By Ameh Ejekwonyilo
Ahead of the second phase of #EndSARS protests across the country scheduled for December 7, 2020, a civil society organisation, New Inittitive For Credible Leadership (NICREL), has cried out, alleging that the protest is aimed at discrediting the government of President Mohammadu Buhari.
NICREL, at a press briefing in Abuja, over the weekend called on youth in the country to refuse being used as agents of destabilization.
According to Reverend Steven Onwu, Executive Secretary of NICREL, the sponsors of #EndSARS protest have unleashed a wave of negative propaganda against Nigeria and have backed this up with an intensive campaign of fake news directed against the Military.
Reverend Onwu described the sponsors of the #EndSARS as unpatriotic and said they misrepresented government response to the protest and alao deny the positive interventions of government and the programmes that have been implemented and being implemented to make things better for Nigerians.
NICREL said, ”The damage done to the country in the course of these protests remain unquantifiable as we wake up each new day to learn new facts about the extent of hardship that the #EndSARS protests have visited on Nigerians.
“What we find tragic is that the damage is still being done. The sponsors of #EndSARS have unleashed a wave of negative propaganda against Nigeria and have backed this up with an intensive campaign of fake news directed against the Military.
”These lies, distortions and misinformation have now been packaged and presented to Nigerians and the world as if they were the authentic accounts of the situation in our dear country. International news organizations have been mobilized and commissioned to push these false renditions of events that are now being framed to present President Buhari in bad light.
”What we have been able to gather is that the campaign of fake news and negative propaganda is intended to create the basis for western countries to impose crippling sanctions on Nigeria such that the resulting hardship will force Nigerians to rise up against the government and sack it from office. The implication is that those that are behind this plot are not interested in changing the government through election, but they rather want to precipitate chaos across the country so that they will use protesters to demand for an interim government.
”These sponsors are now announcing new dates for #EndSARS protesters to go back on the streets, which makes it necessary to alert Nigerians that should they join such protest they would not be joining the efforts to reform the police but would instead be joining an anarchist movement that is fixated on power grab. They would have fallen for a professionally coordinated false flag operation that targeted the entire population with manipulative contents”.
The group urged Nigerians to wake up to the reality that the government and the army exist to serve and protect the collective interest and that at no time will these critical institutions shirk their responsibility simply because some narrow-minded persons have decided to blackmail well-meaning Nigerians.
