishness has led to the loss of thousands of lives and property worth several trillions of naira in the last eleven years.
Of course even at that, it should not be violent, but insisting for full return of these stolen funds to the national treasury. Sadly, some of the beneficiaries of that sleaze are fingered as co-sponsors of the violence that characterized the ENDSARS protests.
Finally, as for those desperately desiring to see to the end of the Buhari Administration, it is a matter of time. They don’t even have to wait for too long as two and a half years will come and go in no time. They should pick the best among themselves or elsewhere and mobilize Nigerians to vote for those they are convinced will bring about the changes they desire (President, governors, senators, reps, etc) in the 2023 general election.
As Kano Emir partners Badamasi Burji Foundation to develop education
From time immemorial, all successful people across the globe have one or two turning points in their lives. For Badamasi Shu’aibu Burji, editor, publisher and entrepreneur, his turning point started during the 2013 All Nigeria Editors Conference that held in Asaba, the capital of Delta State, with the theme: “Nigeria Beyond Oil: Role of the Editor.”
Experts at that annual conference minced no words in advising Nigeria to walk the talk and move the country beyond its over-dependence on oil money, citing an example with Saudi Arabia, world’s largest oil producer, working on all fronts to diversify its economy far beyond oil. That was followed three years later by yet another editors’ conference in the city of Port Harcourt, whose theme centered on the need for editors to critically examine life beyond the chair and immediately start to make hay while the sun shines.
In Nigeria, there have been cases of editors living a life of deep penury after serving as gatekeepers in some of the country’s foremost media platforms. Courtesy of that conference, many editors took to farming and other small businesses, preparatory to the day of their retirement.
Editor Badamasi Burji’s creative mind, however, saw him converting an ordinary, ancient peanut crunch in Hausa called kulikuli to a delicious, healthy snack that in no time started fetching him good fortune. It soon became his export of northern Nigerian food to other parts of the country, as compatriots of all tribes easily fell in love with the product. He soon diversified to other sectors in the food industry, introducing other products, and establishing restaurant outlets in Kano and Kaduna. He also registered as a printer and publisher who made quality, reliability and integrity his watchwords, and soon started attracting big corporate clients.
Now, instead of Badamasi, who was never born with any silver spoon in his mouth, to sit back and enjoy his newfound wealth, he decided to set up a foundation in his own name. Perhaps to give life to the adage, charity begins at home, he went back to Burji, his village, a quiet settlement about 150 kilometres south of metropolitan Kano, to set up a group of schools that he built from the scratch and furnished all alone, with fortune earned through his own sweat.
Even if this was a private school that charges school fees, it is an achievement on its own right. For if he were after making all the money, good business sense will dictate he sets it up in Kano metropolis where the rich and the mighty that could afford any kind of school fees reside. But the young man will have none of that. He wants the best for the society that gave rise to his being. As Nelson Mandela would say, education is the only weapon with which to conquer the world. Badamasi has conquered his own world, and is so selfless as to want his kinsmen to also do the same.
Recently, Badamasi conducted some journalists and well wishers round the big edifice and they counted almost six thousand pupils all under his full scholarship. Let’s not forget: Badamasi built the school. Equips it. Furnishes it. Pays the teachers and is picking the bill for other overhead expenses. And lest I forget, he also provides the almost six thousand pupils with school uniform, instructional materials, etc. All alone, This must run into hundreds of millions of naira that he could choose to spend in holidaying with his family in the Caribbean.
So passionate is Badamasi Burji about education that he achieved another first probably without even realizing so. In the history of education in Nigeria, no one has ever authored educational books covering different subjects from the northern part. Companies publishing educational books are all located in the south. But being the true Nigerian that he is, Burji hired experts (professors, doctors) from all parts of Nigeria to be a part of his noble dream for educational books that capture the essence of our Nigerian cultural heritage and application of methods that make learning a real pleasure.
To unveil those books and commission his state-of-the-art printing house in Abuja, Burji invited his king – the very respected Emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero to do so. Being part of those who organized the event, it was the first time I was meeting the young Emir at close quarters. Guests who attended the event were left wondering whether this was truly the Emir of Kano’s powerful Emirate, as Aminu Ado Bayero took after his late father in redefining the word humility and living every bit of it. Emir Aminu Bayero personifies integrity and charisma at their highest, all rolled into one. He came in person very unassumingly and carried out the duties with grace and equanimity, promising to partner with Badamasi Burji in taking education a notch higher not only in Kano or northern Nigeria, but the entire country as a whole. No doubt Kano is lucky to have such an excellent human being as its king.
Other important guests, including my big brother and Presidential Adviser Femi Adesina also had kind words to say about Badamasi Burji’s unprecedented strides. The same with Malam Ahmed Rabi’u, who made the welcome remarks, and Alhaji Nasiru Suleiman Mohammed, Sarkin Bukur in Plateau State, who, in his vote of thanks, generously showered gratitude on Kano’s Emir as well as the man of the moment, Badamasi Burji. It was a day when Badamasi’s virtues were freely extolled to high heavens.
For us members of the Fourth Estate of the Realm, Badamasi is an ambassador like no other. He still publishes Concern, his own magazine that I was privileged to serve as first editor twenty one years ago. And he has not forgotten his roots. He still remains his humble self, and he could still pass by you largely unnoticed. He carries no airs, and his doors are always open to the low and the mighty.
If the nouveau riche from Kano were to be like Badamasi, giving back to the society even a fraction of their vast wealth, Kano will have enlisted among the most educated in Africa. Sadly, as far as I can remember, Badamasi is only the second Nigerian to set up an educational foundation in Kano and sponsoring hundreds of students at his own expense. Of course there exists in Kano, some other schools being sponsored by religious or family foundations. But they charge school fees, and some of them even draw foreign funding.
Now, Badamasi has expanded the scope by educating not only hundreds, but thousands of students who could in future rise to become governors, senators and perhaps even presidents. What makes his case even more special is the fact that he is not even a billionaire, but someone with the heart and mind of trillionaires.
There is simply no way northern Nigeria could ever catch up with its southern counterpart especially in the development of education unless it has the fortune of producing more Badamasi Burjis in its fold. This is a young man I have known since childhood, but with all the riches now at his disposal, Badamasi is still not riding the best car in town. He told me he prefers putting a smile on the sad faces of the less privileged members of the society by catering for their needs. Little wonder they always hang around him, rightfully seeing in him a father representing their best hope for survival.
It is not for nothing, therefore, that more and more Nigerians are rightfully calling on the Federal Government to bestow a big national award on Badamasi Burji, even if only to encourage more well-to-do compatriots to be like him or, perhaps, if possible, better than him.