Democracy That Gave Birth To Sorrow And Tears, By Buhari Olanrewaju Ahmed

Democracy in Nigeria has become a temple of injustice where powerful people take over what belongs to the majority by using security agents as a tool to create fear in the hearts of the oppressed people.

Nigeria’s democracy since its emergence has been fluctuating like faulty electricity that has no control.

A country with more than 200 ethnic groups has been struggling to build national unity but the incompetent and desperate rulers instigate the struggle with hate, religion and tribalism.

No doubt, the idea of national unity in this country has collapsed; those who claimed to be the majority created fear and hatred in the hearts of the so-called minority.

Nigeria as a country has never witnessed true democracy due to injustices, killings of innocent citizens, corruption ushered in by the political class, electoral malpractices, shrinking civil liberties and the heavy monetisation of the judiciary.

Thousands of people have been sent to their early graves because of religious and political animosity.

A brutal civil war of 1967 plunged the country into chaos and these chaos remain untreated till date.

The killings of over three million people, mostly women and children, under the order of General Yakubu Gowon, created a massive scar and remains one of the reasons the idea of national unity may not, in reality, come to fruition.

The implication is that the country will remain divided as a result of a war and several other injustices carefully orchestrated by the British Government to advance and consolidate its economic interests in Nigeria.

The June 12, 1993 election which should have united the country was unjustly annulled, with the people responding through a struggle that sparked different reactions across the country as citizens fought for the soul of their nation.

The refusal to officially recognise MKO the winner of the June 12 election created a division, where Nigerians stage protests across the country.  The tyrannical regime of General Ibrahim Babangida who made corruption a business enterprise in Nigeria, promised a transitional government from military rule to democracy but failed to do so.

It was a cruel period when the right of citizens was swept under the carpet. The June 12 injustice was quickly followed by the case of the ‘Ogoni Nine’ environment activists led by Ken Saro-Wiwa, a group that protested against oil pollution in the Niger Delta region.

They were executed on trumped-up charges without the slightest recourse to fair hearing.

Democracy of sorrow and tears, there’s the inter-ethnic war that has killed hundreds of people in Southern Kaduna, where the urchin nomadic Fulani herdsmen rape and slaughter innocent people in cold blood.

Here’s a country where parents watch how the nomadic herdsmen rape their daughters; a country where a husband watches how these monsters molest and rape his wife. This is also a country where children witness how their parents are butchered to death.

Thousand of people have left their ancestral homes because of fear of the unknown, and many have been rendered homeless because of insecurity. The government continues to fail to protect the lives and properties of its citizens.

Our economic instability created social vices in our communities, and thousands of Nigerian youth have become fraudsters and kidnappers because the government failed to create employment for them.

Here’s a country that claims to be the Giant of Africa, yet a graduate who has a first class becomes an Okada rider because of a failed system that only favours and empowers the rich.

More than 20 million Nigerian children do not have the opportunity to attend school, and that is the highest rate in the world. Nigerian rulers make education unattractive to the people whilst their wards are sent abroad to study. This is done deliberately to ruin public schools so that the private schools they own will have patronage.

This is why conscious citizens have been fighting for justice in this country; people like Omoyele Sowore, a frontline freedom fighter who for over three decades has been fighting for the masses.

Sowore was subjected to humiliation, was harassed, poisoned and kidnapped in the middle of the night because he was calling for a revolution that would have brought about economic prosperity for all.

He was Incarcerated for several months and they denied him the right to see his family. His passport was seized yet they kept tormenting him because he was constantly on the side of the oppressed people.

Chief Sunday Igboho, an activist who called for the creation of Yoruba Nation was arrested and jailed in a neighbouring country on the order of dictator Buhari’s regime.

Sunday Igboho’s house was criminally invaded by members of State Security Service, who allegedly killed several people during the criminal invasion, whilst several others were arbitrarily arrested in a Gestapo style.

Nnamdi Kanu, a pro-Biafra agitator who believes in the struggle for liberty for his people, was extraordinarily renditioned to Nigeria by the Buhari dictatorship. Kanu was humiliated and was denied access to his lawyers and family.

Today, he is still being denied access to his personal doctors.
Kanu was granted bail but the tyrannical regime of dictator Buhari refused to obey the court order. This explains the state of the health of our judiciary.

EndSARS, which resulted in the Lekki Tollgate massacre, executed by dictator Buhari’s regime, is another cruel dent on Nigeria’s democracy. Young people gathered to put a stop to extrajudicial killings, harassment, extortion and illegal arrests carried out by the Nigerian police against the youth. For these reasons, they were brutally murdered by their own government for resisting extrajudicial killings.

In Nigeria, social injustice means powerful people using their connections to oppress citizens who dare to question their abnormality in the society. This is partly how security agents are used as a tool to oppress the people.

Right now, Nigeria is bleeding internally and dying, it needs urgent surgery so that it does not die an artificial death caused by the so-called religious and political rulers.

President Tinubu should know at this moment that a King who ushers in peace will never be forgotten and the one who brings in turmoil and desolation would also be remembered for same.

He should make June 12 a prosperous year by freeing all the conscious prisoners starting from Omoyele Sowore, Sunday Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu and should adequately compensate them for their resilience.