Public Properties, Our Treasures

ENDSARS has become a new vocabulary that is introduced in our time and age. It started as an end to police brutality and later took on the meaning of end to brutality, end to unprofessionalism, end to corruption, end to bad governance. It also means freedom from oppression. It means an end to anything that is bad.

It is worth saying that in Nigeria we are not in COVID 19 period, but in COVID19-ENDSARS period. The experience of COVID 19 and ENDSARS will continue to guide us onward. As COVID19 has revealed our weakness so also ENDSARS protest has revealed our weakness. ENDSARS protest has revealed many weaknesses, but this piece deals with our attitude and understanding of public Properties. 

We have problem with the ownership of public properties. We tend to believe that public properties belong to government. Citizens are the rightful owners of public properties, the government only hold it in trust for us. It is our right to have them and it is their responsibility to provide them. If we had seen them as our own, we would have not destroyed them.

The public properties we see around are the fruits of our parents' labour. Our parents agitated for those properties, they sacrificed for it. Our parents spent their time, their energy and financial resources to gain those properties for us. 

Circumstance has ordained it that we learn by experience. "Experience", they say, "is the best teacher." We have started to feel the pain of the loss of those properties destroyed. When our children resume school, they will miss the school shuttle buses; they will start asking for fare to go to school. You may ask me: Who will pay? I will tell you the answer is in the air. All those enterprises and facilities destroyed are the fruits of our labour, our sweat; it is our collective loss, both for citizens and for government.

ENDSARS protest has left for us a lot of lessons, lesson to protect the public properties, lesson that we are the true owners of public properties, lesson that they are fruits of our labours, lesson that they are for our good. Dear friends, let us learn to value public properties, let us learn to treasure them. Public properties are our treasures. However, it is also sure that we will definitely survive this period; it will be over.