In all these looting spree, there are lessons to take away. For the authorities, there is now an opportunity to re-evaluate their relationship with those they lead. Giving the citizens a silent treatment in the face of national angst or condemning the youths for their demand for one thing or the other would not help. Every citizen’s grievance should be seen as an opportunity to improve governance.
By the time the dust settles and the story of the #EndSARS protests is written for future reference, the discourse will encapsulate many dimensions of the protests, including movie-like scenes of chaos and looting.
Certainly, the unfolding spectre of vandalism and arson will occupy a prominent place in that history.
Just like the Lekki Toll Gate event — whether it was killings or shootings; the raids on government and CACOVID palliatives, warehouses and their aftermath, all form part of the deeper social issues behind the EndSARS protests. Also, events that were never envisaged or contemplated, the major one being the loss of lives of innocent Nigerians. The setting ablaze of the businesses and structures of the All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu and those of many prominent people, in addition to the looting of palliatives belonging to the Coalition Against COVID (CACOVID) and state governments, meant generally for the vulnerable and poorest of the poor, can at best be quantified in millions of naira, but it sends a bad signal to the world about who we are. In fact, the Lagos governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu put the loss to the State at a trillion naira, in terms of both destruction and reconstruction.
As acknowledged by all, the EndSARS protests started well, was orderly, and gained momentum without issues, until government’s mismanagement of the Lekki side of it. Since then, it has been a free for all. The arson and looting that started in Lagos, have since spread to other parts of the country. For example, the EndSARS was confined to the South, mainly because the atrocities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigeria Police were more of a Southern reality, but the looting of palliatives has cut across the length and breadth of the country. This has been because hunger and anger are national realities – another indication that many people have fallen on hard times, poverty and unemployment worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and concomitant lockdown. This argument is however flawed in view of the activities of the real thieves among hungry looters, who have since extended their deadly reign to political vendetta and are even now driven by material quest.
Otherwise, how do you rationalise the open theft of material things? What has hunger got to do with the carting away of mattresses, mats, generators, chicken, goats, trucks, tractors, chairs, clothes – such as suits and shirts, such that one looter in Senator Ndoma Egba’s house was jokingly asked if the shirts and suits he was taking away were his size. Again, I have heard that some of the food items carted away from warehouses in Gwagwalada and Idu are now being displayed for sale on the streets of Abuja. Is it hunger or greed that also caused that? How about the depressing news of Benue State’s palliatives being sold in the open market in Kano? The persons who diverted these were obviously not hungry, but greedy and selfish. Isn’t it scandalous that our people looted from the warehouse of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), where expired foods and medicaments are stored? Could that too be about hunger and poverty or loss of societal values?
Before the looters took the laws into their hands, the cardinal principle behind the sharing of palliatives, which were to be given to the vulnerable, jobless and weak and poor, was being withered away. Not surprising, therefore, that people are insinuating that those palliatives were hoarded for political reasons, to be shared to supporters in order to gain political advantage over opponents, or to use these in exchange for votes.
While these isolated cases should not detract from the real hunger, anger and fury in the land, it is apparent that there is no love lost between the political class and the ordinary people, and the affluent and the poor, all of who inhabit the Nigerian space. Nigerians do not trust their leaders and do not wish them well. Thus, while we have coinages like executhieves, legislooters, to describe the diversion of funds by the executive and legislative arms of government, a new word, palliathieves, has found its way into Nigeria’s corruption lexicon.
In all these looting spree, there are lessons to take away. For the authorities, there is now an opportunity to re-evaluate their relationship with those they lead. Giving the citizens a silent treatment in the face of national angst or condemning the youths for their demand for one thing or the other would not help. Every citizen’s grievance should be seen as an opportunity to improve governance.
As many are in shock about the discovery of palliatives, the question is: Why keep food items when people are hungry? What is the bureaucratic red tape in sharing food within 48 hours, if there are no ulterior motives around this?
The culture of flag offs, fanfares and ceremonial commissioning, before items belonging to the people and bought in their name are shared, should stop. We don’t need all these ceremonies to give an individual just a carton of noodles. Before the looters took the laws into their hands, the cardinal principle behind the sharing of palliatives, which were to be given to the vulnerable, jobless and weak and poor, was being withered away. Not surprising, therefore, that people are insinuating that those palliatives were hoarded for political reasons, to be shared to supporters in order to gain political advantage over opponents, or to use these in exchange for votes.
In this looting madness, Borno is immune, because there was nothing to loot. There was nothing to loot, because the government distributed the palliatives it received almost immediately. That is leadership, and not rocket science. Other governors can take a cue from that example.
Uncompleted projects litter the country because they were abandoned after the ceremonial foundation-laying ceremony and after the contractor must have collected part of the contract sum. For God’s sake, where did this nonsense come from? When I watch foreign news channels, I do not see the president or governor commissioning small projects, including the sharing of food. One governor was said to be waiting to distribute the food on his birthday. Common, this is belittling! Were they his father’s food items or his money? If I’m in a position of authority, I will only commission completed projects and not any stupid foundation-laying ceremony.
As uncertainties about our personal safety and the security of the nation stare us in the face, we need to rethink our value orientation. All this excessive display of opulence in the cars we ride and at our abodes should stop. If you think your security man or houseboy likes you because you pay him peanuts, you are mistaken. When a mob action starts and they come for you, he might not be able to save you. Until we learn to live for one another, in a society where there is justice and equity, EndSARS might just be the beginning of our woes.
Meanwhile, as lawlessness reigns, we must not allow the situation to degenerate into anarchy. That is why there is government in the first place.
In this looting madness, Borno is immune, because there was nothing to loot. There was nothing to loot, because the government distributed the palliatives it received almost immediately. That is leadership, and not rocket science. Other governors can take a cue from that example.
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