As news of plans by some youth to occupy the Lekki Toll Gate on Saturday, February 13 makes the round, a right activist and political observer, Comrade James Adeyemi appealed to them to reconsider their planned action, sensing it might go the way of the previous one.
Adeyemi, who is the National Leader of the Black Youth Vanguard (BYV) in a chat in Lagos Tuesday, stated in retrospective how the genuine #EndSARS protest ended in disaster that led to the destruction of several heritages of the state, warning that, no right-thinking citizen of Nigeria should engage in any act capable of portraying him as the enemy of the progress of the state.
The concerned political observer was of the belief that the Judicial Panel of Inquiry set up by Governor Sanwo-Olu is peopled by highly intellectual personalities who know their onions and capable of handling the issue before them, admonishing that, “they should be allowed to do their job without any form of hindrance or unnecessary detraction.
According to him, people should be wary of some unscrupulous characters in the society whose main objective in participating in any form of protest is to destroy Lagos heritages of which they themselves are beneficiaries, believing that, the destruction visited on the state the other time was pre-meditated.
“Since it is not certain that the planed #OccupyLekkiTollGate activities would not go the way of the previous one that is now a bone of contention, I advise the planners to shelve it and resort to more dialogues to resolve the issue. The situation in the country now, security-wise does not encourage any street agitation as we could not determine who harbours ulterior motives and who has genuine intentions. In that wise, any act that is seen as capable of trigger off any unrest should be done away with,” Adeyemi cautioned.
He wondered why anybody, at this time would want to assemble people against the COVID-19 pandemic protocol that entail keeping social distance, covering of faces and shunning crowd, observing that, the planned action is likely to be counter-productive and end up a disaster.
“Since the opening of the project, by my own assessment, cannot jeopardize the job of the panellists, I suggest they should be given an ample chance to concentrate so that satisfactory reports would be issued out at the end of the day,” Adeyemi concluded.
