There is something ultimately futile about desiring an alternative society without knowing what exactly it is. A restless society wracked by adversity to seek an alternative ethos is a fertile ground for reform or even revolution. But a revolutionary fertile ground without a national consensus is a recipe for anarchy. So, as the late popular musician Sonny Okosun, used to ask in that popular song: “Which Way Nigeria?”
Those desirous of urgent change in Nigeria are frustrated. Worse still, those who hope that lasting change in Nigeria’s social and political landscape will come about as a result of popular protest and upheaval need to think again. They may have to wait a little longer if they insist on such change coming about in defense of a national consensus. That consensus does not exist and has never existed.
Citizen action in demand for urgent change seems to be a futile project and a futile hope. There is no popular revolt or revolution in the horizon. Worse still, those who are impatient with the reticence and apparent indifference of the Nigerian public to their hard lives cannot understand the burden of our national history.
They cite instances of recent social and political upheaval in places like the Arab Spring nations and even as recently as in Kenya and cannot seem to understand why the Nigerian populace is so docile and apathetic. We are so many and our social and economic troubles are so huge that all sensible political observers would expect us to flare up in the kind of massive unrest that brings about instant change.
Our anger is massive enough to overturn the Titanic of any state. We are so many that our deprivations can sack any government. But yet it never happens. Not by any chance now or in the foreseeable future. The reasons are ingrained in our historical and political DNA.
On the contrary, there are inbuilt series of factors that have frustrated and negated the possibility of revolutionary change in Nigeria. The military coup of January 1966 was not exempt from this revolutionary reticence. Even before the gun powder of the coupists dried up, ethnic, religious, regional and all manner of conspiracies had seized the day.
The original revolutionary fervor of the young officers was dissipated. The nationalist ideals that fired their original youthful anger was darkened. Motives and purposes were imputed that were never dreamt of and, soon enough, those originally hailed by the populace as redeeming messiahs and revolutionaries were quickly rounded up, locked up or neutralized as treasonous traitors.
Soon enough, the mainstream counter revolutionary establishment forces seized the day and have held strong and strangulated the Nigerian state and society from quick change for the last more than half a century. In a sense then, the whole of Nigerian history since the collapse of the 1966 military coup has been a chronicle of counter revolutionary upheavals and the entrenchment of reaction as a permanent feature of our political DNA as a nation. Our successive political dynasties may call themselves fancy names like “progressives” , “nationalists” or “patriots” as the case may be.
Some exceptions have been made in recent times- the ENDSARS protests, the Covid-19 hardship protests etc. But these were isolated episodic stirrings of mass anger. They were only tangentially political and hardly ever national in scope. Nor did they reach wide enough on the national scale. Collections of citizens driven by hunger and hardship to march in protest against the government of the day would be normal in nearly every society.
The possibility that such anger movements could spiral into widespread political movements is usually a function of national history and political leadership culture. Even more important is the factor of the configuration of a national society. But in and of themselves, adversity, no matter how dire widespread , cannot bring about sudden total political change.
In today’s Nigeria, for instance, adversity is everywhere in evidence and multifaceted. The things that make other people restive and explosive are in abundance everywhere in Nigeria. Insecurity has reached a Hobbesian height. There is hunger all over the land. Food is scarce and expensive. Most people cannot afford the bare necessities of life because they are dirt poor.
People are homeless, sleeping in ope spaces. Most people cannot afford basic primary healthcare while most others are marooned because the cost of transportation has gone beyond the reach of many. Even what used to be the semblance of a Middle Class has been traumatically eroded into a penurious incapacity.
The cries of anguish echo throughout the land. In this landscape, one would expect a nationwide upheaval and wild protest demanding immediate change of the status quo as a minimum. Not quite. No one is convinced about the possibility of such change. The doctrine of state security and public order are ingrained into the brains of a police and military that trace their origins to a colonial vanquish ethos.
To reinforce the air of animosity between government and people, those elected by our successive democracies to preside over the state are openly displaying levels of hostility inherited from the colonialists.
Their opulence from clearly unearned resources is mind buggling . On occasion, popular anger has even approach the precincts of power. Demonstrators have occasionally invaded the precincts and premises of even the National Assembly. The state has retorted through hooded goons and overfed Alsatians!
Calls for protests by Civil society Groups and known populist leaders have only been met with apathy and isolated adherence. On the few occasions when populist leaders have called the populace out to protest the hardship in the land, only a handful have shown up. In some cases, those who showed up were paid to protest or mobilized by political and other interests.
On balance, our grudges are too many. Our troubles come from too many different directions. When people are hungry, are threatened by bandits, kidnappers, abductors and rapists in droves, they need extraordinary strength and focus to decide which pain is most dire.
As it were, Nigerians now need to be reminded and mobilized to respond to their own many grudges and existential threats. People no longer know when hardship to protest against or who exactly is the target of which adversity. Thus overwhelmed by multiple worries and deprivations, it becomes hard to choose which pain is more severe. In this situation, people are only reminded of the things that divide rather than unite us. On the day of protest, our dividing lines come alive.
People ask what religious sects are the protest organizers? Are they Muslims or Christians? If Christians, are they Pentecostal or legacy sects? What ethnicity are the inspirers? Are they Igbos, Hausas, Yorubas or Ijaws? Is it a northern or southern protest? What geo-political zone is leading the protest? What do the organizers want? Which political faction or interest is behind it?
Why can’t they come out in the open to demand for “something” from the people in Abuja? Parents caution their children and wards to stay home and away from the equally hungry and frustrated soldiers and policemen who are in any case looking for people to shoot to death? Even if you are killed protesting, there are no consequences. In a land without consequences for the most heinous crimes and offences, why go out to commit suicide in the hands of those paid by the state to kill the very citizens whose tax money pays for the guns and bullets used to keep the peace and maintain the order of the devil?
In times past, there used to be a united nation. There was a time when our pains were collective and our sufferings a shared burden. We used to hear each other’s cries and feel each other’s pain. Our hunger, homelessness, insecurity or bereavement never used to speak in sectional dialects. In the 1970s, student demonstrations used to gravitate around national issues.
As undergraduates, we heard exh other from across great divides. Without modern cell phones, we heard each other loud and clear from ABU to Ife, from UNILAG to Nsukka and from UNIBEN to UI. Whether it was the price of fuel, the cost of food, unemployment, alleged corruption by government offcials , inflation or sectarian intolerance, there was a national consensus from Maiduguri to Badagry, from Sokoto to Yenagoa.
In those days, it used to be the belief that hunger and hardship obey no geography, worship no specific gods or speak no differential languages. Now, our hurt has been divided by the same things that have come to divide our people. Yes, indeed, as Chinua Achebe lamented before he bowed out, “there was a country”!
We lost our nation and the things that ought to unite us. Abot all, we have never found a consensus as n elite, let alone one that we can pass down to our masses. Yet, we need to explore and understand the factors that breed and erode consensus in a diverse plural society. Our politics is divided. Our politicians are disciples of regional deities and ethnic creeds rather than a national belief.
With no gods to worship, we have become a very religious people. Our values are less dictated by national pressures and more by promptings from churches and mosques than anything else. Superstition rules our lives instead of the fear and respect for enforceable laws and codes of conduct. Belief in the afterlife and the goodness that lies beyond the here and now.
If hunger ravages today, look to the future when God will reward us with an El Dorado of abundance and feasting. The gods that find the most adherents are those that confer abundance and instant wealth. Those who come to church in Keke and Okada should return home in limousines as a demonstration of the favour of the Almighty. Those who have abundance today happen to be enjoying the blessing of Allah, our turn is coming!
The pursuit of divisive federalism in most matters has deepened our search for a national consensus. Most Nigerians now think of their states and geo political zones before they bother about a pan Nigerian reality. More often than not, Nigerians off load their frustrations at the doorstep of their respective state governors. These tin gods and petty emperors are the more visible emblems of the nation that has kept our hopes in abeyance. Most Nigerians even forget that the National Assembly is populated by idle people who are supposed to represent our constituencies as Nigerians.
The greatest casualty of this balkanization of expectations is the crucial element of national elite consensus. No nation grows or achieves meaningful progress without a tangible national elite consensus. We need a platform of common grounds to unite the expectations and aspirations of all Nigerians irrespective of class, belief, ethnicity and orientation. In a nutshell, what is the Nigerian dream or vision of a good life? To what platform of self fulfilment should the Nigerian child grow up in life? What society should form the benchmark of our collective aspiration as a people?
On a casual school visit in the company of a governor friend of mine some years ago, we asked some JSS 3 kids what they would like to become when they grew up! The answers were quick and revealing:
“Militant!”, “Kidnapper!”, “Dangote!”, “Governor!”
