#EndSARS protest is divine intervention to free the oppressed, says Okotie

Chris Okotie, senior pastor of the Household of God Church International Ministries, says the #EndSARS protest is a divine intervention to awaken the “moribund spirit of the Nigerian brotherhood”.

For about 14 days, protesters across the country demonstrated against police brutality and extra-judicial killings.

In a statement on Friday, Okotie said “the power that now approaches is neither political, religious, ethnic nor even – terrestrial”.

“Rather, it devolves from the Creator who endowed man as a free moral agent,” he said.

“The current youth agitation must be construed in this context. It is an extra-terrestrial phenomenon. It is a divine intervention to resuscitate the moribund kindred spirit of the Nigerian brotherhood.

“To aver that this movement is politically motivated is to submit to jejune partisan stimuli emanating from a reprehensible perennial insensitivity.

“It is not directed against any political party. It is an altercation with the status quo; it is a vitilitigation against decades of leadership ineptitude and mediocrity. And now they have gone public.

“They bear witness now to the political imbalances and economic disequilibrium that have characterized the chequered pavement of our walk towards nationhood.

“They bear witness to the stratification of the Nigerian society that allows the circumstabience of corruption by osmosis.

“They bear witness to a system that has elevated corruption to an institution of byzantine complexity.

“The bear witness to a system that has jettisoned their dreams and aspirations into the catacombs of oblivion. And now they rise against the forces of dissatisfaction, disillusionment and despondency from taking their souls in captive hopelessness.

“These young people are not rebellious dissidents. Rather they are emissaries of posterity. Galvanized by the indomitable spirit of the Nigerian psyche and the relentless cry of posterity, they have become veritable instruments in the hands of destiny to chart a realistic path for the Nigerian renaissance.

“Nigeria is about to be reborn. For indeed, change derives from a vertical impetus that translates into a horizontal movement or exodus.

“When the season comes the agitation becomes ubiquitous. And when the time comes the mandate becomes an imperative.

“Untrained in the art of mob opposition, bereft of military discipline and partisan – fanaticism, they march on with their lungs filled with the breath of patriotic desire and their lips pregnant with nationalistic fire, hoping for a better tomorrow. They shun ethnicity, religion, the polarization of class distinction and geo-political sentiments.

“And as brothers and sisters in peaceful arms they march towards the great goal of an emerging nation. They march as an unconscripted army bound by the commonality of being joint heirs of our national patrimony.

Okotie appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to be a “father now and not a commander-in-chief and treat this matter with conciliatory disposition”.