Why is it impossible for Nigerians to protest – non-violently – against the maladministration and corruption they continually face in the country despite years of bitter suffering? Not long ago, Thais donated pints of their blood to smear across government buildings, normally passive Arabs precipitated the 2012 Arab Spring and even, Burkina Faso, the tiny West African nation, widely demonstrated recently to force a desired result. Yet, my countrymen continue to silently suffer though far worse situations without doing more than raise weary eyebrows.
Why can’t we shake off that lethargy and hold our leaders who have progressively assaulted our sensibilities and well-being to the worst extreme accountable?
For ages, I have mulled over this question without getting answers. I turned to Sigmund Freud in his 1921’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego that “a primary mass is a number of individuals who have put one and the same object in place of their ego ideal and consequently identify with each other.” Nigerians – regardless of its melting pot of over 250 ethnic nationalities – are undeniably linked by the common denominator of suffering with lack of adequate basic infrastructure like power, energy, water, education, housing and health. Yet, its leaders budgeted $1bn in the 2012 annual budget for feeding. Power supply for an entire region stretching 923,768 square kilometres comprising 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory has dropped to less than 4,000 megawatts whereas the CIA lists seven million populated Togo as boasting 671,900 megawatts annually.
Still, Nigerians – per normal – took it in their strides. Thais innovatively demonstrated because of a hike in the price of bread. The only time ever that Nigerians took to the streets to protest any hike was during the 2012 anti-fuel subsidy removal demonstrations.
As people across all societal strata trooped out en masse during the protests, I exulted in the knowledge that as Malcolm Gladwell postulated, Nigeria had reached that tipping point, “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point,” when oppressed people revolt and cause profound change.
The world probably thought so too as it watched with bated breath in anticipation of a climactic end in the mould of a power change seen already with the Arab Spring but yet to spill over to sub-Saharan Africa. But, it ended abruptly due to “security concerns.”
The 2012 rally revealed one truth though: Nigerians are groaning and gasping for breath under the weight of massive economic deprivation and craved an escape but, need a rallying figure for direction to properly express their frustrations and displeasure to cause attitudinal change intrinsic in the Nigerian rulers towards the ruled. Freud called this need “a (largely unconscious) identification with the other individuals…drawn in the same way to the leader, a binding element which…makes him impulsive, powerful and secure in safety of mass numbers where otherwise, he would have felt isolated.”
Nigeria crossed this obstacle with the NGO coalition, the Save Nigeria Group, that banded together to plan the 2012 protests. This group stressed non-violence and orderly conduct in order to prevent its hijack by undesirable elements, like witnessed during the epochal June 12, 1993 presidential election annulment protests.
The coalition was also arguably the protest’s undoing. Later reports circulated that the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress – in talks with the Nigerian government simultaneously as the protest was ongoing – compromised.
Therein lies, again, the urgency for the emergence of democracy-enabling institutions in the form of civil society groups, labour unions, human rights groups to effectively fill this vacuum in Nigeria. Tons of these groups already exist but they – asphyxiated by non-existent funding – have turned coats and are cavorting with the ruling government – that they ought to monitor – in exchange for huge financial enrichment.
This is a painful scenario especially as Nigeria faces a major milestone ahead of the 2015 polls already suspended ostensibly, due to – again – security concerns. Globally, there are fears that the elections were suspended apparently to scuttle the electoral process. The United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, told Nigerian authorities from Washington after the poll shift announcement that Boko Haram’s shenanigans should not be a decoy to postpone the elections especially as the five-year old insurgency in the country’s north-east looks uncertain to end in six weeks especially, as the Nigerian constitution approves six months’ postponement in such cases.
Already, the situation is getting more complex. After Kerry’s statement, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ade Adefaye, told diplomats to stay out of Nigeria’s affairs just as President Jonathan’s campaign office accused the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, of secretly meeting top opposition members in Dubai towards compromising electoral participation with biased distribution of Permanent Voter Cards to the north, the opposition’s stronghold. Though the opposition calls this claim an “irritant,” some observers note the situation as a calculated smear campaign against Jega to force his resignation to facilitate the emergence of a pliant replacement who would superintendent the polls or stall for time to do so since his tenure ends in June. Incontrovertibly, these are serious developments which do not bode well for the 2015 elections.
These situations are why first, Nigerians have to rise now from their perpetual lethargy or of praying to God to physically descend to change Nigeria. It is the time to act until the desired change comes. Secondly, since this action requires firm and unbiased leadership, the US must empower viable Nigerian NGOs with adequate funding to facilitate effective leadership in protesting against any machinations against this crucial election. It is mutually beneficial. As John Campbell sums it in a recent CFR’s Contingency Planning Memorandum Update on the Nigerian elections, “an unstable Nigeria with internally displaced and refugee population…could potentially destabilise neighbouring states and compromise the US interests in Africa.”
•Ms. Ogunbayo wrote in from Lagos
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