The Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, said on Sunday that he was a victim of police brutality as a governor while seeking re-election in 2014.
Fayemi, who said the EndSARS protests by the youth were a noble cause, added that there was the need for the governments to partner the youth for sustainable peace.
This was as the Minister of Trade, Chief Adeniyi Adebayo, assured Nigerians that the President, Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), would implement the youth’s demands.
Fayemi and Adeniyi spoke in Ado Ekiti during an interaction session with stakeholders’ on the EndSARS protest.
The governor said, “I am a victim of police brutality myself”. You can all recall what happened to me during my election of 2014. However, some policemen had also rendered good services to me; so, not all of them are bad. Our police must be motivated to do well.
Fayemi, who said the youths were angry over sundry issues, said the government had however done many intervention programmes, proscribed SARS and introduced youth investment fund and many others as a response to youths’ agitations.
“I commiserate with the families of those who paid the supreme price. The panels that we set up will look will into how best to address the issues raised, because EndSARS protest had placed a moral burden on all of us,” he said.
Adebayo, who said that Buhari wanted to use the interaction to feel the pulse of Nigerians, advised the younger ones to apply for youth oriented programmes being rolled out by the Federal Government.
The Assistant Inspector General of Police, Zone 17, comprising Ondo and Ekiti states, Mr David Folawiyo, said the EndSARS protests had exhumed fundamental issues indicative of the rots in the system. The Chairman, National Youth Council of Nigeria, Mr Eyitayo Fabunmi, called for total reform of the police “so that they can be more professional and civil in the discharge of their duties.”
Participants were drawn from civil society groups, non-governmental organisations, National Union of Road Transport Workers, youth representatives, and Christian Association of Nigeria, among others to brainstorm on the way forward after the #EndSARS protests.
Reading the communique, the Chairman of the forum, Mr Emmanuel Enebeli called for the overhaul of the nation’s security architecture,.
He said, “Stakeholders also resolved that police personnel should return to their duty of protecting live and property. We still need the police in our roads, now hoodlums have taken over the roads”.
It is wrong for the government to launch a fresh onslaught against #EndSARS protesters, campaigners and those who provided survival package to the protesters; freezing their accounts and scapegoating others who are being secretly harassed while placating Nigerians with judicial panels of inquiries.”
In a related development, the team instituted by the Inspector General of Police to assess the losses suffered by the police the violence that accompanied the hijact of the #EndSARS protest has visited facilities attacked in Osun State.
A statement by the state Police Public Relations Officer, Yemisi Opalola, on Sunday said the CP Abutu Yaro-led team visited police facilities attacked in Osogbo, Ilesa and Ile Ife, as well as victims of the attack.
