“Our country Nigeria needs more of rebels. Those who will look at things in the face and say this is not right, this is not good for Nigeria.”
–Former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo (The PUNCH, February 20, 2022)
The opening quote drawn from a speech made last Saturday by General Olusegun Obasanjo (retd.), former Head of State, underlines the constructive dimensions of rebels and rebellion, especially in a context like ours where things have really gone awry. Obasanjo’s statement was made at the occasion of the 80th birthday of a former Students’ Union leader now elder statesman, Alhaji Tayo Sowunmi. A word about Sowunmi is in order. He was the President of the University of Lagos Students’ Union when this columnist was President of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) Students’ Union, a season of our national life renowned for anti-military protests. While some of us went to work in the technocracy and intellectual department, Sowunmi forfeited the offer of a blue-chip corporate job to continue in activism and made a mark as an outspoken and effective campaigner for the rights of teachers under the aegis of the Nigerian Union of Teachers as Secretary-General. He veered into politics at the onset of the Fourth Republic and decided to mark his entry into the ranks of octogenarians with an interesting book entitled “Footprints of a Rebel.” This is the backdrop to Obasanjo’s endorsement of rebels and rebellion in Nigeria’s search for reinvigoration.
At first blush, it may sound queer to advocate rebels as an answer to Nigeria’s many problems. It should be obvious nonetheless that what Obasanjo has in mind, taking his cue from Sowunmi’s career, is rebels or, better still, protesters with a cause. This writer is of the view that political and social protests should be made the fifth Estate of the Realm next to the media widely known as the fourth Estate of the Realm. Not just Nigeria but our universe owes a lot to the activities of protesters, at first, scorned or derided but later granted the pride of place in public affairs because of the changes and restructuring of dialogue brought about by their protests. What would the United States be today without the historic anti-slavery protests, the protracted struggle for civil equality, the exploits of protesters such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the more recent uprisings entitled #BlackLivesMatter following the brutal killing of George Floyd in May 2020?
Readers will recall that in the wake of the uproar caused by the #BlackLivesMatter movement, a national and international dialogue ensued regarding racism, police brutality, the extension of part of the police budget to disadvantaged communities as well as police reform. In this sense, protests and protesters helped to reshape and redefine national and global political discourses drawing attention to hitherto neglected issues, bringing about, in the process, a fairer and more humane world. Little wonder that Time magazine gave in 2011 its Person of the Year Award to none other than “the protester.” Who can forget the changes brought about by the widespread pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa a little over a decade ago? How about the Occupy Movement which escalated the conversation about widening inequality, itself a major drawback of contemporary global political economy? Here in Nigeria, the protester or rebel has always been at the core of political change and reform. Beginning with the struggle against colonial rule, the independence of Nigeria was achieved by the toil and tears of our founding fathers and heroes past. During the years of military rule, it was difficult to silence the voice of the people who were organised by activists to showcase the power of the people. Of course, there was the heroic June 12 demonstrations, the anti-authoritarian ferment which led to the formation of the National Democratic Coalition ventilating grievances through a pirate Radio Kudirat in the struggle for democracy. That struggle had its heroes, martyrs, traitors and backsliders but it is an important chapter of our march towards a re-invented Nigeria.
In later years, protest tremors were set off by Occupy Nigeria movement whose ranks were constituted by several of the folks currently members of the ruling party. Subsequently, under the Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) regime, protests have been mounted such as #OurMumudondo, Coalition of Civil Society activists as well as the epic #EndSARS eruptions against police brutality with national and international reverberations. The protests under the current administration are remarkable because the ruling party this time around has proved to be more intolerant of civil protests than some earlier governments which understood that protests are not a blight on democracy but an essential part of it.
It should be noted that protests, even demonstrations, when they involve groups and swathes of citizens are examples of what scholars have termed “nation-building from below.” This is because they flash an image of another country more united in outrage than the extant one set in its old ways. Protests do not always come from below but can take the form of defensive radicalism, to borrow Prof. Claude Ake’s term, in which an enlightened ruling elite preserves the system by adopting reforms which avert the necessity for direct and revolutionary changes. Two historical examples are the English ruling class frantically reforming the system to avert their version of the French Revolution which had broken out across the English Channel. The second is the German leader, Otto von Bismarck who introduced extensive social legislation in his country to steal the thunder of the socialists and to beat back the advance of socialism.
Structurally, wise elites don’t wait until their countries are overtaken by mass protests. They employ remote sensing capacities to gauge the people’s temper and pulse in order to introduce desired and necessary reforms. It was heartwarming for example when the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan insightfully urged that the rate of inflation and poverty were such that it would be unwise to remove fuel subsidy as that would deepen the misery of Nigerians. However, shortly after the government correctly put on hold the policy for 18 months, a section of the elite that profits from oil importation business threw spanner in the works by unleashing a fuel crisis allegedly related to the supply of contaminated fuel. The crisis still persists and life has become even harder than Lawan anticipated. Disturbingly, very little is being said even by way of consolation by the responsible authorities while those who started the fire are probably laughing to the banks. Nobody has offered to resign and nobody has been shown the door for frustrating an announced policy of the government and deepening the misery of Nigerians scavenging for fuel in the midst of an electricity crisis occurring side by side with an usually hot and humid weather.
Silence in these circumstances cannot be golden. In the tradition of progressive political change, it is advisable that action be taken to show that the woes and sufferings of Nigerians are loud and visible enough for the deaf and the blind to take account of.
In conclusion, protests extend the national conversation creatively and deepen democracy. Considering the turbulence often associated with them, however, far-sighted leaders anticipate them by making desired changes and perceiving keenly the political barometer.
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