If you refuse to speak out when great evil is being perpetrated, one day, it will knock on your doors and no one will be left there to help you.
Since Governor Rotimi Akeredolu SAN became governor of Ondo State, he’s found a new hobby in ordering policemen, who have provided themselves as willing tools, to shoot at any group of persons who are dissatisfied with his style of governance and took the bull by the horn to protest.
The list is growing and Akeredolu is becoming a tyrant who enjoys watching his people run in fear of being shot. He’s turning this into a sort of a sport.
The first reported case was that of April 2018 protest by students of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko over the callous increment of over 300% in their tuition fees. The protest, largely peaceful, became a reminisce of the military days of clampdown of dissenting voices with policemen shooting live bullets into the crowd of students. Like a war zone, everything became “scatter-scatter”. A 400 level student was shot in the leg, just below his knee. Save for his brave colleagues, he would have died. Many more incurred various degree of injuries and valuable items lost. A peaceful walk to express disappointment became a war.
Since then, the list of tyrannical disperse of peaceful protests has grown into tens with the latest ones being a resurgent higher institutions protest against unholy increments of their tuition fees and that of today, OSOPADEC Students protesting against the obvious misdeed in the commission since the advent of this regime.
As much as I am gutted that someone who has spent a large part of his life studying the laws of this country is the brain behind this callous and wicked orders is worrisome and preposterous. The thought of a senior advocate comfortably ordering policemen to shoot into a crowd of protesting harmless students and youths is the height of the decay in our morals and values as a society.
Dissenting voices and protests is one of the ethos of democratic rule. If all governors aim to gag dissenting voices as Governor Akeredolu is doing, then we would not have democracy. Had it not been for the feebleness of our minds, Akeredolu, who cut his political teeth with the military while others were going everything humanly possible to get the country back to democracy is saddled with the responsibility of governing a state under a civil rule. It’s obvious he still believe in the military style of governance of see no evil, say no evil. Pathetic.
The witless shooting of OSOPADEC students and youths under the aegis of Ilaje Advancement Forum is an invite to anarchy. We all know how volatile the Niger Delta axis of this country is. Every leader should be wise enough to manage these situations before it snowball into a struggle that will be blown out of hand. Why is the governor not ready to entertain talks from Ilaje and Ese Odo on the continued abuse of power and authority by the sitting OSOPADEC Chairman despite the magnitude of petitions written against the man. Could it be true the Governor and his family are benefiting from the misdeeds and thereby aim to quench everything that can turn attention to it? One thing I know is that one day, Akeredolu will exit the Alagbaka Government House as the landlord and someone else will take over, what will be said of him afterwards will be left in the hands of posterity.
Wándé T. Àjàyí is a freelance writer.
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