The ability to fend off rape is a prerequisite of the Nigerian psyche. Vulnerability is a double-edged snare. It incites entrapment, creating a maelstrom of gluttony and death around the vulnerable and ethically frail.
As you read, modern Nigeria manifests as a labyrinth of lust, an allegory of war and rape. In the wilderness of lust and shame, society becomes ‘slaughter slab,’ the multiple-room brothel, vibrantly themed and decorated for the Nigerian degenerate.
Degeneracy abounds across societal slabs; across ruling class and the governed, rich and poor divides. While the incumbent ruling class touts its distorted fable of crooked martyrdom, donning the puritan’s cloak, the governed, comprising Nigeria’s teeming impoverished and fast disappearing middle-class, shed blood and brawn to ennoble the monstrosity of their common oppressor, the ruling class.
Just recently, we saw how spectacularly the Charles Oputa aka Charly Boy-led protest group and a pro-Buhari faction hacked at each other with cudgels of folly and blades of rage.
Charly Boy, despite harsh criticisms and unsparing mockery trailing his ‘Resume or Resign” campaign, mobilised his “Our mumu don do” civil society-driven movement to protest President Muhammadu Buhari’s elongated medical tourism in the United Kingdom, at Abuja, Federal Capital Territory (FCT)’s Unity Fountain and Wuse Market.
One school of thought nullifies Charly Boy’s self-painted portrait as modern day hero, calling it an epic fraud. The self-acclaimed ‘Area father’s’ critics deride his professed passion and attempts to ride against violent currents of Nigeria’s tribal, religious bigotries.
Despite their harsh criticism, Charly Boy’s apologists see him as a stunning, courageous patriot, devoted to restoration of the public parliament’s mythical state of influence and enormous power. To the latter, Charly Boy is the black knight and Nigeria, his damsel in distress.
From a previous, violently quashed protest at Unity Fountain, Abuja, the Charly Boy gang moved its stage to FCT’s Wuse Market. But rather than join forces with the Area Father and his crew, a pro-Buhari group in the market, issued a decisive response, in a tenor of violence and murderous rage.
Charly Boy was attacked in Wuse market by angry, pro-Buhari protesters – mostly northern youth. The musician and his cohort of disgruntled youth and cameramen eventually fled for their lives, with the pro-Buhari group hot in pursuit. The pro-Buhari group threw rocks at the 66-year-old, who was eventually rescued by another group of south-eastern youth and security operatives who fired gunshots and tear-gas to disperse the crowd.
Thus an ethnic crisis was narrowly averted. It took the prompt intervention of security operatives for the situation to be salvaged. Charly Boy eventually suspended the protest, telling his cohort that their point had been made. “My brothers and sisters, I’ll like to say thank you for a good job well done; and to say to my fellow comrades, we’ve made our point, let Nigerians judge… Let Nigerians do the needful, do the right thing,” he said.
“Permit me, my fellow comrades, to say that we’ve come to the end of this particular sit-out,” he said.
“Charly Boy caused it, how can he go to Wuse Market to talk against Buhari?” “Those Hausa boys dealt with him…serves him right,” resonates the arguments on social media.
Expectedly, Nigerians are queued in layers of conflicting perspectives in respect of the Charly Boy’s ill-fated protest.
Armchair critics analyse the ensuing imbroglio claiming Charly Boy was probably pursuing someone’s agenda. He must be horseman to some political mastermind’s dark schema, they argue. He is too comfortable, too rich and catered for, to indulge in such desperate display of commoners’ grief, argues Nigeria’s armchair Trotskys.
But that is simply one way to look it. Charly Boy and company perhaps intone a heartfelt misery. Perhaps he isn’t just another child of privilege paying lip service to commoner’s plight, but a true patriot whose love for Nigeria and the country’s suffering and smiley masses, transcends the bounds of his gated paradise.
At the backdrop of these incidents, President Buhari remains in London on medical vacation spanning 100 days or thereabouts. His anti-corruption fight remains a sham, a pseudo war against institutionalised sleaze. And the National Assembly still impedes the strides of his administration.
As usual, there were casualties during the recent protests. It is not surprising that the wounded are mostly unemployed youths, impoverished wards of commoners. However, a rare thing occurred by Charly Boy’s exposure to hurt. A child of privilege, like him, shouldn’t indulge in such dangerous enterprise. But Charly Boy did. Was he for real?
Was his cohort for real? Are they true patriots? Or are they familiar victims of rape? Like hordes of underprivileged youths, were they caught in dizzying sexual dialectic, by which the Nigerian rapist(the ruling class), vainly and methodically strives to plow the raped (clueless, impoverished citizenry) barebacked?
Did paltry sums change hands? Who paid who to stage a phoney protest? Was it a real protest? Was the pro-Buhari group driven by money or dangerous bigotry? Were both groups comprised of true patriots, seeking Nigeria’s best interests?
Their savage world of rape is transcended by higher characters, the puppeteers, who determine the extremes of their ordeal but that is a discussion fit for other fora.
Nigeria would be better off if its youth committed to more laudable ventures; like the pruning of the National Assembly to a unicameral legislature; like protesting against ‘budget padding’ and other corrupt acts by the country’s legislators, the presidency and governors.
It’s about time Nigerian youth stopped lending themselves as muscles to every devious plot or shady protest for a paltry fee. Let the senators, governors, corporate titans and ministers hiding in the shadows, gather their children to lead the protest marches and their currency-activated bloody massacres.
Nigerian youths may draw inspiration from their Kenyan peers. Cynthia Muge, 24, had no millions in her bank account. But few days ago, she contested as an independent candidate because she lacked the funds to obtain the Jubilee Party’s nomination form, and defeated five men to secure the Member of Country Assembly (MCA) seat in Kilibwoni Ward, Nandi County.
Flat broke, the University of Nairobi graduate devised a social media and house-to-house campaign strategy to poll 8,760 votes and beat her closest competitor, Wilson Kiptanui of Jubilee Party’s 8,354 votes.
John Paul Mwirigi’s story is equally inspiring. The 23-year-old unemployed orphan and sixth of eight siblings, also contested as an independent candidate against veteran politicians of established political parties. He emerged winner, polling 18, 867 against Jubilee Party’s Rufus Miriti, who had 15, 411 votes. Three other seasoned politicians — Mwenda Mzalendo (7,695 votes), Kubai Mutuma (6,331 votes) and Raphael Muriungi, a Deputy Governor, two-tome ex-MP and former Assistant Minister (2,278 votes) — were beaten by him. Yet Mwirigi lives in his family home, a local granary in his village.
It is about time Nigerian youths assimilated the finer aspects of tact, humaneness, service and humility. The ‘popular’ musicians chanting their political ambitions on platforms of popular parties are undeserving of the citizenry’s votes. The truly committed patriot would distance himself from the usual ogres. Those who wouldn’t are simply out to ‘rape’ or be ‘raped,’ for a fee.
