They Came to Mourn. The Police Brought Tear Gas.

Today marks six years since EndSARS, and I still remember what Nigeria felt like around that time. You could be stopped simply because you were a young man with dreadlocks, braided hair, a good phone or a decent car. Looking young and doing well had somehow become enough reason for the police to treat you like a criminal. Young people were being harassed, extorted and detained. Some were tortured. Some did not come home. What exactly was our offence? Was it now abnormal to be young in Nigeria and still want something good for your life?

Young Nigerians eventually decided that this was not okay. What began as anger online became one of the most coordinated protests I had ever seen in this country. The people funded it themselves. There were legal teams helping those who had been arrested, medical teams treating the injured and volunteers providing food and water. Young people gathered in Lagos, Abuja and across different states. They sang, danced and walked together. They wanted the government to hear them.

It was a beautiful thing to see, especially in a country where we are constantly told that young people are unserious and divided. During EndSARS, Nigerians who had never met began looking after one another. People did not wait for a politician to organise them or for the government to provide anything. They saw a problem, gathered their resources and responded. For once, it felt as though we understood that another person’s safety was also our responsibility.

Then came the evening of 20 October 2020. I was not at the Lekki Toll Gate, so I will not write as though I witnessed it physically. I watched the livestreams like many other Nigerians did. I remember the confusion. I remember hearing gunfire and watching people trying to help one another. I remember DJ Switch filming from the ground as the situation became more frightening. I broke down that evening because it hurt me deeply. These were young people who had not attacked the government. They went there because they believed that their voices should count.

There are still disagreements about exactly how many people died at Lekki that night. The Lagos Judicial Panel concluded that soldiers fired live ammunition, that protesters were shot, injured and killed, and that what happened amounted to a “massacre in context”. The Lagos State Government rejected the panel’s conclusion about nine deaths and said the evidence did not establish that a massacre had taken place. Amnesty International separately reported that security forces killed at least 12 people at Lekki and Alausa.

I have read the panel’s report and the government’s response. I know the figures remain disputed. But what is not disputed is that soldiers were deployed, shots were fired and people were injured. Hospitals treated victims. The panel recommended disciplinary action, prosecution, compensation and police reform. Lagos State later paid ₦410.2 million to 70 victims of police brutality, and payments were also made in other states.

What Nigerians still cannot see is a clear trail from those recommendations to the people responsible. Who gave the orders? Who carried them out? Who was investigated? Who was prosecuted? Six years is enough time for the government to provide proper answers.

The story of Pelumi Onifade is one reason we cannot simply move on. Pelumi was a 20-year-old journalist covering events connected to the protests when officers attached to the Lagos State Task Force took him away on 24 October 2020. His family spent almost six years trying to establish what had happened to him. In June this year, DNA testing confirmed that an unidentified body labelled number 1385 was Pelumi. An autopsy later showed that he died after being shot in the abdomen.

Think about his mother searching for him while his body was already inside the same government system that should have helped her. It took court orders, a coroner’s inquest and almost six years before the records finally gave the family an answer. Pelumi’s mother should not have needed to fight that long to learn what the state already had the means to establish.

Perhaps what frightens me most is how easy it has become for us to hear that someone has died and continue with our day. There have been so many killings, kidnappings and attacks across Nigeria that death now arrives as another headline. We complain for a few hours, perhaps trend a hashtag, and then another tragedy takes its place. I sometimes wonder whether 20 October 2020 was one of the moments when something changed in us. If young people could be treated that way while the country watched, what exactly were we expected to feel afterwards?

Nigeria celebrated another Independence Day only a few weeks ago, but many Nigerians still do not feel safe in their own country. People are kidnapped on roads and taken from their communities. Families sell property and borrow money to pay ransom. Young people remain afraid of the police officers who should protect them. We call ourselves a nation, but what kind of nation leaves its citizens to negotiate for their own safety?

This morning, people returned to Lekki to remember. Enough is Enough Nigeria had organised a small memorial. Activists, journalists, residents and a few political figures came with wreaths. Before they could lay them, police officers fired tear gas and dispersed the gathering. People ran, including the journalists who were there to report what was happening.

I watched the footage and thought, this is exactly why the memory of EndSARS must not die. Six years ago, young Nigerians protested because the police responded to citizens with intimidation and force. Today, Nigerians went back to remember, and the response was still intimidation and force. If even a wreath is treated like a threat, then we have not learnt enough from what happened.

Many young Nigerians are tired. Some have left the country, some are still trying to leave, and others have withdrawn into their own lives because caring about Nigeria has become exhausting. I understand it. Nigeria can make caring about Nigeria feel like self-punishment. But a country cannot be allowed to exhaust its citizens into silence. If every abuse is eventually buried beneath the next crisis, those responsible learn that all they have to do is wait.

The spirit of EndSARS must remain alive, not because we want another tragedy and not because anyone should put their life carelessly in danger. It must remain alive in our refusal to accept abuse as normal. We must keep asking what became of the judicial panels’ recommendations. We must demand the records of investigations and prosecutions. We must support victims still pursuing their cases, document abuse when it happens and stop defending wrongdoing because we like the government in power.

As the 2027 elections approach, anyone asking young Nigerians for votes should be made to answer for police accountability. “Youth empowerment” is not enough. Another committee is not enough. We need to know what will happen when a police officer abuses the authority of the state and whether the law will protect the citizen or protect the uniform.

They stopped the people at Lekki from laying those wreaths today. They cannot stop us from remembering why the wreaths were brought.

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They Came to Mourn. The Police Brought Tear Gas.

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