by Azeenarh Mohammed
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 to intimate, 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 and immigration 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 where above capacity, they won’t tell you that he insisted on awarding this contract to Drexel Technologies LTD, a company that hasn’t filled returns since 1994, a company that benefited at least N693,000,000 from this exercise, a company 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 organsing 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.
The 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 N1,000, J.O. donated N12,000 and a further N30,000. They won’t tell you that M.Y. donated N10,000, F.H. donated N5,500, K.A, M.A donated donated N1,000, Q.A. donated N1,000, S.A. donated N1,000, A.M. donated N10,000, A.S. donated N3,000, D.O. donated N1,000, S.B. donated N1,000, J.A. N1,000 and we are still raising money for next week’s protest.
They won’t tell you we spent N7,000 last week on paint, N2,000 on transportation, N60,000 on coffins (N6,000 per coffin), N5,000 for transport (from town to Kugbo twice) and N4,500 to deliver the coffins to Moro’s place, N7,000 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 exercise, 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.
Azeenarh Mohammed first published this piece on her blog, Azeenarh. She tweets from @xeenarh.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
