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Mr. President, listen to your people, #EndSARS
There comes a time in the life and tenure of leaders and governments when they must step back to assess events and happenings around them and take those consequential decisions that are demanded.
It is one such time for President Muhammadu Buhari and the government of Nigeria. It is time to listen to the people. It is time to #EndSARS.
For days many of the young people of Nigeria have been on the streets. They have been crying over the pain they have borne for years; that agents of the state, rather than support them, have become a problem for them. That guns bought to protect them have become weapons that are used to hound them. They want an end to this situation. They want closure. They want the institution scrapped.
We feel their pain and appreciate their point. When an institution fails to act in accordance with its remit it has on its own foreclosed its own legitimacy and continued existence. This in our view is the situation that we have at hand. Ending SARS would therefore not be a defeat for anyone. It will be an expression of the determination of both the leaders and the led to make the right decisions that would best engender the realisation of the Nigerian dream.
And yes, ending #SARS would not address all of the problems of policing and rights abuses in Nigeria. But it would signal a determination to embrace a new beginning. This would be enough for now. We can thereafter proceed on to the rest of the package.
Mr. President, listen to your people: #EndSARS today.
Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari
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