Governorship aspirant for Anambra State on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Emeka Etiaba, has said the major lesson from the #EndSAR protest was that power to change bad policies of government resides with the people.
The senior lawyer and son of the country’s first female governor, Dame Virgy Etiaba, noted that when the people become docile, bad policies of government, including corruption would continue to prevail unchallenged.
Etiaba who stated this in an interview with Daily Sun lamented that religion and ethnicity had dealt a big blow to the country and nobody was ready to speak the truth.
“The protest has yielded the envisaged result. SARS has been dissolved but you ask yourselves, why do Nigerians not also demonstrate when elections are rigged? The answer is straight forward. Nepotism, sectionalism, ethinicism etc. The man or woman who was rigged in is our person, so while some begin to gather to mull a protest, you see another group either paid or gathered on ethnic, religious or other sentiments to shout that the election was free and fair.
“Ethnicism and religion have dealt a big blow to the nation. It has even entered the Nigerian Bar Association. Lawyers are now willing to destroy their association, their vocation that put food on their table because of trivial issues of religious and ethnicism. It’s a shame and condemnable,” he said.
He said another lesson that should be learnt from the EndSARS protest was that Nigerians should never wait for Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to lead any protest in the country.
“The days of NLC being the messiah for the people are gone. Those days are long gone. Nigerians should actually be protesting against them as they have turned hostile against people’s interest.”
Meanwhile, Etiaba said he seeks to be the next governor of Anambra State so as to contribute his quota to the development of the state.
The lawyer dismissed claims that former governor of the state, Peter Obi, had an anointed candidate for the 2021 poll, assuring that his chances of winning the election were brighter.