President Muhammadu Buhari you will agree that the endSARS Protest was a rare phenomenon as it finally revealed and showed your regime’s true colors.
The international community now recognizes the true nature of the dictatorship in your government. I can assure you that more Nigerians will nonviolently come out again and protest for popular demands. So, get ready for more tests.
This time should you try to rough them up with mobs of political thugs, crush and kill them with military and police forces, your acts of repression will be swiftly met with international accountability. You and your regime have been exposed big time. For tyranny and massacre. Your administration can send out all kinds of coordinated agents to raise methodical questions about the report, as well as about the mindset of the members of the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led panel but what no one can deny was the massacre of peacefully protesting citizens.
Psychologically whether you like it or not the language of protest must now be understood by you. The act of assembling or demonstrating is a civil right. You lied to the world when you said the endSARS protest was about removing you from power because it is now clear to the entire world that your soldiers and police fired live bullets at peaceful protesters who waved the nation’s flag and sang the national anthem at the Lekki toll gate, in Lagos on Tuesday evening and early morning of Wednesday. October 20/21 of 2021 will forever be a period of Muhammadu Buhari’s days of reckoning.
The world now know how ambulances and medical personnels dispatched to the toll gate by private individuals to help the wounded and dying protesters were denied access by security forces.
It will now be very difficult for you to engage in sweeping repression and arrests as ways to continue to instill fear, to intimidate and silence those who would speak their minds. You and your regime are now under close observation and watch, and this is just the beginning — the United Nations, United States of America, Amnesty International Nigeria, and others have charged your government and the Lagos State government to act on the recommendations of the report submitted by the panel for victims of Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other related abuses, and dangers.
Trying to be silent and hoping with time these too will go away untreated, not this time. You have been hugely exposed globally.
If you fail to act fully on the panel’s recommendations you and your officials will face possible grave sanctions from the United States of America, and other powers for the oppression of the Nigerian people.
Buhari, this is it for you politically and legally even when you become an ex-president, because there is absolutely no justification for your government and supporters to use cruel measures to try to silence citizens who are peacefully asking for greater freedom, healthy and professional policing, good governance, and a better quality of life.
I will counsel you and your administration here, henceforth I am hoping that there will be more protests at which time protesters will indicate their peaceful cry by dressing in white, carrying various freedom-oriented flags, even white roses, turn on and flood the social media and banging drums, pots and pans.
Try to violently violate the citizens right of assembly and peaceful protest again. The Nigerian people will take you and your repressive officials to the International Criminal Court – ICC after you and your officials leave office. Let’s hope we do not have to reach that type of citizens response. From now on do the right thing.
…………………………………………………
John Egbeazien Oshodi is an American based Police/Prison Scientist and Forensic/Clinical/Legal Psychologist. A government Consultant on matters of forensic-clinical adult/child psychological services in the USA; Chief Educator and Clinician at the Transatlantic Enrichment and Refresher Institute, an Online Lifelong Center for Personal, Professional and Career Development. A former Interim Associate Dean/Assistant Professor at the Broward College, Florida. The Founder of the Dr. John Egbeazien Oshodi Foundation, Center for Psychological Health and Behavioral Change in African settings. In 2011, he introduced the State-of-the-Art Forensic Psychology into Nigeria through N.U.C and the Nasarawa State University where he served in the Department of Psychology as an Associate Professor. The Development Professor and International Liaison Consultant at the African University of Benin, and a Virtual Faculty at the ISCOM University, Benin of Republic. Founder of the Proposed Transatlantic Egbeazien University (TEU) of Values and Ethics, a digital project of Truth, Ethics, Openness. Author of over 40 academic publications/creations, at least 200 public opinion writeups on African issues, and various books.
Prof John Egbeazien Oshodi, a forensic psychologist based in the United States, wrote in via transeuniversity@gmail.com
