The Shepherd Superintendent of the Household of God Eklesssia, Rev Chris Okotie has said the #endSARS protest has no political, tribal, or religious motivation urging President Mohammadu Buhari to treat the request of the young people with a fatherly heart.
Rev. Okotie gave the position in a statement made available to Church Times on October 21.
He said to put a political colouration on the protest is to “submit to jejune partisan stimuli emanating from a reprehensible perennial insensitivity”
What is happening now according to him “is neither political, religious, ethnic nor even – terrestrial. Rather, it devolves from the Creator who endowed man as a free moral agent. He, therefore, arrogates to himself the title of emancipator in his quest to dismantle any mechanism of oppression or suppression of the human will. It is an extra-terrestrial phenomenon. It is a divine intervention to resuscitate the moribund kindred spirit of the Nigerian brotherhood.”
Quoting Chairman Mao he said, “if the people no longer fear your power, it is because another power is on its way explaining that the statement is true within the present Nigerian context.”
Okotie explained that the “word protest comes from the Latin word “prostestari” meaning to bear witness in public. “Such is the propensity of the current youth imbroglio. It is not directed against any political party. It is an altercation with the status quo; it is a vitilitigation against decades of leadership ineptitude and mediocrity.
“And now they have gone public. They bear witness now to the political imbalances and economic disequilibrium that have characterized the chequered pavement of our walk towards nationhood. They bear witness to the stratification of the Nigerian society that allows the circumstabience of corruption by osmosis.”
The protest in his words, “bears witness to a system that has elevated corruption to an institution of byzantine complexity. It bears witness to a system that has jettisoned their dreams and aspirations into the catacombs of oblivion.
While noting that the people “have risen against the forces of dissatisfaction, disillusionment and despondency from taking their souls in captive hopelessness, he said, “these young people are not rebellious dissidents. Rather they are emissaries of posterity. Galvanized by the indomitable spirit of the Nigerian psyche and the relentless cry of posterity, they have become veritable instruments in the hands of destiny to chart a realistic path for the Nigerian renaissance.”
Nigeria according to him is about to be reborn. “For indeed, change derives from a vertical impetus that translates into a horizontal movement or exodus. When the season comes the agitation becomes ubiquitous. And when the time comes the mandate becomes imperative.
“Untrained in the art of mob opposition, bereft of military discipline and partisan – fanaticism, they march on with their lungs filled with the breath of patriotic desire and their lips pregnant with nationalistic fire, hoping for a better tomorrow. They shun ethnicity, religion, the polarization of class distinction, and geopolitical sentiments.
“And as brothers and sisters in peaceful arms, they march towards the great goal of an emerging nation. They march as an unconscripted army bound by the commonality of being joint-heirs of our national patrimony.”
He enjoined President Buhari “to please be a father now and not a commander-in-chief and treat this matter with conciliatory disposition; let compassion mitigate the sterner resolutions of your political oversight.
“Your paternal superintendence must now over-ride every other consideration and engender a peaceful rapprochement. Please listen to the Nigerian Youth, no matter how discordant their voices may be.
“Let the heart of a father translate the pathos in their desperate exclamations and compel you to reassure them of your paternal commitment to securing them a great future.”