If you follow the headlines and social media chatter, by tomorrow Nigeria should be a heaving cauldron of rage. Promoters of nationwide protests are promising ‘10 Days of Rage.’ One of the groups led by veteran agitator Omoyele Sowore that has identified with the action has ‘Revolution Now!’ as its rallying cry.
By every definition, revolution suggests a violent overthrow of the existing order. Equally, the promise of rage from mobs of the people, directed at those in authority is ominous. Little wonder that the government is taking the threats seriously. It is mobilising as if war is imminent. Everyone from governors to ministers and sundry supporters of the administration have been preaching peace – trying to talk would-be protesters out of their proposed action.
It’s fast turning into a typical Nigerian farce. While anti-government protesters are frothing at the gills with righteous rage over the cost of living crisis, supporters of the administration who argue that the protests are just another political ploy of frustrated election losers to secure regime change by any means necessary, are equally mobilising to have their say. It could just turn out to be 10 days of duelling rallies.
Since the beginning of the year discontent has been bubbling under the surface as food and petrol prices spiked. The long drawn process of negotiating a new minimum wage – with a brief labour strike thrown in to spice things up – deepened that air of tension.
But much as the raw materials for agitation have been present locally, this protest is far from original – with most of those backing it admitting to receiving inspiration from the recent violent uprising in Kenya. Those protests left parts of central Nairobi in ruins, with 40 dead and the country in shock over what had just played out. The youthful protesters could claim a victory of sorts after President William Ruto withdrew the contentious Financial Bill which came with myriad taxes.
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For Nigeria, there are parallels to the situation in Kenya. Ruto took office in 2022 following a bitter election battle in which his predecessor didn’t back him. On his very first day in office, he scrapped the country’s age-long petrol subsidies – triggering fierce criticism as prices spiked. This mirrors President Bola Tinubu’s journey. He, too, emerged after an ugly electoral battle which his rivals fought up to the Supreme Court. He announced the end of fuel subsidies at his inauguration and floated the naira. What followed was raging inflation that has so far defied a myriad of interventions.
For those who are ever ready to copy the latest fads in other countries as panacea for Nigeria, the Kenyan example looked attractive given the president’s quick capitulation on the Financial Bill. But after the smoke cleared and the hotheads had a chance to review the wreckage, it was debatable what the riots achieved. One of most notable enhancers of the protests, parliamentarian George Ndung’u was forced to issue a craven apology for his role in the crisis after seeing the consequences of what he had fanned.
For those who are so gung-ho about protests, the assumption is that they can bring about much that is good. Unfortunately, beyond venting and being a channel for people to let out their frustrations, they don’t achieve much. After the burning, maiming and killings, Kenya hasn’t become heaven just because someone set a part of parliament on fire. You then have to wonder whether somebody’s proposed ‘10 days of rage’ would bring the price of rice down to N18,000 or a litre of petrol to N180.
The presumption is that the president and other leaders at different levels are so oblivious of happenings in the country that they require nationwide protests whose eventual outcomes are unknown, to wake them up or force them to work miracles they’ve been unwilling to produce until now.
One of the key weaknesses of the protest supposed to start tomorrow is the woolly way in which it is conceived. Officially, it is tagged the #EndBadGovernance protests. But what constitutes good or bad governance? A shopping list that has been floating around on social media has among other things the return of fuel subsidy and release of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu as demands. This is the same subsidy that all presidential candidates at the last election committed to remove.
For some naive souls who will join themselves to the protests, it is supposedly about hunger. But the nebulous demand for an end to ‘bad governance’ plays into the hands of those who insist that it is the latest political chess move by embittered election losers.
One of the clear lessons of the #EndSARS protests is that it had a clear, achievable goal that was captured in its name. For as long as the focus remained on police brutality and terminating the Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS), the agitation went swimmingly.
The government quickly capitulated and scrapped the unit. But the organisers didn’t know when they had won. Instead of moving on they began tacking on new demands in the giddy and vain belief that their newly-discovered street power was all-conquering. It was overreach that played into the hands of the authorities.
Unlike the Buhari regime which initially responded in a lackadaisical manner to the #EndSARS crisis in Lagos, the Bola Tinubu administration isn’t taking things for granted. That certainly comes from experiencing at first hand how quickly an out-of-control protest nearly brought the country’s commercial nerve centre to its knees. The scars are still fresh. Many of the facilities that were razed by protesters still out of commission.
Given that no price can be put on human life, the discourse in the aftermath largely revolved around whether there were killings at the Lekki Toll Gate. Everyone has their own version of what happened at that location on that sad night. What didn’t become cause celebre are the killings that happened elsewhere. Policemen were murdered, their stations razed. Prisons were forced open and dangerous criminals let loose. Most of those escapees are roaming free, wreaking havoc till this day. No one can forget the haunting images of scores of newly-bought BRT buses casually burnt in the name of rage.
No one who lived through that episode would take the threat of a similar protest by faceless organisers lightly. Wisely, the government has acknowledged the right of those who have been hurt by its policies to protest. Where there is a departure is that those who are quick to parrot constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly are not so fast to state that the rights of protesters don’t supersede those of other Nigerians who want to get on with their lives, or to get to their work place in peace.
Given our past experiences, none of these organisers can guarantee things won’t spiral out of control, or that their protesters won’t be hijacked by other forces.
The country is at a critical juncture. President Tinubu’s reform may have had a bruising effect, but he has also made an effort to provide relief. They are by no means enough. But the charitable must admit that he’s only had a year to do the job. His critics expect him to perform transformational magic in that time.
He is supposed to banish fuel scarcity that has plagued the country since the 70s in 13 months. From 1999 to 2023, billions of naira were ploughed into turnaround maintenance of the nation’s refineries, yet none is working as of date. Tinubu is supposed to simply lay hands on them and they miraculously come back to life.
Most of the so-called demands of the protesters are things that only a military dictator can deliver. The president on his own cannot amend the constitution or restructure the country without the National Assembly. The release of Kanu is matter complicated by many court cases. It’s pointless discussing some other ridiculous demands which only confirm that those who wrote them have been spending too much time watching TV talking heads.
So would Nigeria go up in flames tomorrow as some fear? I doubt it very much. A damp squib would be delivered because those driving these ‘me too’ protests are not clear as to what they expect out of this action. They are keen to start something but have no exit strategy. Like those who came before them with #EndSARS they will soon discover that rage has its uses, but it can also be badly abused; and good governance goes beyond conjuring another trendy hashtag. Hopefully rage will give way to constructive engagement.
