By Omoh Giwa
Do you remember that story in the old English reader about the man whose sons could not stop fighting one another? The one where he gave them individual broomsticks to break and they snapped them easily but when he handed them a bundle tied together, their strength failed them? That fable, simple, moralistic and perhaps overused, has never felt more prophetic than during those feverish days of the EndSARS protests. It explained perfectly how I felt when I saw Nigerian youths banding together, united by pain, outrage and a faint glimmer of hope. For once, the children of disillusionment stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to speak truth to power, not through the usual whining on social media or angry tweets but through coordinated, peaceful resistance.
What thrilled me most was not just the act of protest itself, but how organic it was. It wasn’t a rented crowd. It wasn’t the handiwork of the usual political jobbers who wear “activist” like a season’s fashion. No political party claimed ownership; no godfather sponsored it for clout or convenience. It was as though the youths had finally realised that their future could no longer be outsourced to politicians or negotiated through hashtags.
Before this, I used to sit before the television, listening to impromptu analysts, men in ill-fitting suits and women with carefully arranged indignation, discuss the state of the nation. Their analyses were usually so hollow that even silence would have been more insightful. If they weren’t rationalising why a government needed to borrow yet again to build another white elephant project, they were explaining away hunger as “temporary market adjustment”. Some even found philosophical justification for the price of garri and petrol rising in the same breath. Every time I watched them, I felt like hurling the remote control through the screen.
So you can imagine my joy when I began to hear whispers, then roars of protest. The streets of Twitter, Instagram and TikTok became classrooms of political education. The same people who once posted dance videos and cooking tutorials were dissecting and interrogating the constitution and budget allocations. It was beautiful. For once, the young were not waiting for elders to speak on their behalf. They were done waiting. They had seen enough police brutality, enough government deceit, enough suffering disguised as patience.
Although the movement began with the call to end the notorious police unit, SARS, it quickly evolved into something much larger. It became a call for dignity. For good governance. For accountability. It was as though Nigerians suddenly discovered that they had been living in chains for so long that freedom felt like a rebellion. They wanted change, not the type written on campaign posters, but real, tangible reform that could be seen, touched, and felt in the price of rice, in the safety of their sons, in the dignity of their daughters.
Then came the familiar question, like a script from an old colonial play: “Who are your leaders?” The government of the day wanted a face to target, a name to summon, an individual to corrupt or imprison. When the protesters replied, “We have no leader; we all speak with one voice”, the system panicked. Authority does not understand unity without hierarchy. It mocked them, called them “a bunch of unserious children”, “nuisances” and “miscreants”. Some officials even lectured them on “the proper way to protest”, as though somewhere in the dusty archives of Abuja lies a manual titled “Etiquette for Civil Disobedience: A Step-by-Step Guide”.
But the young people held firm. They cleaned up protest grounds, fed one another, sang the national anthem, and prayed (Christians, Muslims, atheists) side by side. It was the Nigeria of our dreams, however fleeting. Then, as though on cue, the thugs arrived, imported chaos, busloads of violence. The videos flooded the internet: machete-wielding men (If you do not know this script, then I do not know what to tell you ) attacking peaceful demonstrators. Yet the youth stood their ground. They said, “We are the walking dead; what more can you do to us?”
Soon after, whispers turned into dread: the military might be called in. Most people dismissed it as a rumour. After all, this was the same government that came into power chanting “Change”. They had promised to end corruption, to respect life and liberty, to restore hope. But “change”, we later learned, was a Trojan horse, beautifully painted, hollow inside. The promise that once sounded like a symphony of salvation turned out to be the dirge of democracy.
When the shooting happened at Lekki Toll Gate, disbelief became our national anthem. Young people waving the flag and singing the anthem were met with bullets. The government denied it, of course. Denial is our state religion. The army swore they were never there, that no bullet was fired, that no blood was spilt. Even at the judicial panel, truth was dragged through the mud, beaten into submission, and then declared “inconclusive”. They demanded that protesters produce bodies as proof. The irony was almost Shakespearean. How could a nation that cannot guarantee uninterrupted electricity suddenly develop such an appetite for evidence of death? Even Charles Dickens, master of tragic absurdities, would have paused to applaud the irony.
Many have since said, “Let it go. It’s water under the bridge”. But how can we let go when the river still runs red? The ghosts of the departed do not rest when the living pretend they never existed. Every October, their memory returns to remind us that our democracy remains on crutches.
I confess, I once thought the EndSARS protest would birth a new Nigeria. I genuinely believed the tide had turned, that the children of silence had found their voices at last. For a brief moment, it felt like redemption was possible. But then, as the dust settled and fear returned, I began to understand my parents’ generation. I had once called them cowards, mocked them for swallowing every government lie with the patience of monks. But now I see it differently. They were not swallowing bitterness with lime and honey out of cowardice; they were surviving. The lime, I now realise, was to remind them of defeat’s sourness, while the honey was to help them endure it with a smile.
And so, we too have become our parents, learning to navigate oppression with sarcasm and memes. We joke about inflation and bad governance because crying would flood the streets. We dance to songs of suffering because stillness feels like surrender. We tweet about revolution but queue for palliatives.
Still, I hope, perhaps foolishly, that the next generation will be kinder to ours. That when they tell our story, they will not remember only our failures but also our flickers of courage. That they will say we tried, even if we failed. That they will look back on the days of EndSARS and see, not defeat, but defiance. For those few weeks, Nigeria was alive. The broomsticks had become a bundle again, unbreakable and proud.
And though the bundle was later scattered by bullets and elections, its memory endures. Somewhere in the heart of every young Nigerian lies the echo of those chants, the dream of a nation that could have been, and perhaps, one day, will be again.
Omoh Giwa writes from the Department of English, University of Lagos
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