17 Nigerians died. They died due to the
negligence and greed of Abba Moro. Abba Moro is yet to to be prosecuted
and we are here to remind Nigerians that 17 people died.
They will of course try to discredit us.
They might send down thugs to start a screaming fit within our lines.
They might even start a fight or two so their police and civil security
men can intimidate, harass, and possibly arrest us. They will do
anything they can to take attention from what matters: that greed and
negligence resulted in the death of 17 of our comrades.
They won’t tell you that 20 people died
in this same exercise in 2008 and Abba Moro was warned by the board of
the Immigration Service to postpone the exams so as to prepare
adequately and avoid casualties; they won’t tell you that he refused to
spread the exercise to universities and polytechnics to avoid the crowd;
they won’t tell you that he knew all the venues were above capacity,
they won’t tell you that he insisted on awarding this contract to Drexel
Technologies LTD, a company that hasn’t filed returns since 1994, a
company that benefited at least N693m from this exercise and that has
ties to the minister himself.
Instead, they will write in the papers
and claim we are sponsored by the opposition. That we are trying to stir
up trouble. What they won’t tell you is the hours we spent sending
emails, DMs and sms organising what time and date worked for most. They
won’t tell you of the hours spent under the sun arguing about price,
watching carpenters build coffins from scratch in Kugbo.
They won’t tell you that we are just
Nigerians who only want the rule of law to be applied. And we don’t ask
for much: the prosecution of the Minister of Interior Mr. Abba Moro for
murder.
They won’t tell you that P.A donated
1000, J.O donated 12000 and a further 30000. They won’t tell you that
M.Y donated 10000, F.H donated 5500, K.A, M.A donated 1000, Q.A donated
1000, S.A donated 1000, A.M donated 10000, A.S donated 3000, D,O donated
1000, S.B donated 1000, J.A 1000 and we are still raising money for
next week’s protest. They won’t tell you we spent 7000 last week on
paint, 2000 on transportation, 60000 on coffins (6000 per coffin), 5000
for transport (from town to Kugbo twice) and 4500 to deliver the coffins
to Moro’s place, 7000 on two buckets of paint (oil and emulsion) or
that we took our lunch hour and sacrificed personal time to make this
happen.
They also won’t tell you that we aren’t
doing this just for those who died or got injured. Only the protesters
can tell you why we did this, and why we won’t stop until we get
justice…
We are doing this because on 15th of
March it wasn’t us but on the next recruitment excercise, it could be
any one of us. We are doing this because we want to live in a just and
equitable society and we can’t achieve that until government stops
rewarding the greedy and incompetent. We are protesting to remind you
that 17 people died because of the greed of a few. And we should all
stand up until justice is served.
Opinion was written by Azeenarh Mohammed. Follow this writer on Twitter: @xeenarh
Culled from theScoopng
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