If I were to choose between self-proclaiming peoples’ heroes- (journalists, human right lawyers and civil society groups), the governed and government, I will without hesitation settle for government that is today under vicious attack from which it cannot adequately defend itself.
I cannot see any evidence that peoples’ heroes currently fuelling the fire of EndBadGovernanceinNigeria,Tinubu must go campaign took some pains to understand the nature and character of Nigerian society. It is also of little relief that the public faces of the nationwide EndBadGovernanceinNigeria, campaign which include Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN) Deji Adeyanju and Demilade Adenola, from their outbursts are perhaps the most uninformed when it comes to the sociology of our nation.
First, they tried to draw an absurd parallel between western developed democracies and our society that harbours millions of out of school hungry and angry children who never knew love, thousands of orphaned victims of insurgents in IDP camps and thousands more that could not read and write as a result of ‘bad governance’ in the respective states that unleashed them on Lagos. They then self-conceitedly dismissed fear expressed by government and our security apparatus that the planned protest could be hijacked by criminals. The trending videos of bare-footed underage children vandalising public property or invading private property confirmed government fears. The governor of Borno State also admitted most of those involved in violent demonstration in Borno State were under-aged.
The governed, who in the main are insane, are in a world of ‘the survival of the fittest’, fortune seekers. And surreptitiously leading the governed in its current confrontation with government, are those who after taking more than their proportionate share of our natural resources, now seek freedom to preside over an empire of slaves.
For the informed, it is difficult not to sympathise with the government which is saddled with the onerous challenge of keeping man who as we pointed out, is insane, under control. Besides its primary responsibility of protecting lives and properties of its citizens, government also has the misfortune of having to protect the wicked, the evil doers and others sworn to pulling it down either through reasoned argument by heroes of society and if that fails, through rioting and social dislocation in the guise of protest over hunger and hardship occasioned by government’s harsh economic policies
But to the governed, government is a Leviathan- a huge fearful sea monster responsible for all their woes including the hungry, the jobless, husband seekers, philandering husbands and warring wives, the deprived and depraved. We also have those who want to live questionable lives, enjoy freedom without responsibility with rights to questioning government’s exercise of power and authority.
But this is not to say that government as an institution run by a few ‘ordinary’ people does not sometimes shoot itself in the leg because of the ephemeral nature of power and the paradoxical nature of politics which may change a leader from a saint to Satan overnight, the reason why we have very few politician-statesmen.
For instance, while there is a consensus that many of the rampaging mobs involved in looting of houses and shops in Kaduna and Borno last week and their sponsors do not understand the nature of our crisis of nation-building, it is difficult to fault their demand for the resettlement of those condemned to IDP camps across the country by Boko Haram insurgents and herdsmen terrorists. For many Nigerians, that would have been the cheapest and shortest route to justice, fairness and equity for those violently uprooted from their ancestral homes. Unfortunately that was the route President Buhari refused to traverse all through his eight years in office.
If for eight years, Buhari played the ostrich while pandering to the threat of Miyetti Allah’ (patron of cattle farmers) to make the country ungovernable unless their demand for open grazing across federating states in Nigeria was allowed, most Nigerians had thought President Tinubu would not have such constraints. But that the president had to be reminded of the imperative of justice for those condemned to IDP camps by demonstrating youths last week was evidence enough that the president has also become hostage to northern politicians who were behind his 2023 presidential victory.
But in spite of some evil men in government and the imperfection of ‘little men’ that run it as an institution, none including our self-proclaiming peoples’ heroes who never provide rational argument to back up their demand for government protection, the governed who is incapable of making a fundamental distinction between rights and obligation of citizens while questioning governments power and authority, can do without government.
How people, politics and power can sustain peace
Republic of broken people.
Governor Sanwo-Olu on Sunday acknowledged a post by Lagospedia that called on the Igbo to vacate Lagos and Southwest of Nigeria and brace up for a massive hashtag #Igbomustgo protest from 20th to 30th August. The governor however has distanced government and good people of Lagos from ‘the reckless, divisive and dangerous rhetoric’ while assuring everyone that ‘Lagos remains home to every Nigerian citizen regardless of their ethnic nationality’.
Finally, “Governor Sanwo-Olu dismissed the reckless and divisive post as an attempt to sow a seed of discord between the Yoruba in the Southwest and other tribes, especially those who have made Lagos their permanent place of abode.”
The governor was right. It is not in the character of the Yoruba to be hostile to strangers in their midst. That was why sociologists describe their culture as ‘social’. I am not sure if it is because of Igbo votes, but I deeply feel Sanwo-Olu missed an opportunity to advise our Igbo brothers to respect the values and cultures of their host communities.
I grew up in the village, knowing only Uncle Uncle Sunday who handled the oil palm inside my father’s cocoa plantation. At home, his room was opposite my father’s. He participated in all our social and cultural activities. When he eventually left us, it was as if we were all bereaved.
Similarly, today our Ekiti Southwest LGA is made up of three major towns. The biggest shops in each of the three towns are owned by Igbo. There has never been any problem between them and their host communities.
If the people of Ikorodu or Lagos Island want to invoke Oro (spirit) to avert impending doom in their communities, I don’t think the Igbo in these communities have anything to fear. As the saying goes, “When in Rome, behave like the Romans”. No one should also begrudge Igbo for observing their culture. The other day, fearing Yoruba could go to war over the annulled June 12 1993, Igbo in Lagos trooped back to the East ostensibly to celebrate New Yam festival. A quote in Chinua Achebe’s “No Longer at Ease” ‘where he said “we are strangers in this land. When calamities befall the owner of the land, we return home leaving behind the owners of the land who know how to appease their own gods” captures this aspect of Igbo culture.
While some Igbo youths organised One million March in Abuja singing ‘Abacha today, Abacha tomorrow Abacha forever”, the Yoruba relied on her culture to wage a five year war of attrition against Abacha.
National Assembly’s Southeast Caucus had earlier raised concern about what it described as “dangerous ethnic profiling of Igbos”. The statement concluded by asserting that :“ It was such profiling that led to the millions of deaths in Nigeria from the 1950’s to the unfortunate civil war in 1967 to 1970”.
I think the caucus should emulate the deputy speaker of the Lower House who had advised Igbo “to exhibit weakness” for a change especially in a stranger’s land. Excessive display of Igbo in strangers land has been the bane of Igbo urban dwellers..
With Sowore’s call for ‘revolution and day of rage” statements by Ebun Adegboruwa, Deji Adeyanju, Adenola, it was obvious the protest in Lagos was organized by Yoruba professional agitators, who the British pre-colonial administration referred to as “Lagos noise makers”. But is it not a paradox that most of those interviewed or captured by the camera arguing with the police were Igbo protesters? The target of the 1953 northern elite sponsored Kano attack was SLA Akintola and his AG supporters. But because it was Igbo that exhibited strength in other peoples land, the 33 people killed were Igbo. And contrary to the caucus claim, the unfortunate massacre of Igbo in the north in the sixties was not as a result of ethnic profiling but because of Igbo’s exhibition of courage which found expression in unrestrained celebration of the 1966 assassination of Ahmadu Bello by Chukwuma Nzeogwu on the streets of northern cities.