GUEST COLUMNIST BY MAHMUD JEGA
Controversial Reagan-era American National Security Council official Lt Col Oliver North, best remembered for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, quoted his boxing coach at the US Marine Academy to have said there are only three rules to boxing. “Keep your hands up. Keep your feet moving. And keep your a–e off the ground.”
Nigerians should remember these three rules because the year 2022 is not going to be different from a boxing match. The government will deliver many punches at citizens but it’s hands are gloved so as to reduce the impact. However, insurgents, bandits, robbers, kidnappers, secessionists, cultists, political thugs, communal warriors, inflation, unemployment, potholed roads, floods, gully erosion, advancing deserts, fires, accidents, collapsed buildings and COVID will not bother to wear gloves before they send punches flying at us. They use the tactics of local boxers. Even when they wear gloves, they clutch big stones inside them, spray the gloves will coarse sand or even with pieces of broken bottle. Some famous local boxers spend the night at a cemetery ahead of a major bout, their hands buried inside fresh graves.
As citizens we have to keep our hands up because punches will be thrown at us this year from all directions. The last thing a boxer wants is for his opponent to land a jab to the chest, a blow to the head, a left hook to the chin, or an upper cut to the jaw. Even the great Muhammad Ali once had his jaw broken by a jab from Ken Norton, so we citizens must always keep our hands up.
Heavy jabs will be thrown at our heads this year from various angles. Insurgents will try to deliver upper cuts with the hope of knocking us out cold. Kidnappers will attempt to throw left hooks at our jaw in order to knock out our teeth, leave us dazed and incoherent by selling our houses, farms and cars in order to meet their ridiculous demands of ransom in tens or even hundreds of millions. A bandit who never had more than a few thousand naira in his pocket will shamelessly ask for a hundred million naira in ransom, an amount more than the monthly Federation Account allocation of many local governments.
Not only insurgents and bandits. The expected increase in fuel price to the region of N340 per litre is a prospective upper cut directed at a Nigerian citizen’s lower jaw. Our transporters have been known to double fares when fuel price rose by only a small percentage, as if fuel is the only cost factor in transport. With petrol prices expected to double this year, transporters must be pinching their noses trying to figure out by what percentage they should hike their fares.
The Federal Government’s 2022 budget plan also calls for an end to electricity subsidy, an increase in taxes and, though it was not stated, a further floating of the naira. These three economic factors could together deliver a powerful left hook to the citizen. We must adopt Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy, step back, duck, swing to the side, lie on the rope and keep our hands up all the time.
This year, politics could deliver a George Foreman-sized right hook at Nigerians’ noses. I hear that 100 new political parties have applied to INEC for registration, on top of the 18 that we currently have. With so many rancorous direct primaries all over the country, we must keep our hands up in the event of parallel congresses, roaming party thugs and open air skirmishes.
Citizens must keep their feet moving, and not in one particular direction. Until a few years ago, Nigerian leaders always talked about the need to move forward in every crisis situation. It was Bishop Matthew Kukah who said in 1991 that if one is standing on the edge of a cliff, his best option is not to move forward but to retrace his steps!
So, after a careful study of the strategies, tactics and preferred operating hours of bandits and other criminals, we should keep our feet moving by embarking only on the most necessary travel, in the daytime as much as possible, by air if we can afford it, by train if it is available, in non-posh vehicles in order not to attract attention, on relatively safe roads, without stopping in the bush to urinate, without giving a lift to unknown people, always keeping an eye on the other lane to see if vehicles are still plying it, and ensuring that your car does not drive straight over orange peels or polythene bags suspiciously discarded on the road. Normally it is good to stop in the bush to offer help to stranded motorists, but the situation today is not normal.
We must also keep our feet moving because some citizens are likely to respond to Government-delivered jabs and criminals-delivered upper cuts with left hooks of their own such as general strikes, street protests or even an #ENDSARS II. If any of these happens, we must keep our feet moving by stocking up food, prevent rioters from looting our stores in the name of looking for palliatives and discourage rioting citizens from blocking highways and storming prisons.
A labour general strike may intimidate the government, but it also amounts to double jeopardy for the private sector, which suffers heavy losses due to the actions of both sides. A Nigerian man who ekes out a living from day to day is in triple jeopardy in the event of a general strike. When some citizens decided in 2020 to identify and liberate foodstuff from alleged palliative stores, some went beyond that, looted the stores of innocent businessmen and drove away tractors from government irrigation yards. Or if there is another #ENDSARS protest, anarchists could hijack it, attack the houses of senators and traditional rulers, loot supermarkets and even kill cops in the streets.
The bottom line in boxing, as the US Marine Academy coach said, is to keep your a–e off the ground. As long as you don’t fall to the canvas, the referee will not drop to the floor and make a hasty count of ten to declare you knocked out. So, a citizen must avoid falling to the canvas, however heavy the blow and however sudden the upper cut.
If a boxer is not knocked out, i.e. he keeps his a–e off the ground, at worst the three judges could tabulate their scores at the end of the bout and declare that you lost the match on points. If the verdict is a split decision, there is enough room for doubt and your supporters will convince themselves that you were rigged out. Boxing scores are not an exact science. If they are, why do judges so often return split decisions?
A worse outcome, even when you struggled and successfully kept your a–e off the ground, is for the referee to declare that you have been technically knocked out by stopping the match because you have suffered a major cut on the eye, for instance. We must avoid a TKO in 2022. No government policy, no insurgent, no kidnapper, no looter, no rioter and no striker should leave us dazed and wounded as to be TKOed, such as, by fleeing the country through the Sahara and Mediterranean.
The biggest indignity of all however is when your coach throws in the towel from behind the ring in order to save you from further punishment. I saw a video clip where a boxer attacked his coach for throwing in the towel. He said he was still able to fight and that the coach was probably bribed by his opponent.
Under no circumstances should our coach throw in the towel this year. The Federal Government should not throw in the towel and lock down the country because of any God-forsaken virus. Government will also do well not to engage in fisticuffs with foreign countries and airlines over Covid testing. We should not withdraw from any sports tournaments, should not extend school holidays, should not tell workers to work from home, should not close down NYSC camps or postpone weddings. In 2022 we should keep our hands up, keep our feet moving, and keep our a–es off the ground.
