Femi Akintunde-Johnson
How many people soldier go kill o…” such was the juvenile chant of the Nigerian students of the 70s and 80’s – especially during the juntas of Generals Obasanjo, Buhari and Babangida. Sadly, the chant continues in this century, with more gusto and virulence. Our campuses, highways, and inner city bypasses have continued to witness bloodshed and needless sacrifices, if they are not shut down or abandoned for related reasons. There have been many landmark junctions in our developing entity called Nigeria where we had killed and been killed in the foolhardy hope that it was all for the growth of the society – after all, we have been fed with the morbid altruism that the “tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of Patriots”.
In 1978, Nigerian students, protesting the unconscionable hike in hostel and feeding fees during the Obasanjo regime, wailed and were wasted on Nigerian streets, while chanting “Ali Must Go!”. The notorious person of their angst was the federal commissioner in charge of education, Colonel Ahmadu Ali (who later flourished as a politician with national pedigree). The Segun Okeowo-led National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) was banned, and its president rusticated from the University of Lagos. Many students were killed, including a UNILAG architecture student, Akintunde Ojo, and eight others suspected to be from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Similar protests and bloody results had occurred down the years between Nigerian students and their supposed protectors, the Nigerian security forces. Yet, the festival of sorrow tears and blood was not restricted to students only: the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC), the Nigerian media, the radical sections of the academia and civil society, few creative and professional icons like Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Gani Fawehinmi, Beko Ransome Kuti, Anthony Enahoro, Alfred Rewane, Ndubuisi Kanu, Olisa Agbakoba, Wole Soyinka, G G Darah, amongst a fairly long list, have severally and jointly fronted the challenge to wrest the destiny and prosperity of Nigeria from the grip of malicious undertakers and mindless vultures who are bent on milking and sucking it dry.
Consequently, many of these patriots and canons of people’s power struggles suffered indignities, detentions, brutalities, discrimination, harassments, blackmail, and what-have-you. As it is with the students, and the civil society, so too have certain figures even within the established security forces broken ranks with the pervasive wickedness and looting that have characterised many regimes and administrations, with attendant horror stories as their retirement benefits. Some have been trounced into ignominy, others hounded out of their duty posts, and yet some have had to flee into the safety of foreign lands.
Are there signs that all these sacrifices of valour and vanities across these many decades would yield a country primed for great progress, genuine peace and equitable dispensation of justice and resources? Is the soil of this land satisfied with the tonnes of blood and gore shed in open pastures and secret concourses? Can we stand away from the evil and wicked machinations of the past, and boldly step into a future pregnant with hope, competence, know-how and tolerance? Are we ready to move into a future shorn of greed, hate, lies, quackery, and all appearances of selfishness and insensitivity?
Where do we get answers to these queries? A deep introspection of our current travail shows that we have been perambulating around the same “village-square” with only occasional flares of success, here and there – yet the circumference of the square continues to increase, and the occupants swell in size and hunger. We see clearly what seems like a deliberate plan of the few and formidable to pauperise the majority, and entangle them in sweet-smelling ignorance wrapped in the insidious arrogance of ethnic jingoism, tribal bigotry and primordial self-indulging politicking.
Our people have been so bastadised that they could contemplate selling their children, spouses or parents for pittance…just to survive for another day. We are no longer scandalized when looters and their quick-fingered cousins fling cash on the streets, and carpet party grounds with hard currencies. Our politicians, the few that seem tolerable, have succumbed to the quizzical self-condemnation of telling their supporters: “if they give you money, rice, or anything, take it…but vote with your conscience.” A song that ultimately fails the optimistic dreamer as the class-driven impoverishment of the Nigerian people is now so deep and deplorable that we may need a massive and methodical public mental health investigation into the psyche of the Nigerian electorate to confirm the suspected evaporation of dignity and selflessness from the dictionary of the ordinary Nigerian.
It is a state of mind carefully orchestrated and implemented by virtually every administration that we have had the misfortune of being led by. Simply put, they make us mad so we can behave in ways that justify the urgent need to commit us to undocumented asylum.
To make it impossible for ordinary folks to organise, unite, and articulate a cohesive and egalitarian force or counter move, they have erected the twin battering rods of religion and ethnicism…feeding and pumping diluted doctrines of sectarianism, and fake lullabies of discrimination, marginalisation and such political subterfuge, to deflect and defray our attention from the real vital issues. Those who wish to suck us dry, and throw us into dustbins without scruples, are the ones who cry most: that they are being targeted and harassed as a result of where they come from and where they worship God.
Surely, “power is not served a la carte”, yet people who binge on our resources and mock our judicial and moral frameworks are the same people positioned and privileged to jostle for power so as to perpetuate their wicked and self-serving machinations – bar none!
But is it really too much to desire a break from our inglorious past? Are we beyond redemption in restoring universally acclaimed values and tokenism of human dignity? Why do we acquiesce to a political process that insults our history, culture, advancement and posterity? Why is it so difficult to assemble and activate a few good men and women who clearly demonstrate honesty, competence, intelligence, commitment, public-spiritedness, capacity, compassion, and a few other virtues? Is there anyone out there who looks towards 2023 with bounding hope and wholesome optimism – and who is not tied to one presidential campaign cubicle, or the other? And so many more questions… Any answers?
(To Continue)
