Nigeria: We sow the wind, we reap the whirlwind, By Fred Edoreh
It is compelling to condemn the recent looting and destruction across the country especially for the losses inflicted on innocent and struggling citizens. But I do not join those pontificating about the criminality. They do not have the moral grounds to. Besides, it is self delusory to leave leprosy to treat eczema.
Rather than beg the question, we must face its depth. The madness in October was a manifestation of the pains and anger in the land. It had been fermenting over the years. The expression of such anguish can never be predicted nor fully regulated. This is a social fact.
We had two clearly distinguishable segments of protesters. A fairly civilised section of the youth population staged a well organised peaceful agitation, mobilising transportation, foods, drinks, music and other logistics to occupy spaces in various cities across the nation to call attention to the sore state of the nation. They employed education and media technology to convey their messages. They articulated and communicated demands on police reforms to the FG. But #EndSARS was only a metaphor for their general anger.
They were there for long days without any incidents. It was a unity carnival. They conquered the primordial sentiments of ethnicity, religion and region that have divided and arrested our growth into nationhood. We couldn’t have asked for a better style from our youths.
Sadly, our governments was bereft of diplomatic intellect to deal with their sophistication and prolonged standoff. Lacking in the skills of social governance, they have always relied on deception, propaganda and brute force to engage issues. Part reason why they have been seeking legislations to gag the social media in order to frustrate free expression, communication and mobilisation among the people. But these don’t solve a thing. They only fester pains and postpone the day of rage.
They are more comfortable dealing with thugs in our political and social processes because they lack depth and can be used and condemned. But it’s always like riding the tiger’s tail. Our history of organised violence and criminality shows that they soon return for their own take. Trace this to the emergence of Boko Haram, militancy in various zones, Bakassi Boys, Benue’s Gana and Lagos Area Boys. They are all creations of government indiscretion and the social imbalance from prevalent economic injustice.
So, we saw how suspected agents of state systematically mobilised the “hoodlums” to help them dislodge the organised protesters. Once called in, this group redefined the protest in their own terms to unleash mayhem. But it is interesting to note that, looking away from the mobs of the jail breaks, arson and looting, it was the peaceful Lekki protesters that our military turned their guns on.
Government argued that it had responded to the protesters with the announcement of the dissolution of SARS and the President’s acceptance of their five point demands, therefore they ought to have vacated their civil action. Our leaders did not understand that there are etymological and consequential connections between trust and truth.
How, for instance, did the government want the protesters to trust the IGP’s announcement of the dissolution of SARS or transition to SWAT when the protesters have pointed out that same pronouncements had been made four times before but the police brutality and extortion only increased?
Also, the President may have been sincere in his response to the five-point demands but he fails to recognise that he has a deficit of trust with the people. They have not forgotten that he was once in the protest against deregulation of the downstream oil sector, giving the impression that he was against increase of fuel pump price but they saw that he raised the price even higher when he assumed power. He did not tell the people the truth of his agenda.
The same deception and propaganda was employed in their treatment of the Lekki shooting. It has been back and forth buck passing between various officers, institutions and tiers of government. No matter how suppressed, the people know that it was a planned and agreed action. They know that there is a strong connection between the shooting and the dismantling of lighting and other facilities that preceded the act.
It was a shame to see the army deny any involvement at first, then later admit that they were called in by the Lagos State government. Then they say they only used blank bullets or shot only in the air. It was equally a shame for the Lagos Governor to have denied any knowledge or involvement in the plan, pointing to a higher force beyond his control, then to later admit having contacted the army. He also denied that people died, then later submitted that only a couple of people died and a few injured.
Then, enter Detective FASH with the facade of a forensic expert, volunteering his enormous goodwill for a mockery of the situation.
Equally shameful was it that the Commander-in-Chief did not acknowledge the incident in his broadcast despite the outrage across the nation and the globe. Instead, he tells us that condoms were found at the protest grounds, an allusion from his characteristic disdain and blackmail of our youth population. It was as if the social tragedy which the shooting represents didn’t matter to him or that he was in the know and in approval of what happened, either before or immediately after.
Paid government spinners have tried to discredit the Lekki story by pointing us to exaggerations in the number of deaths but Nigerians are not fooled. They know that the issue is not about numbers but about the very act of our government unleashing our military to shoot at our own citizens on a peaceful protests with the national anthem in their mouths and the national flag in their hands.
The truth is that, for years, Nigerians have been living in frustration and escalating anger over deficits in virtually every sector of life, the ever increasing hardship they suffer, the blatant visibility of social injustice, inequity across the land and the unrelenting falsehoods in our governance. These were all etched in #EndSARS.
How can Nigerians be happy with an exchange rate of about N450 to the dollar or N600 to the pound and the devaluation of their country in global economic competitiveness? How can we have deposits of oil and gas with four refineries and still be importing petroleum products which drains in excess of N1 trillion annually from their national income and depletes investible revenue for growth? Yet, over decades, successive governments only sit in Abuja to announce increase in fuel from time to time. And they expect to be respected?
How can the youths be happy to see our debt profile rise again to almost N30 trillion, a few years after we were told we got debt forgiveness and were free? Today, over 25% of our national income goes for debt servicing and we are still borrowing for coming generations to remain in the debt net. Worse is that there is no tangible development to show for the debts. And we expect the youths who understand their future is being recklessly mortgaged to be at ease?
Families are groaning with the weight of providing education for their children. Why can’t we place premium on funding, even institute a students’ loan system, to guarantee the education of our future generations both from rich and poor families? Yet our leaders display the graduation photos of their children at overseas universities while our home universities remain ill-equipped or the students are oft back home with frequent ASUU strikes. Wasn’t it such a shame that not many schools had the capacity to run online lectures for their students during the lockdown?
They either did not have adequate facilities or their communities didn’t have the requisite infrastructure to provide the communication backbone.
Worse is that after families go through all the pains, the graduates return home to still depend on their parents because, over the decades, our leaders failed to apply our oil money to diversify our industrial and economic base to create a virile environment for jobs and employment generation.
In the absence of these, in truth, many of our youths have taken to the objectionable “Yahoo” sub-sector, doing either local, international or ritual killing. Others do drugs just to ease off. Many have taken the dangerous desert and Mediterranean routes to escape their country. A few succeeded, many died on the way or landed in slavery in Libya. Those behind at home are feeling choked by the challenges of daily survival. The COVID lockdown and encumbrances on daily hustling worsened the pains this year.
The recent release by the National Bureau of Statistics on our national balance of trade for manufactured goods gives no hope. In Q2 2020 Nigeria imported manufactured goods worth N2.78 trillion while the worth of our export of manufactured goods was a paltry N254.2 billion, giving a deficit of N2.52 trillion. This explains why there are no jobs. Forget the trash of TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni. Those don’t cut any flacks with what we are up against.
How can we be happy when travels within the country is hell due to very bad roads? In Lagos for instance, the neglect of the transportation system over the decades has created terrible traffic bottlenecks that going to and from work is a nightmare. Lagos ought to have had a huge network of internal rail transport system like other big cities across the world but we didn’t do that. We have left the population to constant daily stress. Some workers begin their journey to work by 4am and get back home by midnight or even later. Most annoying is the siren-blowing, security protected, bellicose government officials who push citizens off the road to get easy pass. And we expect the people to be normal?
The deficits and challenges of living in Nigeria are legion. Most excruciating is the ever rising prices of foodstuff. Add poor electricity supply, poor housing, poor health services, poor justice system, then the mental trauma from stories of marauding kidnappers and killer herdsmen. Then the fact that the police resort to brutalising citizens to force false confessions because they lack the technological equipments for scientific investigation. That is besides low morale from poor salaries, allowances and objectionable conditions of service.
In the midst of these the people hear that their National Assembly men collect about N25 million monthly for sitting in Abuja! They heard about the connivance by persons in government to perpetually defraud the nation of its oil revenue with the P&ID gas pipeline deal that is now a subject of dispute in the UK. That is after they heard about the Malabu OPL 254 fleece which succeeded the NLG/Halliburton scandal. Then the hanky-panky that trailed the Pension Fund fraud and the attempt at high quarters to restore the culprit to service through the back door. Then the allegation of a Secretary of government self appropriating funds meant for IDPs! Then the drama of the NDDC probe in which hundreds of billions of Naira meant for development was turned to a pantomime of “issokay, off your mic.”
Then they heard that monies meant for the purchase of weapons to fight Boko Haram were stashed away in septic, water tanks and farm houses of military service chiefs just as several billions were reportedly discovered in the village hut of an NNPC GMD while more dollars were found in an Ikoyi apartment of we still don’t know who. Some soldiers were said to have bolted away with about N600 million their GOC sent them to launder for him. Money meant for the improvement of our military. Even the anti-corruption Czar was cited for even more massive corruption. And you expect Nigerians to be cool and calm?
Talk about the recent looting of COVID-19 palliatives. People had said they didn’t see much of the palliatives. Many state governments shared the first batch along party lines. A community received just one carton of noodles and the one pack per household didn’t go round. Talk about deception.
Notwithstanding the criminality in the act of looting palliative warehouses, it remains that the people were looking for food, anywhere they could find food. One senator reportedly explained that kept back the palliatives waiting to share the them on his birthday. His birthday! Such impunity, such insult on the people is the recipe for the fire next time.
The privileged can say what they may but the fact remains: Our people are suffering and are angry with the continued bad and unproductive governance, deprivation and socio-economic imbalance. Leadership cannot be demanding civic comportment from the citizenry while it continues to misbehave. We should expect that as we sow the wind, we must reap the whirlwind. This is our story.
