Folarin Falana, popularly known as Falz, son of Human Rights Activist and Legal Luminary, Femi Falana, has disclosed the main reason why the #EndSARS protest against Police brutality and extra judicial killings was hijacked by hoodlums.
The Nigerian hip-hop artiste, lawyer and social activist, Falz, said the reason why hoodlums and thugs attacked demonstrators and disrupted the protests was that they were willing tool of politicians used to create apprehension and forment trouble in the society.
He added that the hoodlums disrupted the protests because they did not know better, adding that the hoodlums were oblivious to the fact that the agitation will rub off positively on them and change their life for good.
Falz made the disclosure at a webinar organised by a group called “We Move Naija”.
He opined that the #EndSARS protests had engendered the re-engineering of Nigeria, noting that the country will not remain the same again.
He noted that with the passion and unity displayed by Nigerian youths in the past weeks, he was optimistic that the future of the country looked brighter.
He added, “I have never seen a Nigeria as united as what I saw during the protests. The youths were so united. However, the question for many people now is, what next? I think it is work in progress. The struggle has by no means ended. Majority of the work lies in citizen education.
“People need to know their rights and what the Constitution says. For some time, I have been informing my followers on social media about what the law says about specific issues but I decided to commit my resources and efforts into making it a full-fledged show when I realised that many people were unaware of certain things.”
On hoodlums disrupting demonstrations, he said “The words, ‘hoodlums’ and ‘thugs’ were thrown around a lot recently. A hoodlum is an average young man like me who does not know better. Nobody was born or destined to be a hoodlum. They just need more education to let them know they don’t have to be used by politicians to wreak havoc.”
He, however, enjoined youths to focus on the next election cycle in 2023 to make substantial inputs to the political process.
“As we are approaching 2023, it is important for us to start getting ready. It would be a big year for our future. It is important to start getting our permanent voter cards. A lot of people don’t understand certain things like the process for recalling an elected official.
For example, if somebody who is representing you in the National Assembly is not doing what the constituents want, you have the power to remove him. The power of the people is greater than the people in power. We need to work more closely with one another,” he said.
He said the whipping up of religious and tribal sentiments was a way of sowing seed of discord among the populace “We need to discard all the religious and tribal sentiments that have been thrown around. They are just tactics by people trying to tear us apart. We need to keep the energy going. Stay alert and register to vote.
“We need more intelligent people in government. These past few weeks have shown us that the people we have in power are very shallow. They are just there to embezzle money. We need people who know that they are there to serve us and not for them to be worshipped”, he concluded.
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