Pascal Arogorn Ibe
Presidential aide, Femi Adesina has said his principal, President Muhammadu Buhari’s fatherly role during and after the #EndSARS protests, prevented the country slumping into anarchy.
“If President Buhari hadn’t exercised the restraint and tolerance of a father, at a time that even hitherto respected people instigated the protesters to carry on (and they promptly went underground when anarchy ensued), we would have been talking of something else in the country,” Adesina said in an article published on his website on Thursday.
“The rivers of Nigeria could have turned crimson, and mourning and lamentations would have suffused the land. But we are thankful for the father in President Buhari, patient and enduring, almost to a fault.”
In the article captioned “We Have Not Many Fathers,” Adesina explained that Buhari exercised patience during and after the protests which rocked Nigeria in October.
He said the country has “many tutors, many instructors, but not many fathers. President Buhari is one, and that is why the country is experiencing relative calm today.”
According to him, even when the protests were hijacked and misdirected, the Nigerian leader was unmoved on his instructions to security agencies. Buhari, he explained, accepted the five demands made by the protesters.
“What better display of accommodation and readiness for dialogue. But the protest was prolonged, and eventually hijacked and misdirected,” Adesina added.
“But thank God for fathers, who kept their heads. No wonder it is said that what the elders see sitting down, young people would not see, even if they climbed trees. May God continue to give this country good fathers, who remain calm in turbulence, who keep their heads when others are losing theirs.”
Protests Against Police Brutality
Early last month, Nigerians took to the streets, protesting against police brutality and extrajudicial killings.
The protesters sought the scrapping of the now-disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the police accused of human rights abuse.
However, the protests continued after the disbandment of the unit with the shooting of some of the protesters in Lagos State, sparking a looting spree and destruction of properties in some parts of the country.
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