CHANGE THE CHANGE

• Chude Jideonwo

It’s the unique conundrum of society that the young, unburdened by history, are almost certain to repeat the mistakes of the past. Also, the young, unburdened by history, and so free of the fears, cautions and caveats of yesterday, are its best chance of escaping the past.

Often, they fail. Inevitably, because one must learn from the past to avoid mindlessly repeating it. But now and again, magic happens, stars collide and the young open a path to a future that could previously only be imagined. Nigeria’s unreached promise is waiting for that moment. I think of the headiness of the latest very important national movement #EndSARS. “We are the generation that will succeed where our parents failed,” it declared. I recall the organising myths it has engendered in one generation, and I find myself chastened by the lessons from previous movements. I see the promise and the limitations, the boisterous possibilities and the debilitating hubris.

You see the same in #BringBackOurGirls before it, #OccupyNigeria preceding it, #EnoughisEnough a few years earlier, and if you gallop to the dark days before 2000 and hashtags, there were countless movements to save Nigeria from military dictatorship and return it to a seamless government of the people, for the people and by the people.

Sadly, in a country where history isn’t embedded in culture, talk less of contemporary culture, every set of young people (including mine) announce that the generation before them was feckless, cowardly, inactive, lazy, corrupt and ineffective. And then, bolstered by that falsehood, it does exactly what those before it have done, in the exact same way, and thus meets the exact same fate.

Nigeria, that towering mishmash of corruption, ineptitude, mediocrity, murder, disunity, exploitation and pockets of destruction, is the only one that survives. Every movement to change this country crashes, headlong and headless like waves on concrete. The concrete remains. The waves slink back, pointless.

This doddering giant outlives all.  Why?

I’ll wager an informed guess, informed by almost two decades of advocacy, activism and in the front seats in power’s corridors.

Maybe it is because we don’t build on the successes that already existed. Maybe it is because we don’t listen to the quiet voices that will bring clarity. Maybe it is because we are very quick to dismiss and belittle, to discount and ignore. We don’t link arms across generations. So our results don’t compound. We are locked in a chain of mutual generational disdain.

The young, as I have written again and again over the past decade, are not better because they are untainted by participation. Untested purity is not enough to change a nation. If it were, the revolutionaries of the 1960s or 1970s or 1980s would already have built the Nigeria of our dreams.

In 2013, I asked: “If these problems remain the same way over decades, does it make any sense to engage them without a more deeply thought-out strategy? Would youthful exuberance, an army of new tools, and a sense of outrage inspired by our non-responsibility for the present rot, be enough to change our country? Would we be able to make things change simply by the power of our will? Shouldn’t we answer the questions that generations have been asking before making a step? Shouldn’t we ensure that we know exactly what we are doing before we begin to do it?”

Nigeria is a chain of the courageous and the strategic. It has never lacked for activists and protesters, for those who have been ready to lay down their lives. This is the nation of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Ken Saro-Wiwa; Maitama Sule and MKO Abiola; Kudirat Abiola and Kaduna Nzeogwu; Clement Nwankwo and Chris Anyanwu; and Wole Soyinka and Omoyele Sowore. The coconut-head generation is, of course, not the first generation to say enough, to war against indiscipline, to fight for freedom. But something about Nigeria has resisted all efforts at revolution. Something that requires rigour in contemplation, wisdom in articulation, depth in execution.

Of course, it can be done. Of course, any generation now alive has the capacity to make the change happen, especially the young, with their energy, daring, audacity and the greatest gift of all, time. Whether they will learn from the mistakes of those before them and discard naivety and self-containment is the question. 

In the interim, the waves and cycles of popular uprising will continue. They must continue. Performance is better than apathy. Half-action is better than inaction. Moving forward, however haphazardly, is better than standing still. After all, the movements of the past brought us democracy; peaceful handovers of power; rescued Chibok girls and others old and young; brought down  in some form  the dreaded special anti-robbery squad.

The agitations matter. The protests matter. The movements matter. But much more is possible and, I suspect, just within our grasp. To have it, we need to understand deeply the labour of our heroes’ past, and be grateful for the bloodshed that brought us thus far. We need to drop the superciliousness of thinking about being the “first” generation to do this or try that. We need to understand, as I wrote half a decade ago, that we stand on the shoulders of giants. And if we do not understand the past and build upon its successes, it is very likely that our success, however important, will be limited, our progress will be stunted, and the future will continue to mirror the past.

This is what I have learnt as well as previous generations of changemakers: Nigeria is hard to change; culture will always eat passion for lunch, and those who consider themselves unmoored from the past will be consumed by the same predators that took their parents. This understanding is as urgent as it could ever be. Because our country, of course, can change. But those who want to change it, must first change the ways we try to bring the change.

Enough is enough!

Chude Jideonwo is co-founder of media group RED and human flourishing company Joy, Inc. He is the author of two books “Are We The Turning Point Generation?” and “How to Win Elections in Africa: Parallels with Donald Trump”. He has been a World Fellow at Yale University.

This is an excerpt of his postscript to the book, ‘Footprints: Past. Present. Future’, available for sale at footprints.eie.ng. At the book launch recently, these 25 young changemakers were celebrated as EiE’s New Voices.