Tag: Hardship

Last Monday, protesters mobilised to Minna and Kano city streets over what they described as unremitting economic hardship compounded by insecurity. Though the Minna, Niger State, protests were at a point hijacked by hoodlums, both protests in the two northern states were neither violent nor unmanageable. Days later, civil society organisations in Osun State, particularly youths, also staged a protest against rising cost of living. They said they had reached the end of their tethers. In none of the three states was the angry crowd overwhelming. But in Minna and Kano, the governors were sensitive enough to comment on the protests as well as attempt to take some remedial measures. Governor Mohammed Umar Bago of Niger State may not have taken impeccable actions to grapple with the issues raised by the protesters, but of the three states where protests broke out, he was probably the most responsive, if not proactive. Niger State is governed by the national ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

In his reaction to the Kano protests, Governor Abba Yusuf promised to meet with President Bola Tinubu to intimate him with the reasons for the protest and discuss solutions. Kano is governed by the populist New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) led by ex-Kano governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Mr Yusuf gives the impression that the protests transcended state political and economic dynamics. In Osogbo, Osun State, where youths, including students’ union organisations, also took to the streets, the protests ended with an imperial two-week ultimatum to the federal government to address the hardship in the country. Where some human rights activists are exploring legal options to compel the government to fix prices in a free market economy, and while the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) are opting for a national strike, other groups think a massive street protest should compel an administration they say is dithering to rouse itself from slumber. With incredible casuistry, some are even advocating a revolution.

The Niger, Kano, Osun and NLC actions may presage a massive reaction against the Tinubu administration’s policies. The ruling party is wary of the protests, and its spokesmen have insisted that the demonstrations and threats are politically motivated, especially given opposition leaders’ spontaneous identification with the protesters. The ruling party does not doubt the prevailing economic hardship, but it argues that reforms take time to gestate and bear fruits. It adds that the simultaneousness of the Minna and Kano protests indicates something sinister and premeditated. Mr Bago’s findings attributed the Minna protests to misinformation about truckloads of food items being transported through Minna, which some hoodlums had planned to intercept and ransack. Kano’s Gov Yusuf gave no casus belli for the protests other than that he planned to meet the president for a review. Overall, no one doubts the problem associated with rising cost of living occasioned by fuel subsidy removal, floating of the naira, insecurity in the countryside and on farms, and a needless centralisation of authority in the hands of the national government. When things go wrong, as indeed they have, the blame is consequently not decentralised. The president takes all the blame. And until the constitution is amended and powers devolved, the president will continue to take all the blame, justified or not.

The protests make a few things urgent. One is that the administration has a little time left to ameliorate the hardship ravaging the country. Whether the reforms embarked upon by the government are unimpeachable or not, the hunger and hardship experienced by the poor and downtrodden make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to be amenable to the logic and niceties of economics. The first few protests should, therefore, be viewed as an opportunity for the government to familiarise itself with the feelings and pains of the public and have a little time and leeway to make amends. That the economy was battered years ago before the advent of the current administration means nothing to the hungry. Two, the protests give the government the opportunity to reassess its diagnosis of the problem and, more importantly, retool and recalibrate the prognosis. Even if the administration is cocksure about the problem, it needs a second look and second view to convince itself that there is no other way of resolving the crisis or that those saddled with the crisis are the best hands for the task.

The third urgent task before the administration is to see whether from the disparate views of national lawmakers, economic analysts, and opposition critics there are no pearls of wisdom in following a different trajectory to solve the crisis at hand. It is possible that the administration’s diagnosis is flawless, but are the identification and execution of the solutions also flawless? History lessons show that the best of governments, not to say the best and most perceptive of statesmen, have sometimes been honestly mistaken. Costs have risen astronomically, and the dispossessed have had little or no succour: it, therefore, makes the country’s situation somewhat flammable. The protests give the administration the opportunity to review itself and the capacity and competence of officials saddled with the responsibility of helping the president to run, reform and stabilise the country. The protests, even if they were instigated by the opposition and other saboteurs, indicate that the administration cannot maintain its present course, either in terms of the solutions or in regards to palliatives. There is too much chaos in the system, particularly the economy, to obviate the forebodings many fear may be imminent.

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Notwithstanding the genuineness of the protests and the reasons that inspire them, critics, labour unions, protesters and opposition parties must mind their methods and the language they use in communicating their anger and disappointments. They have sometimes spoken and acted like they desire the collapse of the country, and with it 25 years of democracy. The security and intelligence services have sometimes been tardy in exposing and dealing with such subversive inclinations, but nevertheless, it is time the country as a whole exercised caution and restraint. Decades of economic mismanagement have brought the country to a difficult pass. Yet, the current administration has only spent eight months out of a four-year term. Wishing or, worse, plotting the administration’s collapse could produce dire and unintended consequences whose course no one can predict or manage. Leaders of the opposition have been particularly irresponsible, as if they have it all worked out how to benefit from a total collapse. And too many ignorant critics and activists are simply unmindful of the end result of their actions. They unduly romanticise revolution, and hope that if any blood would be shed, it would be other people’s blood.

But history begs to disagree. Iranian Revolution overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979 but only managed to replace one dictatorship with another, with the Islamic Revolution a far cry from the more refined and cosmopolitan Persian Empire it has unsuccessfully tried to imitate. Russians had their own revolution in 1917 and managed to acquire close to 12 million people dead in the civil war that followed, about 1.2m executed during Stalin’s purges, and an estimated seven million dead from the famine that followed collectivisation. The French also valorised revolution and procured one in 1789, leading to the death of most of those who inspired it, replacement of their monarchy with Napoleon Bonaparte’s dictatorship which took close to six million people to early graves through needless wars. The Nigerian political opposition may loath their electoral losses, and other so-called ‘owners of Nigeria’ may still be miffed by the outcome of the February 2023 presidential election, but wishing or plotting the collapse of the country in order to mitigate their electoral losses and justify their prophecies is as foolish as the remorseless Ibrahim Babangida military dictatorship that prevented MKO Abiola from assuming the presidency he won in 1993.

It is time the culture of protests was regulated to entrench systemic survival. Protest is a constitutional right that cannot be abridge, but it must not enable a few to instigate a catastrophe upon the nation. In any case, a single term is only four years, after which elections will be held to either endorse an old administration or elect a new one. Britain proved that point in the 18th and 19th centuries by opting for gradual change when Europe embraced revolutions. Critics and unions breathing and speaking fire must be made aware of the consequences of their actions. However, the Tinubu administration cannot pretend not to suspect that his panaceas are indeed not working the way he expects.

It is time the Tinubu administration recognised, and perhaps started to voice it out, that much of Nigeria’s existential crisis was caused by a badly structured federation that needs a comprehensive overhaul. He may not be able to inspire that holistic reworking of the constitution now, but he needs to urgently begin to isolate, amend and implement some of the provisions of the constitution. Too many people and regions have a sense of entitlement that must be discouraged from taking further roots. Niger State governor probably realised this, which was why he took control of the protests that convulsed his state last Monday. His panaceas may be unimplementable in some respects, and his accusations of those behind the protests may be unfair, but he was smart enough to take control of the situation and deal with it the best way he deemed fit. Kano’s Mr Yusuf should borrow a leaf from Mr Bago. More, President Tinubu, whose record of democratic activism is probably incomparable, must also through constitutional and legal changes begin to encourage governors and local government chairmen to take responsibility in their states. Abuja does not hold all the aces; some of the aces, as insecurity at the local levels and in their forests show, are in the hands of proactive state and local leaders.