THEY WERE NO LONGER AT EASE PART 2.

HOW IT PLAYED OUT.

“the words of encouragement which the bedbug was said to have spoken to her children when hot water was poured on them all. She told them not to lose heart because whatever was hot must in the end turn cold.”
― Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease

The more individuals and so-called intellectuals assumed to be men of good character, sound mind and integrity are pushed forth to represent the people and cure the ills in government, the more they come back filthier and more corrupt than those they were meant to cure. The word ‘integrity’ is the most abused word in the Nigerian political dictionary. In that dictionary, the word now stands for ‘filthy, deceitful, lackadaisical and incompetence’.

On the 20th of July, 2020, at a probe by the House of Representatives over an alleged abuse of ₦81.5bn between October 2019 to 31 May 2020, muds were slung about in different directions, counter allegations were even hauled at persons of ‘integrity’ who were part of the probing panel. The atmosphere became dramatic, beer parlour insults were exchanged, and a certain Professor Pondei gave us a theatric masterclass of how to faint to evade constricting but necessary questions. Of course a certain member of the panel ordered “it’s okay, off your mic” to prevent more implicating counter allegations from being uttered. The ‘Honourable’ members of the house began to feel the need to assert their ‘honour’ and ‘integrity’.

The younger generation saw through this charade and satirized it. The hashtag was #Endsars, but there was an awakening, this generation was not the generation that was going to just off its mic. So they ordered in Yoruba, a Nigerian dialect “soro soke werey” (speak up mad man) and it became a slogan in the course of the protest. The protesting young Nigerians felt that they must speak up before they lose it all.

As the protest grew organically without a core or leadership, it disrupted the Nigerian economy while trying to muscle the government to ultimately cleanse itself and make the right decision. It seemed that the people in whom power ultimately reside were seizing control and trying to make a statement. For a brief moment, the beauty of democracy was in full display in Nigeria.

But where there is a juicy carcass, there are bound to be vultures. Greedy vultures hovered above, pretending to lend their voices to the struggle. These vultures came in the form of career politicians and full-time career human rights activists. Panic-stricken, government officials sought for an easy fix. Rather than fixing the issues, they adopted various mediocre strategies like; paying hoodlums to disrupt the protests, sending police and other security forces to break up the protests and seeking for protest leaders to negotiate with. In self-aggrandizing fashion, these vultures pushed themselves forth and pretended to negotiate with government to further their individual selfish aims as opposed to the collective goals of the protesting youths. They took advantage of the exposure the struggle brought and granted interviews in the media that did not reflect the minds of the protesting youths.

Not oblivious of these self-appointed protest leaders making inordinately absurd compromises and the antics of government officials, the protesting young Nigerians screamed, “they are not our representatives, we have no leaders, fix the problem, we would leave the streets.” For days, protesters were shot at with live bullets and beaten to pulp. Dead bodies littered the streets. Families mourned loved ones whose agitations were not obtuse but simply:

Fix education, fix unemployment, fix the constricting systemic issues that is depriving us of our future, give us a functional police department which instead of violating our rights will act to guarantee those rights and our basic freedom amongst others.

These are the kind of demands that the citizens of functional states should not have to make. The Nigerian legislature churn out new laws against new trending issues as if the laws are inadequate to guide and regulate. But laws are only as good as the will to act and enforce them aright. A government with the right will to be bound by the rule of law, can act and behave right in a progressive manner and find its way within existing legislations.