About this time last year, I was walking to school to go teach my students. On getting there, I was told the school and other schools in Lagos had been ordered to close, and that everyone should remain indoors.
It wasn't long after I left the school, headed home, that I heard the first gunshot. It sounded so close. It was terrifying!
I avoided the main road, and took a different path home. When I got home, I took out my phone, and it was still morning when I saw the blood.
Right there on my phone, I saw shootings at Ajangbadi — just a few kilometers from my house. I saw policemen in numbers and arms that I had never seen since I've been living in the area. They were crouched back to back in the middle of the road firing their rifles forward.
Forward, not upwards.
There were dead bodies everywhere. I saw my friends on my WhatsApp with blood stains and injuries. Many of them were being helped by other protesters to the hospital. No, they didn't stop marching, but neither did the policemen.
This was still morning, and what happened at Ajangbadi that morning never made it to the news or internet.
The evening, however, left me hopeless.
People in large numbers holding hands and singing the country's anthem in one of the safest places in the state.
People who left their homes for the promise of a better nation.
People whose only arms where the flag and their phones.
People who had families and businesses; people whose only crime was hope.
These people were murdered by the people supposed to protect and fight for them. They were used as target practice, and we're told to run to make it more fun for the shooters.
People in large numbers holding hands and singing the country's anthem in one of the safest places in the state were murdered by the army.
It was so organized a plot.
First, you declare a curfew in the evening when you know people are out in mass. Next, you get all the surveillance cameras in the entire place removed. Then, you block all the roads leading to the gathering. Then, you wait till it's dark and turn off all the lights.
Then you start shooting.
Mind you, you shoot forward...into the crowd, and not upwards. Use a machine gun if you must, and don't forget to throw teargas and make them completely disoriented.
Now, you stop shooting and start taking the bodies. There must be no evidence of anything, remember?
Keep shooting till it's daybreak and keep taking the bodies too. This is why you were trained as soldiers. And if they ever accuse you of it with video evidence, you deny it.
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20-10-20
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Last year, we lost a lot of Nigerian lives to the Nigerian government. Today, I'm remembering the struggle, hope, faith, unity, love, bond, and mutual understanding we shared. The way we held hands and threw out fists in the air demanding for a reform of a nation we didn't get to choose.
Today, I'm remembering young people like me that were massacred in cold blood before, during, and after the #endsars protests.
Today, I'm remembering Nigeria. 🇳🇬🕯️
All my love,
Delight Asaph.