Ejiro leaned against the floor-to-ceiling glass of her Lekki Phase 1 apartment, watching Lagos stretch beneath her like a sprawling, chaotic quilt. Her phone vibrated relentlessly with Twitter notifications, the blue light casting harsh shadows across her face. The neon glow of her screen flickered against her dark skin, illuminating the fury in her almond-shaped eyes and the tight set of her full lips.
It was happening again.
Her timeline flooded with shaky videos and desperate pleas. Another young man was brutalized by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), another life altered because a group of armed men in black uniforms had deemed him “too fresh” to be innocent. The familiar hashtags resurfaced like old wounds reopened: #EndSARS, #EndPoliceBrutality, #NotAgain.
She clenched her jaw, remembering how many times she’d seen this same story play out. Different faces, different locations, same brutality. Same silence from those in power.
But this time, it had hit home.
Her brother, Efetobore—Efe, the baby of their family with his infectious laugh and dreams too big for Lagos to contain—had been dragged from his white Range Rover Evoque and shoved against the dusty, dented side of a police truck. His university ID card meant nothing. His explanations fell on deaf ears. They called him a “Yahoo Boy” because of his ripped jeans and designer sneakers, because he dared to look successful at twenty-three. They had slapped him, taken his phone, and demanded a transfer of ₦500,000. He had refused—stubborn like their late father. A gun had been cocked. A baton had been raised. It was the intervention of a market woman—a fearless, loud-mouthed mother of five with graying hair and hands weathered from decades of labor—that had stopped them from stuffing him into the van.
Ejiro’s fingers trembled as she composed her tweet, her anger sharp as a machete cutting through grass:
“How many more? How many more of our brothers must die before Nigeria listens? We are tired. #EndSARS NOW.”
For years, she had built her reputation as a political activist on Twitter, amassing followers who respected her sharp analyses, her ruthless clapbacks to corrupt politicians, her refusal to cower in the face of death threats that slid into her DMs like unwelcome guests. She’d been called troublemaker, agitator, and worse. The Shell Corporation, where she worked as a senior environmental analyst, had warned her about her “online activities” more than once. None of that had deterred her, nor would it tonight.
Tonight, her activism wasn’t just digital. Her fight wasn’t just for faceless names in the statistics. It was for Efe, who had come home with a split lip and eyes haunted by what might have been.
And she was ready to burn the whole damn system down.
She pressed send. The tweet exploded within minutes, multiplying like cancerous cells. Retweets. Quote tweets. Comments flooded in with similar stories of abuse.
My brother. Ikoyi. Last week. They took everything.
Happened to me in Surulere. Still have nightmares.
They killed my cousin in 2018. No investigation. Nothing.
Other Twitter activists with blue ticks and large followings chipped in. Journalists. Celebrities. Everyday Nigerians tired of living in fear. #EndSARS trended at number one within the hour, pushing past celebrity gossip and football scores.
The streets of Lagos buzzed with unrest. What had started as whispers of rebellion turned into a tidal wave of resistance. From Surulere to Ikeja, from Abuja to Port Harcourt, the youth stormed the streets, fists raised, placards lifted. They were Generation Z, the ones supposedly too absorbed in TikTok and Instagram to care. But they cared. Oh, they cared with a ferocity that shook the foundations of power.
At the Lekki Toll Gate, a new era of defiance was born.
Three days after her tweet, Ejiro stood amidst the swelling crowd at Lekki Toll Gate, her voice hoarse from chanting. She had traded her corporate Shell blouses for a simple black T-shirt with “SORO SOKE WEREY” emblazoned across the front, her high heels for sneakers dusted in the red earth of struggle. Her braids were pulled back into a tight ponytail, revealing the sharp angles of her face—a face that had appeared on NTA News the previous night, labeled as one of the “masterminds behind the unrest.”
Lekki Toll Gate burned with defiance. An uprising written in chants, drums, and the steady hum of outrage. A sea of young people stretched beyond what the eye could see, their placards raised high, their fists clenched in unity. Some wore masks—both for COVID and to hide their identities from government cameras. The air vibrated with energy, with possibility, with the kind of hope that comes from collective anger channeled into purpose.
The night air vibrated with voices chanting in unison, fists raised, placards cutting through the humid air. End SARS now! No justice, no peace! The people stood shoulder to shoulder, a sea of young Nigerians—tired, angry, and fearless despite knowing the risks they took by being there.
A group of drummers beat against metal barricades, their rhythm sharp, insistent, warlike. The beats called back to something ancestral, something that lived in the blood of rebellion. Street vendors moved through the crowd, passing out pure water sachets to parched throats, feeding the movement with roasted corn and gala. Someone had climbed onto a makeshift stage fashioned from wooden pallets, leading a chorus of the national anthem, voices raw, unpolished, yet heavy with something sacred.
Arise, O compatriots, Nigeria’s call obey…
The words, once recited mechanically in school assemblies, now carried the weight of true patriotism—not the blind nationalism the government demanded, but the fierce love of country that demands better from those in power.
Ejiro stood at the heart of it all, phone gripped tightly in her hand, livestreaming to her ninety thousand followers, her pulse beating with the rhythm of the revolution. Her commentary was rapid-fire, switching between English, Pidgin, and Yoruba, though her native tongue, Urhobo, surfaced when emotion overtook her.
“See as dem dey gather. See! The youths are awake! The sleeping giant don wake!”
She was more than an observer. More than just another body in the crowd.
She was the movement.
The scent of roasted corn mingled with the acrid smell of burning tires and the sweet floral notes of perfume worn by protesters who had come straight from offices or university classes. The Lagos skyline loomed behind them, neon lights flickering in silent witness to history. Buildings named after colonial masters and corrupt politicians now watched young Nigerians demand a future unburdened by systemic oppression.
She felt the power, the unshakable belief that this—this moment—was bigger than all of them. This was Nigeria’s Arab Spring. This was their own revolution, written not in the language of the colonizers or the elite, but in the raw, authentic voice of young Nigerians demanding to be heard.
Then, she saw him.
He stood a few feet away, his tall frame draped in a crisp white kaftan that seemed to glow under the streetlights, his face partly obscured by a black cap pulled low over his eyes. But his aura? Undeniable. The kind of presence that demanded attention without a single word. Even in a crowd this dense, people unconsciously created space around him. She recognized him instantly.
Tunde Alade, billionaire entrepreneur. CEO of AladeTech, the company whose financial apps had revolutionized banking for millions of unbanked Nigerians. The man whose face graced Forbes Africa and whose name was whispered in tech circles from Silicon Valley to Yaba.
And a man who, despite his wealth, had not been spared from SARS brutality.
The rumors had been everywhere. The video had trended for days. How he had been stopped on his way from a meeting, dragged out of his Mercedes G-Wagon, his designer wristwatch snatched from his hand while an officer sneered, “You dey form big man abi? We go waste you here now, and nothing go happen.” He had been forced to kneel on the road, gravel biting into his knees, until a friend with connections in the police force pulled strings to get him released. The officers involved were supposedly “disciplined,” but everyone knew what that meant in Nigeria: a transfer to another unit, maybe a slap on the wrist.
Now, he stood here, among the people. Among the angry, the hurt, the broken. Not behind tinted windows or in air-conditioned offices, but in the thick of it, sweat beading on his forehead just like everyone else.
Their eyes met across the crowd, and Ejiro felt something electric pass between them. Recognition. Understanding. A shared fury.
He moved toward her with deliberate steps, the crowd parting like the Red Sea. When he reached her, he didn’t extend a hand or offer a greeting. Instead, he simply stood beside her, his eyes scanning the massive gathering.
“Ejiro.” His voice was deep, laced with something she couldn’t quite place—respect? Amusement? Recognition? The way he said her name, emphasizing the middle syllable correctly, sent an unexpected shiver down her spine.
She lifted a brow, feigning nonchalance despite the flutter in her chest. “You know me?”
A slow, knowing smile touched his lips, revealing a dimple in his left cheek. “Your tweets have more impact than most politicians’ policies. You shake tables for a living.”
Ejiro smirked, remembering the phrase from Nigerian Twitter. Table-shaker. Disruptor. Truth-teller. “Someone has to. The government’s been too comfortable for too long.”
He nodded, stepping closer until his shoulder nearly touched hers. The scent of his cologne—something expensive but subtle—mingled with the earthier smells of the protest. “I watched what happened to your brother. That was some madness.”
She inhaled sharply. The memory of Efe, bruised and shaken, still clung to her skin like a fresh wound. “They could’ve killed him. Over nothing.” Her voice cracked slightly, betraying the emotion she fought to keep contained.
“They could’ve killed all of us,” Tunde said, his voice grim, gesturing to the crowd around them. “They tried to kill me too. Stopped me on my way from a board meeting, dragged me out of my car, called me a fraudster.” He touched his wrist absentmindedly, where his watch had been forcibly removed.
Ejiro’s jaw clenched, righteous anger flaring. “Because you dared to be successful?”
“Because I dared to look like success in my own country.” His eyes darkened with something old, something bitter. “A black man in a luxury car is immediately suspicious. A young boy with an iPhone must be a criminal. This is the Nigeria we’ve inherited.”
The words sent a chill down Ejiro’s spine. How many times had she read that same phrase in countless stories, seen it play out in grainy phone footage of young men begging for their lives? How many times had successful Nigerians been punished for their success by the very institutions meant to protect them?
“But something is happening now,” she said fiercely, gesturing to the thousands gathered around them, their voices rising in unified chants. “They can’t silence us anymore. Not with all these eyes watching.” She pointed to her phone, still livestreaming, the viewer count climbing past twenty thousand.
Tunde studied her, his gaze intense, as though seeing past her fiery exterior to something deeper. “You really believe that? That this time is different?”
She nodded without hesitation. “With everything in me.” She looked around at the diverse crowd—Christians, Muslims, people from different ethnic groups that politicians had spent decades trying to turn against each other, now standing as one. “Look at us. United. Fearless. They’ve tried to divide us for so long, but this—” she gestured around them, “—this is the real Nigeria.”
For a moment, the noise of the protest faded around them, drowned out by the crackling energy that hummed between them. Two strangers connected by a shared dream of a country that served its people rather than feeding off them.
He saw her fire.
She saw his steel.
Different elements forged in the same war.
“Then let’s make sure they never forget,” he said. There was something in his voice—a promise, a challenge, an invitation.
The next morning, the world woke up to a Nigeria that was bleeding.
The videos had gone viral. The protests had spread to London, New York, Ghana, South Africa—anywhere Nigerians gathered in the diaspora. CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera—they all carried footage of young Nigerians standing against police brutality. The international press had picked it up. Nigerian celebrities who had stayed silent now scrambled to align themselves with the movement. Politicians issued weak statements about “looking into the matter.”
The government scrambled for control, their usual tactics of dismissal and division failing against the united front presented by the youth.
Their response? A nationwide Twitter ban.
But it was too late. The revolution had already left their hands.
VPNs flourished overnight. Suddenly, grandmothers in their sixties were asking grandchildren how to install these digital escape routes. The resistance adapted. The movement grew, now angrier, now more determined.
And through it all, Ejiro and Tunde stood side by side—on the streets, in strategy meetings held in safe houses, in the places where battle lines were drawn and the people refused to be silenced.
What had begun as a chance meeting at Lekki Toll Gate blossomed into something neither of them had expected. Tunde provided resources—his money opening doors that had been firmly shut to ordinary protesters. Ejiro provided the voice, the connections to grassroots organizations, the authentic rage that resonated with everyday Nigerians.
Between planning sessions and protests, they discovered each other. She learned that beneath his billionaire façade was a boy from Mushin who had clawed his way out of poverty through sheer brilliance and stubborn determination. He learned that behind her fierce tweets was a woman who stayed up nights worrying about her country, who cried when no one was watching, who carried the weight of her people’s pain on shoulders that sometimes threatened to buckle.
And in those moments, they found something.
A love forged in fire.
A movement too powerful to kill.
The protests grew, stretching into days, weeks. The government squirmed under the weight of international attention. Nigerian diaspora sent funds. Anonymous hackers targeted government websites. The movement had become a monster they could no longer control.
And so, they did what cowards do best. They tried to silence it.
On the night of October 20th, under the cover of darkness, the Nigerian military moved in.
The air at Lekki Toll Gate was thick with the smell of sweat, of hope, of defiance. Ejiro stood on a platform, her voice carrying over the crowd as she led them in another round of chants. Tunde stood slightly behind her, his eyes constantly scanning for threats, for agitators, for anything that might disrupt the peaceful protest they had maintained for days.
The sun had set hours ago, but the toll gate blazed with light from phone torches, from makeshift lamps, from the headlights of cars parked in solidarity. Protesters sang the national anthem, holding their flags high as though the blood-soaked green-and-white fabric could protect them.
Then, without warning, the streetlights went out.
A murmur of unease rippled through the crowd. Ejiro felt a chill race down her spine. She reached for her phone, tweeting rapidly:
“They’ve cut the lights at Lekki Toll Gate. Something’s happening. Stay alert. #EndSARS”
Tunde moved closer to her, his body tense. “We should think about moving some of the people out,” he whispered, his breath warm against her ear. “I don’t like this.”
Before she could respond, she saw them: dark figures moving in formation. Military, not police. The glint of metal under the moon.
Then the gunfire started.
Ejiro dropped to the ground as bullets tore through the crowd. The screams of her people filled the night, replacing songs of hope with wails of terror. She saw bodies fall. Heard the cries for help.
Blood on the Nigerian flag.
Blood on the asphalt.
Blood everywhere.
Her hands shook as she fumbled with her phone, going live on Instagram, on Twitter, on everything she could.
“They’re shooting at us. The Nigerian Army is killing unarmed protesters. We are dying. Lekki Toll Gate is a bloodbath. The world needs to see this!”
Her voice cracked, but she kept filming. Kept exposing. Kept bearing witness even as her heart threatened to explode from her chest with fear.
She turned, searching for Tunde—only to find him several meters away, shielding a young boy behind his massive frame. The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen, his school uniform still on from earlier in the day. A bullet whizzed past them, shattering the windshield of a nearby car. Tunde ducked, spotted Ejiro, and made a dash for her, grabbing her hand.
“We need to run,” he said, his voice urgent, eyes wild with a fear she’d never seen in him before.
“But the people—” she protested, looking back at the chaos, at protesters trying to help the wounded.
“We’ll fight another day,” he insisted, pulling her toward a side street. “We can’t fight if we’re dead.”
He pulled her through the chaos, through the bodies, through the blood. They ran until their lungs burned, until the sounds of gunfire faded to a distant nightmare. When they finally stopped, breathless and shaken, in the shadow of an abandoned building, she collapsed against him, her body wracked with sobs.
“They’re killing us,” she gasped between breaths. “They’re actually killing us.”
Tunde held her tightly, his heartbeat thundering against her ear. “I know,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “I know.”
For a moment, they just stood there, clinging to each other like survivors of a shipwreck, finding solace in the simple fact of being alive when others weren’t.
“We can’t stop,” she whispered against his chest, her fingers clutching the now-dirty white fabric of his kaftan. “We can’t let them win. Not after this. Not after what they’ve done.”
Tunde cupped her face, his thumb brushing away a stray tear. His own eyes glistened with unshed tears, with fury, with determination. “They won’t. Not while you’re still fighting. Not while we’re still fighting.”
He pressed his forehead against hers, their breath mingling in the small space between them. “This isn’t over. This is just the beginning.”
And just like that, a partnership was born—not just of rebellion, but of something deeper. A meeting of minds, of hearts, of two souls who refused to bow in the face of injustice. A love story written in protest chants and policy demands, in shared dreams of a Nigeria that respected the lives and dignity of all its citizens.
As dawn broke over a bleeding Lagos, Ejiro and Tunde walked hand in hand toward an uncertain future. But one thing was certain: their voices, like the echoes of a broken nation, would continue to resound.