Bishop Dr Gabriel David-Okoro JP
By divine grace, in 2012, I published my first collections of poems under the caption, ‘Urn of Golden Thoughts’. Notable among them are two poems entitled ‘Bloodless Revolution’ and ‘The Blood of Revolution’ which both predicted the EndSARS protest which no one saw coming; not even the intelligence arm of the Nigerian government.
“Hunting the hunters hunting our game
Who must pay for their deeds?
Through inks inscribed and not shed”“Where are the men skilled in lines and speeches?
Who’d stir us to a better resurrection without blows
Or, blood shed on earth but in hearts.”
(Lines 13-15 & 21-23 of Bloodless Revolution).
In line 13 (hunting the hunters hunting our game), I predicted the coming of a time when the Nigerian populace will start hunting those who have been hunting our natural resources.
Line 14 (who must pay for their deeds?) is a rhetorical question. There must be consequences for all actions and inactions. It’s either we pay or they pay. But we have payed enough, it’s high time they started paying.
The question in line 21(where are the men who are skilled in lines and speeches?) is a challenge to Nigerians to seek for inflamed communicators, adept writers and orators whose ‘lines and speeches’ can ‘stir us to a better resurrection’ (that is, a better Nigeria). In other words, we need men whose words when either fitly spoken or skillfully written can spark up a revolution that will lead to a better Nigeria.
This kind of revolution is “without blows or blood shed”, but it will require the shedding of blood in our hearts and not on the earth. And that was what characterized the motive of the EndSARS movement.
The foregoing establishes the involvement of the unseen hand of God in our national affairs. Before EndSARS started, God showed it to me as one of His prophets by using poetic language and imageries. The tact and wit with which the protest was executed is not only sublime but esoteric in nature. It was a timely response to serial insults meted out on Nigerian youths and the rest of the country by a callous and diabolic government.
A government that failed to provide job for its teeming youth population or an enabling environment for them to provide jobs for themselves and falsely labelling them as ‘Lazy Nigerian Youths’. That’s one of the foulest language I have ever heard in recent times. A great chunk of these youths who are supposed to be within the four walls of the university are forced to roam the streets for months, courtesy of incessant ASSU strikes occasioned by irresponsible governance.
What else do you expect from out-of-school students, other than frustrations? Police brutality meted out to these youths was enough catalyst for an inevitable protest which had been brewing up in their restive minds.
Police brutality is just an infinitesimal part of the show of crass lawlessness and unconstitutional actions that has become characteristic of the APC government. We have seen a unilateral nullification of the federal character regarding federal government appointments to the endorsement of the use of hijabs in public schools by the apex court, a verdict which has joined a host of other government policies to be rightfully described as ‘constitutional nuisances’.
A great percentage of Nigerians see the EndSARS protest as a means of restoring sanity to our country for we cannot continue to entertain such brazen impunity and deliberate denigration of the laws of the land by the supposed defenders of the same. By God, our situation would have degenerated into a state of anarchy if the harmless youths decide to take up fire arms to fight off the repressions of the political class.
Ironically, it was the youths that demonstrated class and maturity as opposed to those in government who made use of excessive force by deploring state security apparatus, who in a brazen show of lawlessness began to shoot armless protesters at sight.
I therefore humbly urge the conveners of EndSARS protest to use the same mechansim which they employed in bringing to fruition the EndSARS protest in actualizing a Peter Obi presidency. Segun Awosanya et al, posterity will not forget you if you can repeat this feat.
Nigerians have a common enemy, and that is an insensitive political class who has held the nation by the jugular. We need to sheath the sword and eschew all discordant tunes so we can harmoniously defeat this common adversary.
Whatever dissenting views or ideologies that might have arisen with regards to a Peter-Obi presidency should be seen as a red herring which is irrelevant to our common quest for a better Nigeria.
We will do well to carefully study lines 1–6 of The Blood of Revolution which reads thus:
What land of nativity!
That raised giant men
That lived as dwarfs.
Giants with ants’ minds.…none to succour thee?
Among scholars and flocks?
In this poem, I am simply raising a lamentation over Nigeria, the land of my nativity (line 1), a land that produced great men who lived like dwarfs because of their mentality of smallness (lines 2-4).
I began the second verse with two questions ( in lines 5 & 6):
Are there none to succour thee? Can’t we find anyone among the learned, and the nation in general who can come to thy rescue?
Lines 13-16 are very interesting as it clearly reflects what we have on ground now in Nigeria.
Big-headed Humpty dumpties offering nothing:
Seize the bull’s horn!
Wrest your collective destinies
Free from bloody hands
As a result of the cry for rescue, certain unpleasant elements arose which I described as ‘big-headed Humpty dumpties with nothing to offer. They capitalize on our unfortunate circumstance as a nation, and our quest for change to seize the reins of government. But their hands are bloody, and so we must forcefully rescue our collective destinies from them,a force that we can only make use of through the ballot boxes.
Peter Obi’s quest for the highest office in the land is an answer to the prayer of those of us who have been crying and agitating for a better and greater Nigeria. This is an auspicious, make or mar moment in the history of our country for the conveners of the EndSARS protest to consolidate the gains of the protest; because part of its gains is a reawakening of our national consciousness as provened by the clamour for Peter Obi as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
We cannot afford to allow big-headed humpty dumpties with bloody hands, and with nothing to offer, hijack a revolution which we all prayed for, and that which some of our beloved ones paid the supreme sacrifice.
