There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity – Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe
There’s anger in the land. The youths are angry. The children, mothers and fathers are angry. Everyone is angry. Angry with the way things are in the country. Angry at the hunger that has dehumanised many and reduced a large number of our people to a pitiable state. Angry at the unemployment level. Angry at the poverty rate, and our rating as the world’s poverty capital.
Angry at our educational standards that have since plummeted to near zero. Angry at the dearth and decay of infrastructural facilities. Angry at our leaders who have done anything but lead and govern. Angry that what we have today is far from the promise of independence, when the British handed over reigns of power to our leaders.
Angry, angry, angry!
This anger is what has boiled over in the last 10 days or so.
Angry youths poured into the streets to demand an end to police brutality symbolised by the dreaded Special Anti- Robbery Squad, SARS.
But, actually, it has been a protest against the many years of misrule and mismanagement of our natural and human endowments by successive leadership. Nigeria is a rich country with poor people.
“Too rich to be poor, and too poor to be rich,” was how American First Lady, Mrs Hillary Clinton, described us. Sadly, that has not changed.
When youths pour into the streets, they are not just demanding an end to police brutality or SARS, they are demanding an end to the frustrations in the land. They are asking for a meaningful, purposeful life. They are asking for accountable leadership at all tiers of governance. They are asking those in leadership positions to sit up, and stop taking the people, especially the youths for granted.
They are demanding a better deal and future. That’s what I can deduce from the protests currently rocking our country. It’s years of accumulated grievances. The youths you encounter on the streets of Lagos, Abuja, Awka or Benin City are not just angry, they are resolute and defiant; neither cowed nor fazed by the menacing looks of security agencies.
What is happening is what some of us had long predicted. That the way things have been going over the years, especially since the birth of the current democratic or rather, civilian dispensation, the chasm between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ could trigger a protest or revolt from the people, particularly our youths.
The value system had been eroded; wealth without sweat has become the order of the day. Democracy or rather, the civil rule has brought more dividends to a few in corridors of power. Amidst these, the youth see no future in their country. I predicted it wouldn’t be long before something snapped. And it just did!
The point, to me, has been made: post- SARS protests, a wake-up signal has been dispatched to our nation’s leaders. No longer will anyone take the youth, indeed the people for granted. No longer will the future of the youth be toyed with.
What is left now is the swift implementation of programmes and policies that prioritises the welfare of the youths. It’s not only the police that needs reforms. The education sector. The economy also needs a fix, an urgent fix.
What we are witnessing is much of economic upheaval as it is social. Democracy must work for the people. Right now it is not.
Democracy, whose democracy really? The first time I asked this question was May 28, 2012, in a piece in THE FLIPSIDE column. Who has been the biggest beneficiary of the dividends of democracy?
The leaders or the people? The answer, I thought was obvious. I observed then: “Democracy, in Nigeria, has ostensibly been the government of a few people ruling in the interests of a privileged, powerful few! The poor get poorer; the majority wallow in misery and all sorts of deprivation. Democracy so far has served largely the interests of those who have found themselves at the helm of leadership.”
I also sought to fathom the reason our country has largely not worked the way it should. Colonialism, military incursion and elite gang up against the people. “From all intents and purposes, Lugard never wanted to build a nation. He couldn’t be bothered about such fangled expressions as ‘unity and nationalism.’ He was a pure businessman representing the colonial office’s business interest!
“My second thesis: our founding fathers seemed to have abandoned nationalism soon after independence. What the three brilliant musketeers, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, practised was regionalism or, at best, confederation: loose federation, with greater regional autonomy. The result: aggressive regional development and expansion.
Each of the regions developed at its own pace. The centre was unattractive as a power base. That did not mean the regional leaders were not patriotic. They loved their nation, but you could not actually call them nationalists in the true sense of the word. Patriotic regionalists, if you like. But that healthy dose of patriotism has been the best and last we have ever witnessed since independence.
“The civilian administrations that came after theirs neither loved their nation, regions nor states. What we have had has been predatory leadership. “It was the military, which came in with their command structure, that restored power to the centre, ruling as unitarists. All orders flowed from the office of Head of State/Commander- in-Chief.
“The presidential system we practice today combines elements of the parliamentary system of the First Republic, militarism or military regime structure and an ill-digested presidential system we are still pretending to practice. What we now have: a rumbling stomach triggered by consumption of concepts and practices incompatible with any human system.
“The third thesis: the reason we have found it difficult to function as a nation in the true sense of the word is simple – elite greed and a docile followership(not anymore).
“Thesis four: Nigeria can be great again. When? Not too long from now. The people are speaking up today as never before. They recognise bad leadership at every level of governance, even if they are not yet able to do something about it.
They know governors that are serving them well and those that are not, self- serving lawmakers, local government councillors who are cancelling projects and enriching themselves. Execu-thieves at all levels will not continue to have a field day. How will it happen? The same way all change occurs: massive discontent and the survival instinct.
When people are pushed to the wall and there is nowhere else to go, they will fight back. With mass poverty and systematic pauperisation of the people, no one needs soothsayers to predict that, sooner than we all think, Nigeria will be restored to Nigerians: a nation guaranteeing the welfare of all its citizenry!”
Eight years after that piece, what is happening today makes the piece prophetic.
We have democracy without dividends for the people, except for a privileged few. We have democracy serving the interest of a greedy minority at the expense of the grieving and starving majority.
To make democracy meaningful, we all must be collective beneficiaries of its dividends. We must have good roads, quality education for our kids and youths, functional health care for our mothers and sisters and transformation of our lives for the better.
These are the parameters by which we will continue to hold our leaders.
