By Femi Adesina
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina has said that his principal President Muhammadu Buhari, exhibited self-restraint and tolerance during the #ENDSARS protests.
Adesina in his article titled: ‘WE HAVE NOT MANY FATHERS’ shared on his Facebook page, commended Buhari’s fatherly role, noting that these attributes displayed by the president prevented the country from descending into anarchy.
Recounting what the president said even after the protest had been hijacked and hoodlums began wreaking havoc, he wrote, “That was why when the EndSARS protest started, and began to fester, and was eventually hijacked and misdirected, President Buhari did not change the instructions, the rules of engagement to security agencies, particularly the police.
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“Things began to degenerate. Policemen were being killed, prisoners being set free, roads and airports being blocked, the economy was being locked down once again after the about five months lockdown imposed by COVID-19, yet the President did not change the order to the police, particularly.
“It was not till last week that the Inspector General of Police instructed his men to now use ‘lawful force’ to confront any insurrection. Sadly, scores of them had been killed in cold blood, scores of patrol vehicles torched, and over 200 police stations, public and private property burnt.
“If President Buhari hadn’t exercised the restraint and tolerance of a father, at a time that even hitherto respected people instigated the protesters to carry on (and they promptly went underground when anarchy ensued), we would have been talking of something else in the country.
“The rivers of Nigeria could have turned crimson, and mourning and lamentations would have suffused the land. But we are thankful for the father in President Buhari, patient and enduring, almost to a fault.
Thousands of youths took to the streets last to demand an end to police brutality and better governance under the #EndSARS banner.
