- Says Police Brutality Remains After Bloody ENDSARS Protests
By Halimah Olamide
“If we go by previous experiences about the consequences and backlash of civil protests, the outcomes have not been salutary,”
A former National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof Lai Olurode, has said Nigerians must develop alternative means of civil disobedience instead of street protests.
Olurode, a retired professor of Sociology at the University of Lagos said instances abound to justfy the conclusion that most streets protests have always been bloody but have produced no desired results.
He cited the police brutality protests of 2020 which he said merely led to the police removing SARS inscriptions from patrol vehicles but have failed to become the police force that Nigerians desire.
Olurode’s statement made available to the NPO Report late Monday, came amidst growing concerns over an impending streets protests over hunger in the country.
Proposing a more “creative and scientific approach on protests,” Olurode said “the most common form of civil protest in Nigeria is street protests or marches.”
He however said that Nigerians can be more creative by considering alternatives to street marches as forms of civil disobedience.
“If we go by previous experiences about the consequences and backlash of civil protests, the outcomes have not been salutary,” he added
Asking “why employ the same mode of behaviour that hadn’t produced any substantive outcome in the past,” Olurode appealed for more creativity and the reliance on science to decide on whether this pending protests should hold or not.
He said, “I hereby advocate that those have subscribed to the protest option to register their protest against hunger in the land through petitions or even boycotts of government services in place of street protests.
“Without any doubt in the mind of many, the 2020 EndSars bloody protest left sour tastes in the mouth. The scale of private and public destruction was massive.
“Though, the protests led to the erasure of EndSars inscriptions on police vehicles but, the protests by no means eliminated police toll gates and the associated sharp practices. These gains got flattened in the midst of the losses of life and property which followed the imbroglio.
“In the light of this, I appeal for caution on the resort to open protests. Let’s deploy more creative thoughts and scientific simplicity to feed our decisions. A desirable outcome is an improvement in Nigeria’s citizenship project which is achievable through alternatives to street protests or marches. Never must we allow opportunists whose narrow concern is to promote ethnic rather than class politics to take advantage of our innocent expressions of social discontent.”
Olurode said civil protests became popular in the United States in the early 1960s to register dissatisfaction with social discrimination against the minorities particularly the Blacks and people of colour and women as well.
He said protests were then “largely a positive force in righting the then prevalent social wrongs.”
In the most civilised and democratic countries of the world, Olurode noted, civil protests were rarely outlawed.
“Even, under dictatorships, protests, where they are forbidden, they get smuggled into modes of registering dissatisfaction and social discontent with harsh government social policies.’ Without street protests and marches, the military would have probably remained in power in most of Africa,” he concluded