By Okike Ezugwu
The friends of the Bola Tinubu presidency are having an unexpected item in their mandate: to abort the possibility of a revolution. They are, in majority of the cases, doing a bad job of it, perhaps because it was not part of the original carte of duties. It is being thrown into the bargain by a special conspiracy of circumstances.
All we have seen is the witch-mongering long trademarked to Nigeria’s public life. To work in the propaganda unit of any government in Nigeria, you only need to have a small vocabulary of swear-words and invectives. Any objective evaluation of the government or your principal is the; “handiwork of mischief makers,” who were; “overwhelmingly rejected in the polls.” And then you add, almost compulsorily, that; “the detractors should eschew bitterness and allow the government to focus on delivering good governance to the people.” If you can do the above, you are eminently qualified, to borrow the now-famous phraseology of a trial judge, to act as a chief press person to the president.
The unimaginative and unprepossessing Tinubu team are recycling lifeless phrases from the old propaganda model. Developing willful blind spot for overwhelming reality, they are accusing the opposition of trying to instigate a protest. It is not also unusual that a tribal card is being thrown in. One Bayo Onanuga (whose role in the government is indistinct) is pointing fingers at Nigeria’s bogeyman, the Igbo, and Peter Obi. I gathered that the Labour Party standard bearer for the 2023 presidential election has already notified Onanuga through his lawyers that he would be seeking redress in the armory of the courts, for the defamatory remarks.
President Bola Tinubu was warned. He would ignore that warning to unleash a deluge of anti-people economic policies on Nigeria. At the moment, it is almost impossible to prevent the outbreak of a major disturbance in the country. From hindsight and considerable history-reading, the August protest might likely fail. This is because no revolution that ever succeeded was announced ahead of time. Noah Harari discussed this eloquently in his book; Sapiens, A Brief history of Humankind, instancing the Arab Spring. Revolution, by its essential nature, is knee jerk. It is always something like fire coming into unexpected contact with gasoline.
The civil rights movement in America would make another useful example. Rosa Parks, seated in a public bus, refused to vacate the front row for white privilege. That act of resistance set off a conflagration that changed history. And we had ENDSARS which was becoming a tremendous success until soldiers were instructed to sacrifice a few protesters. The point I am struggling to make is that the government might succeed in postponing the “inevitable” evil day.
The plain truth, however, is that it won’t be long before the evil day is here with us. The level of hardship in Nigeria is insufferable. It is by a good degree beyond the nerves of ordinary human beings. Even a herd of cattle would ultimately react violently to conditions half as harsh. It has gotten to a terrible point where people eat grass – and I am not speaking figuratively – and trade off their children for the next meal.
Forget the figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, (NBS). The people there are government employees saddled with mutilating statistics. Even at that, it is bewildering that government officials are rejecting their owns statistics. Inflation rate in Nigeria, from real-world observation shorn of government propaganda, is beyond 60%. And for perhaps the first time in our history, urban inflation is not different from rural inflation.
This goes beyond fine press statements. Those close to Mr. president should read Darwin. If nothing is immediately done to cut down the cost of energy, and the general cost of living, and to strengthen the naira, it is wishful thinking to imagine that a revolution is preventable. It will be a bout of the instinct of self-preservation. The people would demand economic relief or death. And hunger would be effective in uniting Nigerians across religious and tribal divides, as it is already doing. I don’t think President Tinubu want to preside over a country of body-bags. This is important just before they mislead our President.
Okike Ezugwu is a Legal Practitioner and Government Policy Analyst
