October 20, 2020: An Unrepairable Relationship
I once took pride in wanting to stay back. While you may never get me sold on the phrase ‘life purpose’, I genuinely felt like I knew where I was needed, and that was as close to Ukehe, Enugu State, as possible. This is an idea I’d nursed for so long, which was more crystallised when my godfather, Nna’emerieagha, passed on in the final stretch of medical school. For years, with no doubt, he had been the most present physician Ukehe had, and he had left behind a large void. My medical school experience was very much an eye-opener to the haymakers Nigeria could throw at you, and all you could do was bite down and take the hits. We had it all — ASUU strikes, JOHESU strikes, NASUU strikes, #NoTo100k, etc — but somehow, my naivety prevailed.
My experience as a doctor in Nigeria, with all its problems and truly low lows, was not unexpected. Even when I wrote this and the conclusion (quoted below) was as definitive as I thought that it was, I still thought of the possibility of staying back in Nigeria.
In summary, an eventual collapse of the healthcare sector in Nigeria approaches inevitability with each day, each bad policy, and as push factors pile up. This is a scenario that deserves critical attention, swift decision to steer the country in the right direction and an abundance of hope that we haven’t passed critical point yet. However, it is indeed unlikely that anyone is willing to wait behind to find out. — (Braindrain in the Nigerian Healthcare Sector — An Interim Prognosis) liftwithcaution.wordpress.com
Before getting into the weeds of October 2020, some world-building is necessary, because even now, not everyone gets it. On my 20th birthday (wow good times), I was in a car with two friends going to Shoprite in Dugbe, Ibadan, when a nondescript vehicle blocked our car. Two men in street clothes introduced themselves as officers and instructed us to follow them to the Criminal Investigations Department. Once there, we were separated and questioned like criminals with threats that we could get locked up and no one would ever know. After an hour of this, they simply let us go.
In June 2019, I was driving to pick up my appointment letter with a friend, and we encountered a supposed police checkpoint. There were two unlabeled cars and three men in street clothes without identification, who inspected our papers, which were in order, but then demanded an affidavit. As befuddling as it was, I did my best to convince him that I did not need an affidavit if I had the original documents. As usual, they erupted and threatened to lock us up. Fortunately, my dad’s workplace was nearby and his arrival defused the situation.
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These are two relatively benign examples, yet still get me heated many years later. A lot of other people did not get this fortunate outcome; they got locked up, transferred to other states, extorted, beaten up and even killed by all forms of armed personnel, but most especially SARS — a police unit designed to combat armed robberies, but had been used as a tool to intimidate, harass and terrorize the youth population. Anyone could be labeled a hacker, scammer, or prostitute on a whim. Traveling with a laptop, driving a new car, having a beard, or sporting dreadlocks could make you an “attractive prospect.” For a country with poor book-keeping habits, the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law claimed that SARS was responsible for the deaths or disappearances of about 30,400 people over a 16-year period from 2004 to 2020. I think this is conservative.
The COVID lockdowns offered SARS a spectacular opportunity to operate. They harassed all road users, under the guise of lockdown, not wearing masks, not having sanitisers etc. I had my share of this while traveling to Warri for a friend’s wedding in August 2020. The tempo and frequency of these harassments kept trending upwards, until a video of a SARS officer shooting a young man in Ughelli, Delta State circulated on social media in early October. #EndSARS started trending on Twitter, and I honestly expected this to fizzle out as these things often do. If there was ever an Emmet Till moment in recent Nigerian history, that was it. A small protest in front of the Lagos State Governor’s Office became a nationwide protest and even drew the sceptical me into it.
How did the government respond? They shot at protesters, froze accounts of the organizers, conducted mass arrests and killed a lot of people. But this didn’t stop the protests. It gained momentum every day, and it truly seemed like we were all in this together. For once, I felt hopeful. Did we really have a chance? Was this it? Each day, we gleefully marched on the streets and came back in the evening to count the losses. As demoralising as it was, it felt like keeping the struggle going gave the losses meaning and we were far too in it to back out now.
All of that came to a head on the night of October 20, 2020. I was working the night shift and had admitted a patient with acute ischemic stroke. As with stroke cases, you institute the protocol and hope it’s a favourable case. I logged on to Twitter to see if there were any protest updates, only to see a video of a bloodied person who had been shot and the people around him were trying to remove the bullet. The military had shown up to one of the most popular protest locations, Lekki Toll Gate and opened fire at young people singing the Nigerian anthem and waving Nigerian flags in what has come to be known as The Lekki Toll Gate Massacre. ‘Broken’ remains the feeling that lingered that entire night. It was the saddest combination of defeat, helplessness and hopelessness.
Like air out of a balloon, all that hope was gone. Those dreams were dead. Even now, looking back, it still seems so unbelievable. The aftermath was the biggest denial mixed with blame game marathon. A sham committee was set up, and their findings were thrown out. I’m not sure what defined the relationship of Nigeria with past generations, but this was it for us. In that moment, seeing young people lying lifelessly on the streets, it dawned on me that no matter how loud our voices were, or how united we were in our struggles, the structures in place were not indifferent, it was set up to perpetuate the struggle.
There were far too many people lost to this struggle, and they will always be remembered by those of us who survived. #EndSARS.
