Before Our Own Riots Start… 14 Aug 2011 Simon Kolawole Live!: Email: simonkolawole@thisdayonline.com Let’s be honest: we did not foresee the London riots. We did not foresee the arson and the looting. Many of us grew up thinking London was heaven, the best place on earth. Our parents and grandparents never ceased praying for us that one day, we would visit “Ilu Oba” (The Land of the Queen). Go to the UK High Commission and see crowds of young Nigerians desperately applying for visas. A frustrated cousin of mine called me last month seeking my approval and support to travel to London. He has graduated, done his youth service and has been applying for jobs for the past two years. There is no job in sight. He is downcast, completely tired of living off the goodwill of friends and family. “I want to travel to London. I don’t mind washing toilets to help out my widowed mother and my younger ones,” he said. If only he knew that “London” is not what it used to be and even toilet-washing jobs are now very hard to come by! The London riots—which spread to other cities in England in a matter of hours—took many by surprise. The immediate cause, it seems, was the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham by the police. Duggan, who was riding in a minicab, died from a single gunshot wound to his chest. He was said to have been on the watch list of the Met Police. His family members and friends organised a peaceful protest to register their displeasure and seek justice. It initially went well. But then some young persons seized the opportunity to unleash mayhem, burning and looting at will. The gory spectacle shocked millions around the world. Why did the people—most of them youths—resort to looting and arson? The UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, described the carnage as the handiwork of criminals. He said angrily: “And to the lawless minority, the criminals who have taken what they can get, I say this: We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you. You will pay for what you have done.” In his opinion—and in the opinion of many British politicians and commentators—what happened on the streets last week should be considered as criminality, pure and simple. Some guys just gathered and started looting. And they will pay dearly for it. Cameron even spoke about poor parenting, poor discipline in schools, general lack of morals and an erosion of ethics and values. Not a mention of economic hardship. If you hold a contrary opinion—say you suggest there is more to the mob action than a mere mind for criminality—you are likely to be accused of justifying the looting. It’s a delicate line. Labour MP Harriet Harman said government cuts were to blame for the riots; she was virtually slaughtered for this. Maybe she was being partisan, her party having been rooted out of power by the coalition of the Conservative Party and Lib Dems. It is easy to think Harman was just trying to play opposition politics. However, I align with her, partially. While I would not hold government cuts solely responsible for the carnage, I would say the warning signal had been there for a while but the politicians and economy managers refused to acknowledge it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, is your typical neo-liberal economist: cut social expenditure to the barest minimum; go for the jugular of subsidies; ignore public reaction as much as possible and continue to insist there is no alternative to your policies. With the global economic crises hurting consumption globally in 2008, the Labour government under PM Gordon Brown reduced VAT from 17.5 per cent to 15.5 per cent for 13 months to stimulate consumer spending. The coalition has since increased VAT to 20 per cent as it tried to plug the holes in public finance. But this had a negative impact on purchasing power. Yet, nobody seemed to pay attention to that. The coalition government went on an expenditure-cutting spree. The youths were the worst hit. Their weekly benefits were reduced, thousands of jobs cut, civil service recruitment frozen and university tuition fees tripled (from next year, the fees could move from a range of £2,500-£3,000 to anywhere near £9,000). Student debts are mounting. University students have been demonstrating since the fee rise was announced, with some of them getting violent. Prince Charles and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla were once physically attacked, while a young student was imprisoned for throwing a fire-extinguisher at a building during the protests. These were signals of what was to come, but it was easily missed. Nobody seemed to pay attention. Meanwhile, Britons watched as MPs piled expenses on expenses; taxpayers were made to pay for a lawmaker’s obsession with pornography. The expenses scandal was all over the newspapers. The bankers too, who ran their banks aground and were bailed out with public funds, did not give up their taste for insane rewards: many of them were still collecting fat bonuses, presumably for their recklessness, at taxpayers’ expense! Public anger was brewing but nobody paid attention. Resentment was rising. The politicians and economy managers went about their normal business, assuming perhaps that there was nothing to worry about. For me, the Duggan murder was the tipping point. The initial demonstration, hough peaceful, offered an opportunity for pent-up anger to be let loose. The ensuing riots, we all know, had nothing to do with Duggan. There is no link whatsoever between the fatal shooting and the looting spree. But too many issues had piled up; too much resentment against government had been bottled up; too much anger had been residing in the recesses of the minds of the youths. Nobody paid attention to the warning signals that had been flashing. Suddenly, an unrelated event happened; suddenly, the youths had an excuse to go on the streets; suddenly, the criminally minded seized the opportunity to unleash terror on an otherwise peaceful, orderly society. I do not justify the crime, by any means, but something bred the anger. Something fed the crime. We should not ignore that as Cameron is trying to do. Yes, the gangs are criminal. But that is not all there is to this brigandage. I have heard many Nigerians say this kind of riots cannot happen here. Our people are docile, they say. Even in the face of blatant looting of national treasury and economic hardship, Nigerians are going about their normal business as if they are enjoying the spectacle. Fela sang: “My people dey fear too much!” Beautiful Nubia added: “My people too dey suffer in silence. They will never talk until it’s too late for them.” I differ slightly. There were spontaneous riots all over the country in 1989—called SAP Riots. The immediate cause was the Ebony Rumours—the incredible allegations made against the then military president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, falsely claimed to have been published in the American magazine. But there had been pent-up frustration in the land: the rumours simply triggered an explosion. Since Nigerians have rioted once, they can riot again. In the last 12 years, we have been inundated with reports of mindless corruption in public office. Billions of dollars stolen; emergency billionaires, who are nothing but money launderers and thieves, are walking on our heads. The roads remain in poor condition. Power supply is as horrible as it could be. Public schools are an eyesore. Jobs are so hard to come by. Out there, we have a lot of frustrated youths. I mix with them. I talk to them. I see their pains. Anytime they read stories about the jumbo allowances of the lawmakers, they are very bitter. When they hear of the billions of naira spent on power sector and yet we live in the Dark Age, they let out curses. I don’t know if they will take to the streets one day, burning and looting, but I know that the ingredients for a London-style upheaval are available. We should not ignore the flashing signals. In a way, the riots have already started, but a different kind of riots caused by unemployment and idleness. The senseless kidnappings are a form of riot. There seems to be a belief that kidnapping the wife or children or mother of a public officer and the rich is a way of getting some benefit from the system. Boko Haram, militancy and motor park touting are forms of rioting. Nigerian politicians need to know that there is a lot of anger and frustration on the streets. Nigerians may look docile. But, let’s be honest: we never knew frustrated London youths would one day resort to looting over a matter that was basically none of their business. That is how resentment works. And Four Other Things... Fuel from Niger Good news for Nigeriens—soon, they could be exporting petroleum products to Nigeria. It could be as early as December this year, according to the Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou. His target is Northern Nigeria, which he said would be getting supplies from the Zinder Refinery in Niger. We also learnt during the week that Chad has achieved sufficiency in local refining, meaning fuel importation has come to an end in that country. Where does this leave Nigeria? Many years ago, I did ask that since those who got refinery licences were not willing to build because of our regulated market, what should we do? Fold our arms and watch? I did suggest that government should build new refineries to achieve sufficiency in production, lease out the management and then sell off the companies later. The policy makers laughed at me. Six, seven years later, we’re still waiting for a new refinery to be built while we continue to burn billions of dollars on fuel importation. That’s Nigeria. Lessons from UK Riots A 20-year-old British soldier, Liam Bretherton, 20, is on trial after walking into a shop with a £2000 guitar moments after it was looted in Manchester during last week’s upheaval. The owner of the shop became suspicious when Bretherton offered the guitar for sale. He checked the serial number on the instrument, locked the soldier in the shop and called the police. He was eventually arrested and charged to court, where he was ready to plead guilty to “handling a stolen good”, claiming he bought it for £20 from a looter. He insisted he was not the one who looted the shop; he only bought a stolen item. The point I want to make here is: if it was Nigeria, the soldier would probably have resisted arrest, while his colleagues would have attacked the police station for daring to apprehend him. By the way, what has happened to those who killed the DPO and DCO at Badagry? Another case of “unknown soldier”? …And the Jokes Nigerians are quite witty, and the social media is offering them a good platform to display their skills. In the heat of the UK riots, many jokes were flying around on facebook, twitter and blackberry.  One said: “FG plans to evacuate Nigerian citizens from London.  Citizens reply: Mr President,​ thank you for your concern... we prefer the riot!" Another said President Goodluck Jonathan had called PM David Cameron and offered two detachments of MOPOL to help quell the uprising and stop the looting. For football followers, what about this? “Riots get to Old Trafford. Wenger caught on CCTV looting trophies!!!!” Adios, Fabregas One of the most prolonged transfer sagas in football history—Cesc Fabregas moving from Arsenal to Barcelona—will hopefully end this week. To football followers, it is one of the most bewildering moves ever. Fabregas, who was not homesick when he moved from Spain to England at the age of 16, is now homesick at 24! He is not guaranteed first-team football at Barcelona, with star performers like Xavi Hernandez, Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta well-established in the first eleven, and Alcantara Thiago on the rise. Incredibly, Fabregas is reportedly taking a huge £5 million pay cut to make this move. Why? Given that Arsenal has not won a league title in seven years, Fabregas' motivation is very clear: he wants to win trophies—even if it means sitting on the bench like Aleksander Hleb, another gifted one who left Arsenal for Barcelona and won five trophies the following year, virtually without kicking a ball!