The National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has appealed to #EndSARS protesters demonstrating against police brutality and extrajudicial killings to call off the protests and give peace a chance.
This was contained in a statement on Monday night titled; ‘#EndSARS Protests – The Remedy For National Maladies Is More, Not Less, Democracy’.
Tinubu said there is no way any society can make meaningful progress without the enthronement of these values and the demands for fundamental police reforms by the protesting youths are in pursuit of the country’s aspiration in the national anthem.
He then pleaded that the government is given the chance to implement the reforms demanded by the protesters.
The statement reads: “For the past twelve days, our country has witnessed massive protests by youths in different cities, which were ignited by widespread disenchantment with the gross human rights abuses including torture, extortion, harassment, intimidation and even extra-judicial killings of Nigerians by members of the disbanded Special Anti-robbery Squad (SARS). The demands for fundamental police reforms by the protesting youths are in pursuit of our aspiration in our national anthem “to build a nation where peace and justice shall reign”. Justice as one of our greatest writers has memorably noted is “the first condition of humanity”. A society where those who are paid from the public purse to protect the lives and property of the people become themselves threats to the liberty, safety and dignity of the people; where human life is difficult to distinguish from Thomas Hobbes ‘State of Nature – ‘solitary, poor, nasty and brutish’ is not one fit for free and decent people to live in. Such impunity and lawlessness are incompatible with the values and tenets of a democratic society governed by the supremacy of the rule of law”.