#EndSARS Protests Legitimate – Bishop Oyedepo

• Cautions security personnel against harming campaigners

BY VICTOR OSOWOCHI – The Founder and Presiding Bishop of Living Faith Church Worldwide (aka Winners Chapel), Bishop David Oyedepo, says ongoing nationwide protests by the #EndSARS Campaigners are the legitimate rights of Nigerians who are suffering due to bad governance in the country.

Adding his voice to the growing number of well-meaning Nigerians backing the protesters that have been on the streets for about two weeks going, Bishop Oyedepo said they are justified because “Nigerians have been pushed to the wall.”

He said during one of the service sessions held at Canaan Land, Ota, Ogun state on Sunday that young people have the constitutional right to protest if things are not going well in the country because their future is seriously at stake.

The faith preacher however cautioned security personnel against deploying force to attack the campaigners who have remained largely peaceful in the protests while pushing their demands forward to government.

According to the outspoken Cleric, who has remained a strong voice against bad governance and poor leadership in Nigeria, “Every man has a right, legitimately so, to express their displeasure and pains.”

Bishop Oyedepo then went down memory lane saying; “I kept quiet for a while because in 2015, I warned this nation, vehemently, consistently, because I saw the dangers ahead and you can tell.

“The most gruesome season in the history of the nation is the last five years where lives have no value, wanton killings here and there.

“Now they have faced the youths and because they don’t know who is next, they have the right to say enough is enough.”

The Winners Chapel President, whose comments have been critical of what many described as the current administration’s seeming insensitivity to public yearnings for a better Nigeria as well as lack of security for lives and property in the country, said; “Any system that has no value for human lives is irrelevant.”

He therefore warned that: “It would be a sacrilege to shoot at the protesters who are not looting; who are not ravaging. When you push a goat to the wall then you will know that goats have teeth to bite.”

“It is a sacrilege to kill youths during a protest, this protest is legitimate”, the Bishop declared