By Ibrahim A ,El-Caleel
“When people complain of your complexity, they fail to remember that they made fun of your simplicity.”
– Michael Bassey Johnson
Nigeria is currently in one of its fragile moments in recent history. Both the protesters and the government don’t seem to have an idea on how this will end well, without any tears.
Complaint on SARS’ brutality has been on for a long time. However, in its typical executive arrogance, the government didn’t care to take it serious even as the extrajudicial killings rose.
Anytime a SARS extrajudicial killing trended seriously on social media, the government will deceitfully ban SARS.
As IG Bans FSARS, what next for Nigerian youth with ASUU still on 7-month strike
Instead of immediately correcting its ways, SARS will still find its way back to Twitter trends with a fresh extrajudicial killing. Thus, the deceitful banning became a mockery of the collective conscience of Nigerians. This is one of the reasons why the recent banning of SARS couldn’t end the protests. It has much do with integrity. When you regularly deceive people, they won’t take you serious even when you are eventually serious.
As a fierce and popular opposition figure in 2013, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai was hosted to a StraightTalk session on TVC news, where he discussed Nigeria’s leadership failure. He made the following remarks:
“In this country, we have a conspiracy of silence by the elites. Everybody just keeps quiet because he is waiting for his turn; and it is not taking us anywhere. We are all going to be consumed by this crisis. This is a keg of gunpowder that we are sitting on, in which 75% of the population is below the age of 35; they have no jobs, no hope, and they have not seen a country that ever functioned. It’s a key of gunpowder that will explode and destroy all of us if we don’t do something about it.”
El-Rufai painted a true, but dangerous picture of Nigeria above. The convergence of this awful condition with schools closure, frustration and economic hardship is what fuels the EndSARS protest. The government initially took the protests for granted, but lately understood that this isn’t business as usual.
As part of strategies to end the protests, ASUU has been re-called to the negotiation table to get students off the streets. Civil service offices have fully resumed from Covid lockdown. NYSC will soon call-up graduates for the national service. One wonders why the FG didn’t have the conscience to do all these before the protests.
Why didn’t the government take the protest seriously from the onset?
It is simple- the elites take Nigerians for granted. They do not believe common Nigerians can ever do something that will force the government to work. This is evident in their gestures, and some of them have even been able to voice it out.
In August 2013 while rejoining Doyin Okupe and Ahmad Gulak’s attack on his personality, the then Jigawa State Governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido said:
“It (Nigeria) is too weak to break. Who will break it? The ordinary person in Jigawa or the ordinary person in Sokoto or the ordinary person in Bayelsa? Is it the Ibo vulcaniser or the Yoruba woman that is selling kerosene by the roadside or the Okada man in Delta?
“They don’t have the capacity to unite because they are burdened by poverty. We have taken away from them their dignity, their self esteem, their pride and self worth SO THAT THEY CANNOT EVEN ORGANIZE.
“Up there, we (elite) unite, we sing and so we will never allow Nigeria to break because once it breaks, we will lose.
“But the common man loses nothing. What is he losing? He is already living in hell; he cannot lose anything more than this hell.”
This statement of Alhaji Sule Lamido tells you much about how the elites underestimate common Nigerians. The EndSARS protest must have come to them as a rude shock. It was atypical of the regular protest that NLC and TUC used to lead. This was from another planet. The government that usually waits for people to dearly beg it before it talks, started talking without waiting for anyone’s begging.
Governors shouldn’t also keep playing around, especially the northern state governors. The spate of killings in the name of kidnapping and banditry is already trying to create a mass #SecureNorth protests. It will be better if you nip this in the bud by giving it the necessary attention and required action. Alternatively, you can also sleep over it like the FG and SW governors did on the SARS issue, till it blows out of proportion and beyond control.
While I hope and pray that this ends well, Nigerian leaders might be able to learn how they’ve positioned this country to sit on a keg of gunpowder (as El-Rufai would say). They should be able to learn the imminent danger that this country is, and they should therefore work double-time to cover up for the time Nigeria has already wasted fooling around, instead of positioning itself as a competent 21st century state.
