Kaizenify, CC BY-SA 4.0. AYOKANMI OYEYEMI courtesy KAIZEN FOTOGRAPHY
At 6:45pm, the Lekki Toll Gate massacre began.
On October 20 2020, at 12:49 pm Bababjide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos State took to Twitter to declare a 24 hour curfew in Lagos State, which would start at 4pm that day. He would later, hours after the massacre had begun, take to Twitter again to declare that the curfew would now be shifted to 9pm on that same day.
Meanwhile the people of Lagos wondered how impossible it was for any Lagosian who made it to work during such a difficult time of blocked roads, and human bodies masquerading as barricades, to make it back home in time for the curfew, considering the already terrible nature of traffic jams in Lagos, which are known to last more hours than is tolerable.
On October 13, 2020, Bababjide Sanwo-Olu flew to Abuja to present the President, Muhammudu Buhari, “the demands of the Lagos #EndSARS protesters”, advising him to set up a panel and painfully elucidating what the youths of Lagos had demanded.
Our demands were five simple things. An executive order towards the dissolution of SARS and police reforms in Nigeria in addition to a live public address to Nigerians by the President himself. For a President that doesn’t speak to the people, perhaps this was too much to ask.
TobiJamesCandids - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
All reasonable things, all things well within the power of the rulers of any nation, the summary of which was “stop killing us.”
An open, independent investigation into all Police/SARS-related killings, assaults, unlawful imprisonment, and rape. The immediate arrest and arraignment of all culprits, who must be brought under the law, and prosecuted for their various crimes which include murder, rape, assault, and extortion within a minimum of 14 days.
A public apology and financial compensation to the families of the deceased and other victims. Immediate release of all arrested protesters, improvement in police welfare and retraining on modern policing. An enforcement of all court orders and judgments currently obtained against the Nigeria Police Force, including, but not limited to financial compensations and sanctions against erring Police officers.
All reasonable things, all things well within the power of the rulers of any nation, the summary of which was “stop killing us”. When all of this was said to the president, Muhammudu Buhari laughed at our demands. Little did we know that he, by himself, at that point had drawn the battle line against youthful Nigerians who came in peace. So we ask Muhammud Buhari, president of Nigeria, and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, a man with blood on his hands, to step down, and resign.
Kaizenify, CC BY-SA 4.0. AYOKANMI OYEYEMI courtesy KAIZEN FOTOGRAPHY
Wole Soyinka had said in an interview with Premium Times that Buhari was not in control of Aso Villa. Yet what I see is a man who controls by presenting the innocent a rifle without eyes. The youth of Nigeria cry out for their lives, the government responds by taking more lives. In the ignoble minds of the men in charge of the Nigerian armed forces, who by their standards have performed some covert sensitive mission; meanwhile all they reek of is mediocrity, sheer wickedness and perversion. These are the same men whom Fela Kuti, 43 years ago, had called zombies:
Tell them to go straight
A joro, jara, joro
No break, no job, no sense
A joro, jara, joro
Tell them to go kill
A joro, jara, joro
No break, no job, no sense
A joro, jara, joro
Tell them to go quench
A joro, jara, joro
No break, no job, no sense
A joro, jara, joro
Go and kill! (Joro, jaro, joro)
Go and die! (Joro, jaro, joro)
Go and quench! (Joro, jaro, joro)
Put am for reverse! (Joro, jaro, joro)
Normally, at this time in Lagos, Felabration month would be in full swing. Large pockets of the city awake, celebrating into the wee hours of the morning the life of a man who lost everything fighting for freedom from oppression. Freedom for his countrymen. October 2020 has instead become the month of the Buhari-Osinbajo massacre, the month of Black Tuesday, of which Sanwo-Olu was more than complicit—let those who live to tell the tale tell you more about this.
TobiJamesCandids - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
They did this with their own hands. Their names, too bitter to speak of.
On October 20 2020, I am stuck in my room at ZK/U in Berlin, where I currently am an artist-in-residence, it is becoming easier to possess ultimate freedom and still feel stuck and powerless. I’m recording a Twitter voicenote for a series I started the day before (#poemsforendsars), because poetry has the power to calm a weary mind. I am reading Pablo Neruda’s I’m Explaining a Few Things:
come and see the blood in the streets
come and see
the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood
in the streets!
The Tweets wouldn’t send. Arriving back to my timeline, I was met with a genocide occurring in real time. “They are shooting at Lekki Toll Gate”, beamed the cries of peaceful protesters, many of whom would die singing their national anthem, “peace and unity”, tainting the flag with the blood of the innocent.
They did this with their own hands. Their names, too bitter to speak of.
During the first ten days of peaceful protests, a small group of people operating outside of the tyranny positing as governance had begun to emerge providing peaceful protesters with food, raincoats and umbrellas when it rained, music to soothe their souls, ambulances for the injured, and therapy for the wounded. Yet we insisted we had no leader.
The government has forced us to lead ourselves and now the government runs around like a chicken with its head cut off, trigger-happy for fear that power has shifted.
Two weeks before in Berlin, I would hurriedly register a protest which would take place on Sunday 11th October at the Nigerian Embassy. About forty of us would meet outside of the Nigerian embassy in Berlin chanting “EndSARS” and “stop killing us” into the void of Neue Jakobstraße while the Nigerian representatives peeked out from their fancy curtains to record us with their cameras as though we were the circus.
Kaizenify, CC BY-SA 4.0. AYOKANMI OYEYEMI courtesy KAIZEN FOTOGRAPHY
On Tuesday 13 October 2020, we would demand that they come out and address us; we would present a letter to the President through his representative at the embassy. The next Saturday, on October 17, 2020, we would protest again. “End SARS Now”, we would chant, as people trooped out to relate their traumatic experiences in the hands of armed police officers in Nigeria. Many said, we had to escape somehow. The voice of the diaspora loud with trauma: a double consciousness.
Before the end of the week, the state governments across the country would be enforcing incredible curfews and dispatching soldiers while lying through their teeth that they played no hand in this, taking a leaf or two from he-who-must-not-be-named’s book, splattering “fake news” in red font across facts recounted by victims themselves.
First, they send their men to turn out security cameras
Then they take out the lights
Then they send soldiers with tear-rubber wartime weaponry to massacre a people,
Then they try to hide corpses in their vans
Then they block ambulances from entering to save people and then they deny, deny, deny. They are the unscrupulous elements, the ones who violate their creeds without batting an eyelid.
I am going to tell you what’s happening to me. As I write this, my hands are shaking. My house is being burned down and I am stuck in a faraway land where “being under the weather” has never been more literal.
Kaizenify, CC BY-SA 4.0. AYOKANMI OYEYEMI courtesy KAIZEN FOTOGRAPHY
As I write this, my hands are shaking. My house is being burned down and I am stuck in a faraway land where “being under the weather” has never been more literal.
If you want to help us this is what you must do: do not forget that our countries belong to us now. Do not ever forget that Black African rage is fiery enough to be centred, to be the news around town. Have you not heard of the rage of the Africas? You will hear of it.
If you must do something, do this: you mustn’t keep quiet.
You must go around telling anyone you see with a grin: “But what is there to smile about? Do you not know that the Nigerian government has declared war against its own people?”
As I write this, all over Nigeria, uniformed men fire into the streets with live ammunition and an intention to kill. This same Nigeria, whose music blares from European shops and—afrobeat the sound of the African soul, the music of the world. Is this only when our lives matter? When our engineers are shipped across the ocean to help your startups scale? Is this all we are?
You must say: do you not know that the iPhone you use carries the blood of children in Congo, that women in Namibia are asking that we shut it all down because what more is there to life, if a human life means nothing.
And while you say this, you must not dare to forget that our countries belong to us now. This is what you must do because some of us must now learn to fight, and take up the means of war as we defend our own lives and our land.
To my fellow countrymen, I wish you godspeed.