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I JUST HOPE, A Note To Nigerian Youth By Olorunfemi Adeyeye

October 23, 2020

I hope you won’t forget how your oppressors prefer spending billions to quench your thirst for freedom, to acceding to your genuine demands. I hope you now know that they are afraid of you and your unity.

Are you confused at the moment? Weak? Hearts shattered? 

I want to tell you that you are not alone. It’s understandable and permissible. You feel less patriotic? No. You are a patriot; a brave one at that. You are not a coward for feeling broken at the moment. The cowards are the ones who can not own up to their evil deeds in broad daylight. 

I only hope you now agree that the goal is bigger. The state and system you are fighting, brutal. The rots, deeper. That our demands should be radical and strategy, wider. 

I hope you now know it’s way beyond electing a “good person”. It’s about electing a good political/socio-economic system that would prun even the worst of us. I hope you know that a government that can clamp down on young protestors to the point of killing them gruesomely, would do worse during elections just to remain in power. 

I hope you now know your enemies. I hope you won’t forget how you showed to the World, through organizing the protests, that transparency and accountability should be the hallmarks of governance. I hope you take these everywhere you go to. 

I hope you now know that you don’t have to talk tough to be killed by the state. The State can kill you for merely sitting on the floor dumb, if your sitting on the floor threatens their business empire. The flag and national anthem mean nothing to them. There is no sense of nationhood in the State. It’s all kleptohood. 

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I hope you now know that the state would do all to protect its business interests. Kill and spin narratives. None of them, across all tribes, has resigned out of shame or even out of a sense of humanness. I hope you won’t forget how they control the media reportage. 

I hope you won’t forget how your oppressors prefer spending billions to quench your thirst for freedom, to acceding to your genuine demands. I hope you now know that they are afraid of you and your unity. 

I sincerely hope you won’t cheer your oppressors and invite them to public/convocation lectures, except to stone them. It’s not violence. It’s called resistance. 

I hope you will boycott their meetings if they would be bold to call any, even through their proxies. 

I strongly hope you won’t walk past your fellow oppressed when he’s being brutalized by any state agent. 

I hope you won’t forget these lessons as we forge ahead. 

Above all, I hope you now know that when you fight, you may win. But when you don’t, you have already lost. 

Comrades. It’s a marathon but we can get there fast. Take a deep breath. Lace your boots. We move!

#EndSARS #RevolutionNow