I
am very proud of what Nigerians achieved this time last year, when we
came together to fight an unreasonable government policy of fuel subsidy
removal, and properly and effectively channeled our anger to highlight
the issue of government waste.
As we mark the one-year anniversary this week, January 2012 made me
proud to be a Nigerian, indeed to be alive at a time of uplifting active
citizenship across the world.
There are people, especially in government, led ably by President
Goodluck Jonathan who have dismissed the importance of that historic
battle – crediting “failed politicians” from Bola Tinubu to Nasir
el-Rufai for mobilising the people with “bottled water”.
As an entrepreneur who closed down my business and made some
self-sacrifice to join hands across lines to drive that protest from
Ojota to Surulere and Victoria Island and who personally secured the
participation of a great number of those artistes who performed because
they believed in the cause, I feel very insulted by the allusion that
ordinary Nigerians who joined the protest were bribed with “bottled
water”.
But, I can understand the perception. The leading lights of the
protests were politicians, and when politicians get involved,
thingseasily lose their meaning. Of course, it makes no sense to reduce a
protestthat involved Nigerians of every hue and stripe simply because
the political opposition aligned with it, but in a paranoid Nigerian
political space, I understand the push-back.
They looked at the thousands in Lagos, angry and screaming and they
saw the opposition’s party vice presidential candidate, Tunde Bakare
speaking to them, and our short-sighted, over-indulged leaders put two
and two together – and arrived at 10.
True, Bakare was an imperfect, maybe even fatal, vessel for the
aspirations of the protesters, unable to rein in his passions and
overtly calling for the death of our leaders, but he certainly had
earned the right to lead it. He provided a backbone of strategy and
resources, andmanaged to build a broad coalition that went far beyond
the agenda of his political party or his own narrow ideologies.
But as much as you credit him for its success, he also made the
unfortunate call that broke the back of that historic movement – when he
came on stage and gave in to the pressure to break up the protest for
the weekend and re-assemble on Monday.
Go home and re-load for an Occupy protest? The people of Egypt and
Tunisia must have thrown their heads back and laughed at the picnic we
were having.
But I don’t blame Bakare. Unfortunately, I make bold to say that
retreat is ingrained in the Nigerian character. As I read Chinua Achebe
make his justifications for why himself and his intellectual
friendsagreed that Biafra should surrender to the rampaging Nigerian
forces and give up the hard-won independence for which more than a
million had died, I came to that conclusion that we are a people defined
by retreat, or as my former pastor put it, “the spirit of almost
there”.
Bakare made his call for surrender last year because the people were
ready to surrender, and Bakare is a politician, and politicians listen
to the people. The people he was leading had begun to grumble on
Facebook and Twitter and to murmur at protest grounds across the
country. They wanted a break from the protest; they had become tired.
I was in the middle of that protest, working with friends and
associates to mobilise young people, and indeed it was a cause for great
agony. Colleagues at my office were eager to return to work, many
hadlost the financial and other resources that kept the appearances of a
normal life while we protested, there had been reports of breakdown of
law and order across the state as hoodlums held sway, and people were
just frankly, tired.
Let me also share a secret that we don’t want those in government to
know: the entire protest wasn’t dependent on our will to see the course
to the finish, it was sadly dependent on our hope and prayer that
President Jonathan would suddenly agree with us and then reduce the pump
price and would quickly declare “mission accomplished” and go back to
our familiar routines. When five days after we left our jobs, he hadn’t
done that, and his body language portrayed a man who was convinced he
was doing the right thing, Nigerians began to second-guess themselves.
That was when we lost the battle.
Bakare made the popular call, that inadvertently signaled to the
powers that be that Nigerians were not really for a revolution, as it
were, or even a change in approach to governance.
We looked ready, we smelt ready, we sounded ready, but no, we were not ready.
No advancing army facing a ferocious, and equally advancing enemy stops to break bread. And that was the end of that.
Let me quickly say on the subject of Biafra, I cannot even begin to
understand the effects of war, and how devastating – dehumanising – it
must have been for the Igbos and minority ethnic groups (of which I
amone) caught in the borders of what would have been a new nation in
those times. It is more likely than not that if I had been involved in
that war, I wouldhave sided with the majority and conceded. I would have
chosen respite overfreedom, and reason over justice. A living dog is,
after all, better than adead tiger.
Unfortunately, being “unreasonable” (and may I gratuitously affirm
that this is said with all sense of responsibility) that is the nature
of revolutions, and of the fight of a people to define their nations. It
is the fight the people of Syria are having as we speak; one that the
people of South Africa continued to the finish, one that South Sudan has
fought and one that those inspiring people of Egypt have refused to
stop having until their leaders do exactly what the mass of the people
desire to be done.
It comes at so high a cost, that only a handful of nations per
civilisation are able to begin and stay that course. Honestly? I am
unconvinced that Nigerians belong to that small circle of peoples with
thatcapacity for no retreat, no surrender.
By way of explaining this, some Nigerians have then tried to justify
our culture of retreat – maybe we do not need a mass revolt; everyone
after-all cannot be Egypt – and probably they are right. You couldpoint
to countries like Singapore and Malaysia and perhaps post-conflict
Rwanda, and to some extent modern Ghana, and speak to quiet and steady
economic transformation driven (in some cases) by popular democracy as
the solid alternative to “needless” bloodshed and the sacrifice of life
and limb.
That is a legitimate explanation. Unfortunately, it is neither here
nor there. How do we fundamentally change our country if we will not do
it by driving the fear of our collective anger into the hearts of our
leaders?
There is no other choice – in the absence of a mass revolt, those who
seek to drive change now need to fall back on incrementalchange, a
collection of little drops of activity by different sectors of society
that will eventually deliver what some have called the Flywheel Effect.
This will involve a deliberate, sustained effort to move from business
as usual in the way our country is run.
Unfortunately (maybe fortunately) incremental change is in fact the hardest change of all.
It requires a coalition of people committed to that change; it
requires a singular strategy; the kind that has driven China’s economic
transformation; and it requires the sitting down to work out the details
and contours of the shape this change should take.
It requires leaders who have the character to think of a long game
and have the vision and temperament to build the coalition mentioned
above, and it will require the collectivity of aspirations where we
trade off some of our demands (call it principles) in the short term in
order to win a long term war and earn the change that our country needs.
Does all of this give you a headache already? Yeah, I know the
feeling. That’s why some people just prefer to take a gun and get the
job done faster.
Well, take some painkillers quickly. We have work ahead of us.
DailyPost
Real
Madrid coach Jose Mourinho decided against travelling to Monday’s
Ballon d’Or Gala in Zurich not only because he did not think he was
going to win the award for Best Coach, but also due to his strained
relationship with his own players, Goal.com has learned.
