The EndSARS protests reminded me of the Tiananmen square protests which occurred on June 4, 1989 in China.
China was then under the rule of Deng Xiaoping and the far reaching reforms he introduced were beginning to crystallize. In the process, there were problems of implementation which left many of the policy measures unresolved.
Within the Chinese communist party there was a sharp split between those who favoured the reforms and those felt that the pace of the reforms should be slowed down.
In the middle of these, Hu Yaobang the man driving the reforms suddenly and mysteriously died. This served as the trigger for western countries who have been following events keenly in China and the communist party to instigate unrest within the country.
In doing this western agents infiltrated the young elements in China especially the student movements with subversive publications and manuals on how to organize protests and sustain them.
From the cover of their embassies, the western agents provided funding and logistical support followed with massive propaganda coverage for the student protest.
At first the students who massed in the iconic Tiananmen square and took it over were tolerated and allowed to make their demands which the government accepted; a rare occurrence in China up to that time.
But as the students were getting emboldened especially as the western agents were openly hobnobbing and directing the leadership of the protest movement, the Chinese government having tolerated it enough decided to move in decisively to clear the square.
There is no need pretending about it; the EndSARS protests in some ways come from the same foreign inspired template of destabilization as that of China in 1989.
The hallmarks are there; identify a restive segment of the population, choose a sensitive issue that agitates the mind of a good number of people, provide funding and logistics through local agents, prepare platforms for massive agitation propaganda locally and abroad and from embassies secretly coordinate the tempo and tenor of the protests.
Additionally in Nigeria the protests are driven through the fault lines of ethnicity and religion for maximum impact and effect.
All these elements are evident in the EndSARS protests. And what is more this is not a spontaneous happening as we are being made to believe. Everything has been planned in advance from the timing of the moment to introduce the protests complete with the hashtag to the choreography of events and action sequences of the protests and the media coverage. Tactically It is a convergence of the Tiananmen template in targeting the teeming urban youth as the main action party for the agitation, and the ‘’I can’t breathe’’ or ‘’Black lives Matter’’ movement in the United States of America for the local and foreign mobilization of Nigerians abroad to demonstrate and picket Nigerian embassies. And further down the line the protesters would be encouraged to goad the government into a crackdown with possible fatalities. And should this occur the ready made plans to issue statements of condemnation and implementation of sanctions like visa denial and freezing of the assets of selected members of the administration would kick in. There will be hints and outright threats of arraigning some administration officials at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
From all indications the government was caught napping on the protests. The government also provided the casus belli for the protests by its wrong timing of increase in the pump price of petrol and electricity tariffs. Coming after the excruciating experience of Nigerians with the Coved-19 lockdown this was a triple whammy that proved too much to bear. The in-your-face manner of the introduction of these measures hardly endeared government to the citizens.
If anybody had any plans to destabilize the government, there cannot be a better gilt-edged opportunity than that.
Although some of us have genuine and justifiable reasons to be at odds with the government on issues of national import, this however is a moment national challenge to which we must lend our support to see it off.
The EndSARS protests is a false flag operation using a genuine issue of national import to cause disaffection and discontent leading to the destabilization of the country. It is taken straight out of the manual that has been used elsewhere to create conditions for toppling of governments or leveraging on the chaos and confusion so created to secure favourable economic and politico-strategic aims.
In this case, notice how the protests morphed quickly from a demand for the scrapping of the dreaded SARS to other issues that were not in the original demand. It is quite clear from this that the main patrons behind the protests have it in their plans to keep calibrating the process to a point where they will have the government in a corner and thus amenable to their demands. Or in the extreme case cause the toppling of the sitting government and midwife the emergence of a pliant one that will be beholden to them.
Do both the government and the local leaders of the EndSARS realise this?
One of the tactics of planners and manipulators of such capers is to ensure they keep both legs firmly in the two camps. In running with the hare and hunting with the hounds they are able to determine the eventual outcome of the debacle winning both ways.
But it is our country that suffers eventually when we allow ourselves to be manipulated into a needless conflagration. Nigeria exists not just for Nigerians alone but the whole of Africa and peoples of African descent the world over. This is the essence and manifest destiny of Nigeria which it must fulfil eventually. No country or countries in the world however powerful should be allowed to get the impression that they can manipulate and turn Nigeria into their strategic playground.
The government should therefore act swiftly to regain the initiative it lost when the caper first came on. The main area of emphasis of the protesters is in the arena of media and public affairs which the protest movement seems to have the upper hand over the government. To make matters worse the government’s organs of communications and its principals seem to have lost the momentum and credibility to launch a counter narrative on issues of protecting democracy and rule of law which the government represents; and chaos and anarchy which the protesters increasingly represent as evidenced from the reports of arson, looting, destruction of public property and disruption of public life attributed to their members.
