Like a flood, the unexpectedly searing report of the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for victims of SARS-related abuses and other matters which also scrutinized the Lekki toll gate shootings, has washed out all manner of snakes and scorpions from their nests and now, they viciously sting all those they touch.
The horde of hounds which has been harassing the panel, its report and all those who agree with the report includes thugs, lawyers and journalists. Their remit has been simple: discredit the panel, the panelists and especially its report at all costs. There have been machete cuts, chilling threats to life, acerbic articles in national dailies, inimical interviews and even a white-black?- paper all aimed at impugning the credibility of the panel and its report.
But were the truth so easy to destroy, everything in the world would be a lie. That the truth continues to put a lie to the many falsehoods that trailed the Lekki toll gate massacre bears eloquent testimony to its indestructibility. Nigerians know.
Nigerians know what happened at the Lekki toll gate on the night of October 20,2020; of how the Lekki Concession Company switched off the lights to allow bloodthirsty state actors move in and shoot at protesters whose only arms were the national anthem, the national flag and courage that their cowardly killers lacked.
That the panel`s report has been met by a cyclone of condemnation from some quarters bespeaks its authenticity. If the snake is not venomous as they say, why are they burning down the house to ferret it out? Of particular concern has been the frenetic media activities of some journalists which predated the massacre and have become more virulent since the report came to light.
With their lies, such journalists lay into the lamentation of long-suffering Nigerians. No one who has expressed support for the truth only reiterated by the panel has been spared their canons cast into the pages of national dailies like letter bombs.
Because like weevils such journalists have bored their way into some of Nigeria`s most prominent media houses, they have an audience that is rapt. What they do is an insider job as it is from within that they are chewing up the citadel of truth that journalism is.
They form the core of clowns who clap for the government`s every claptrap and with their charlatanism they weaken the gravity of the gravest national problems.
They wail more than the bereaved and with a bucket of bile they seek futilely to launder the image of their grimy principals. Why bark yourselves, they say to their pay masters, when you have dogs like us?
At the party of paranoia they host, they are chief conjurers who ascribe all manner of anti-government agenda to innocent Nigerians who caught in the typhoon of institutional corruption and inertia have openly bemoaned their lot. They conveniently forget that when Nigerians pitch the pinch they feel, they do so because they wear the shoes and nothing more.
Nigeria has seen many traitors in the course of its troubled history. Many who posed as reformers and human rights advocates have been exposed and lured to their deaths by the sirens of filthy lucre. But there is no one as dangerous as a compromised journalist.
By day, they pose as watchdogs while at night they morph into witches posted as sentries to the covens where the oppression of Nigerians is hatched.
Because with their pliant pens and discordant diction, they seek to rewrite history, especially of the Lekki toll gate massacre, history`s vast, imposing, hall of shame eagerly awaits their grand entrée.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
