By Chief Patrick Osagie Eholor
The National Broadcast Commision’s (NBC) sanction on some media organisations is a breach of fundamental human rights. We have separation of power. The press represents the voice of the people. We have a President who claims he is a democrat who returned to power in his native attire while dropping his military uniform. He has no reason to muscle the press. You see the video where the Chief of Army Staff couldn’t even address us as a nation instead he instructed one of his aides to do that. Warning us and trying to shut us down. What are they afraid of? Who is afraid of us? Why can’t we co-exist and live together? What is the issue? We have a President that has failed in all ramifications. I regret voting for him. He deceived us. We have a President who is a sectional leader. A President who keeps appointing people from a particular part of the country into major positions.
Is this country owned by northerners? I think we are also part of this country. People fought for us to remain as one Nigeria. The blood of those who died in the Lekki massacre were not even mentioned. He was talking of the policemen, that I sympathise with, that lost their lives. Why did President Muhammadu Buhari not mention those who were killed? The elite Yorubas have been betraying us. Look at the case of the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu who said nobody died at the Lekki Toll Gate shooting. We are still counting the number of people. Amnesty International is counting so also the International Observers. This is a disservice to the people. The National Broadcast Commission should apologise or it should be scrapped. What is the NBC good for? People that will shut us not to talk on electronic media. This is preposterous. They should be ashamed of themselves. This will never happen in an ideal society. How do you want the electronic media to paint what is black white? That’s what President Muhammadu Buhari and his cohorts want to be done and that’s impossible. We are in a new generation, a generation of social media. Whether the electronic media report it or not we will report it ourselves.
It is not over until it is over. We must endSARS. We don’t want any ‘SARS’ President; ‘SARS’ Governor; ‘SARS’ Legislator etc. It is encompassing. We must endSARS. What we did was just an intro of the SARS movement. We are going to continue whether they like it or not. The ideal that’s here to stay nobody can force it. Not even a tank. We are not afraid of them. They pushed us to the wall. I am not here to incite anybody. I am here for my own fundamental human rights because the rights belongs to me. Under the Geneva Convention you are aware that you have no right to shoot any lawful protester. These people(endSARS protesters) were lawful protesters and who gave the command(to shoot)? What if his daughter or son was shot? Is he going to be mute about it? This is a disservice to the people. He should apologise and resign. We are tired of him.
Our democratic system is too expensive to run. We don’t need House of Representatives and Senate operating at the same time. Only one of them should be operating at a time and it should be on part time basis. The minimum salary of a legislator should be N100,000 while the maximum should not be more than N1,000,000 so that it will become more attractive to those who can genuinely represent us. Those who are there now 98 percent of them are not there for us. Rather, they are there for themselves.
The centre has so much power. The people there are very lazy. There has to be a redistribution of wealth. Every state has to control their resources. For example, in America if you’re in Houston you control the oil yourself. If you’re in New York you create your own revenue. If you’re in Chicago you do the same thing. So, because the people in the centre are lazy that’s why they want this present system to continue. We want to break the police. How can you bring a man from Maiduguri to come and police somebody in Benin where he is not familiar with the terrain? In America and even London that’s why you have what is called a metropolitan police. You have different police system that police the people. So, we must break it and when we do people in Edo State will have theirs and so forth in other parts of the country. We will still have a central police. If we are disatisfied with the state police we can report to the central police for further investigation. That would really provide us an adequate security system. I also suggest that the Commissioner of Police should not be controlled by state governors. They should be controlled by the federal government because if we don’t checkmate them it seems most of the Commissioners of Police are very loyal to a fault to the governors because they’re induced by money. These things have to change.
Also the quota system has to be shelved because it has not been well applied. If you are from a certain part of the country and you score highly in an examination in comparison to what another candidate from the other part of the country scores the person who scored lower marks from another part of the country becomes your boss. How do you think that we would move forward when we are doing this? We have so many governors, National Assembly members etc without certificate. If they are well qualified they won’t be behaving the way they do. For example, look at the palliatives that are meant for poor people. How dare they starve the poor people and kept the palliatives until they got spoilt. Why were they keeping the caterpillars and not giving it to farmers to farm and get more yield? If President Buhari is doing his job why didn’t he summon the 36 state governors and ask them questions? They are all part of the corrupt system. We are saying that enough is enough. We cannot continue to live like this. I have said it before that if Tinubu is truly Jagaban he should stroll on the streets and be recognised.
