Foremost human rights lawyer and activist, Femi Falana has charged youths to repeat the unity of purpose they showed during the 2020 EndSARS protests, in the 2023 general elections.
Falana made this call on Thursday when he delivered a lecture at the University of Lagos Mass Communication Alumni Association, Distinguished Lecture Series, in Lagos.
The EndSARS was a decentralized and leaderless social movement that sparked a series of mass protests against police brutality which rocked the country for over two weeks. The slogan called for the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a notorious unit of the Nigerian Police with a long record of abuses and extrajudicial killings.
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In his paper titled, ‘Communication Strategy: Options For Youth Leadership, Reflections On Endsars’, Falana traced the origin of impunity and brutality in the police, to colonial and military rule.
The legal luminary, while x-raying the coordination and unity exhibited during the EndSARS campaign, called on youths to learn the viable lessons inherent in those protests and apply them to the forthcoming 2023 general election.
He said, “One great truth the ENDSARS youth taught is that a focused, united and determined movement can exert the change they desire in society.
“The greatest lesson is that the youths did not allow the State to divide them along ethnic and religious lines. Therefore, the youths should frustrate the desperate moves by the political class to turn the 2023 election into a regional affair. Politicians should not be allowed to divert the attention of the Nigerian people from the crisis of underdevelopment confronting the nation.
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“The politicians must be compelled to address the rejection of electronic voting, insecurity of life and property, poverty and unemployment, lack of access to education, health and other social services, infrastructural decay, control of the national economy by imperialism etc.
“Every political party should make a commitment to the observance of human rights and implementation of the fundamental objectives enshrined in Chapter two of the Nigerian Constitution. “
Falana also encouraged Nigerian youths, workers and other oppressed people to be involved in the affairs of the country. “Since a people united can never be defeated the youths and all patriotic forces should get organised to end police brutality, extrajudicial killing of innocent people by State agents, terrorists and gunmen,” he added.
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