#EndSARS June 13, 2016

#SomberTuesday !

Yesterday was Democracy Day in Nigeria, the first observance of June 12 in the “emil’okan era. The lawsuits challenging the election results are still in process. Considering the viral video of the hubris-laden valedictory speech of one of our Senators, whose wife was the past President of the Court of Appeals, wahala dey! So, my anecdotal assessment last week is accurate (that "it's hard to imagine that they'll (the courts) overturn the results"). This is one of the big shockers of the moment. It has knocked out the removal of the fuel subsidy, and the immediate jacking up of the price of petrol at the pumps. Another issue that competes for the limelight, or notoriety is the suspension and arrest of Godwin Emefiele, the CBN Governor, for alleged acts so nefarious that the matter is Nollywood-worthy (https://www.premiumtimesng.com/business/business-news/603675-suspended-cbn-governor-godwin-emefiele-arrested-detained.html ).

There are also issues about how NDIC is hamstrung by a last minute law that makes it a toothless bulldog and tool for venal elites to invalidate it from fulfilling its mandate. Femi Falana also compiled a damning "Catalogue of looting and brigandage in Nigeria" (https://247ureports.com/2023/06/catalogue-of-looting-and-brigandage-in-nigeria-as-the-real-subsidies-are-not-for-the-poor-but-for-the-rich-class-femi-falana-san/ ) to show that the petrol subsidy being removed was not beneficial to the poor but was a subsidy to crony capitalists who had fed fat on the riches of Nigeria to the detriment of the marginalized, impoverished masses. The litany of woes can fill numerous books. High inflation is the bane of the existence of the salariat and precariat (workers who are salary and wage earners in precarious situations). Those salary earners depending on their cars for transportation are trying to make daily magic by robbing Peter to pay Paul. People who take public transportation also have to make the magic of stretching inelastic resources to make ends meet because of escalated costs of all consumables, including transportation. Organized labor needs to think seriously about exactly how wage and salary earners will be able to meet their basic human needs, and what their role ought to be in ensuring that they act in the interest of their members. This is a basic part of democratic imperatives.

I decided to recall some of what I've said over the years about the matters I write on weekly. Here is one written during the 2019 elections (https://www.academia.edu/4249035/Moj%C3%BAb%C3%A0ol%C3%BA_Ol%C3%BAf%C3%BAnk%C3%A9_Okome_editor_Contesting_the_Nigerian_State_Civil_Society_and_the_Contradictions_of_Self_Organization )

The statistics show that the emil'okan era is a continuation of Nigeria’s continued obliviousness to gender equity, inclusion of people living with disabilities, the poor, and the youths. On the gender issue, 23 years ago, I wrote this: (https://www.academia.edu/970148/Women_the_State_and_the_Travails_of_Decentralizing_the_Nigerian_Federation ). Power has been appropriated by an ableist, oligarchic gerontocracy. Youths (under 30 years old ) constitute 70 percent of the population of Nigeria. Multidimensional poverty afflicts 133 million Nigerians, a good 63 percent of the population. For such folks, any measures that cause higher prices for staples and necessities is destabilizing, even catastrophic enough to become a matter of life and death. People living with disabilities are not only excluded from elected and appointed positions of authority, most are not given the accommodations and resources needed to live comfortable, productive lives.

Insecurity, abductions and kidnappings have not stopped. Governance that produces good outcomes is yet to be accomplished in Nigeria. This is clearly because we lack political institutions strong enough to produce state capacity and political will to implement policies and administer justice.

Whether one favors Nigeria Bureau of Statistics’ 33.4 percent unemployment in the 4th quarter of 2020 (https://nigerianstat.gov.ng/elibrary/read/1238 ) or the Nigerian Economic Summit Group’s (NESG) projection of 37 percent unemployment in 2023 (https://businessday.ng/business-economy/article/nigerias-unemployment-rate-to-hit-37-in-2023-nesg/ ) or even KPMG’s approximately 41 percent for the same period (https://www.premiumtimesng.com/business/business-news/591879-nigerias-unemployment-rate-projected-to-hit-40-6-kpmg.html ), also considering high underemployment statistics, it is clear that life is hard for a good number of Nigerians. The solution to this problem is decent jobs, but they are few and far between. The blithe recommendation that people should be more entrepreneurial would not yield significant benefits because failure is as much a potential result from entrepreneurial efforts as success. What happens to those who fail? Who takes care of them except kindhearted, magnanimous and well-resourced family and friends? How many of those are out there?

Nigerians are hopeful that the new administration has viable solutions to the socioeconomic problems that dog their heels, meaning that they want what is now popularly described as good governance. Since the sitting president said he is bringing hope, the expectation is warranted. But going from a promised hope to its reality for the majority are two different things. Regardless, Nigerians have expressed optimism that there will be improvement in their lives that contribute to human security. This is why many say there should be unity, and fervent prayers are being said that call upon God to ensure that the emil’okan administration accomplish the goals of slaying the fierce figurative giants that have visited their wrath on Nigeria, bringing hunger, misery, and insecurity to the majority.

Nigeria should stop the backsliding of the democracy that is still a newborn child as democracies go. We should respect and strengthen electoral integrity. INEC must be overhauled and strengthened to perform its constitutionally mandated job of election management.

Nation-building is an imperative. Making the constitution more relevant by ensuring that the full rights of citizenship is available to all Nigerians is essential. We need a nation that treats all Nigerians with evenhanded equity, justice, and fairness. Unity would then be within reach, because it is impossible to have peace without justice. And having peace and justice would contribute to the possibility of attaining political, social, and economic transformation. For these things and all the positive change we want to materialize, we should stop agonizing, and organize consistently and concertedly to create the Nigeria we want.

To reiterate, for there to be a democracy worth its salt, Nigerians must all have full citizenship rights. The fundamental democratic principles and values including freedom, equality, fairness, equity, justice, and transparency, accountability, the rule of law, respect for human rights must be part and parcel of everyday life in Nigeria.

Majority of young Nigerians are intimately aware of shapa (unrelenting suffering). This drives them to seek japa--leaving the country by any means necessary as an avenue to what they believe are greener pastures abroad. To address their hopes and aspirations for better lives, there should be opportunities to secure decent jobs in Nigeria (see the International Labour Organisation’s definition of decent work here:?https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/decent-work/lang--en/index.htm ). The dominance of octogenarians over Nigerian political landscape must also not be perpetuated. On this and the matter of lack of gender equity as well as on the inadequacies of party politics in Nigeria, I excerpt this long quote from what I said in my aforementioned 2019 paper:

“While Nigeria has a very young population, two men in their 70s are the strongest candidates in the Presidential contest. It would have been ideal for the country to have equally strong young

candidates who were well-prepared to challenge the gerontocrats. There also are no strong women candidates to challenge the male preserve that Nigerian Presidency has become. Not having women and youth in leadership means there are few to no new ideas introduced into the political system. The dynamic ideas and innovations that women and youth could have offered to transform social, political and economic policy are prevented from seeing the light of day. It is also inequitable and undemocratic to shut out majority of Nigerians from leadership. Nigeria’s democratic project is therefore stymied, diminished and inadequate to meet contemporary challenges.

Political parties are important institutions for a well-functioning democratic system. They should mobilize and bring people who share common interests together, select the best candidates to run for office, strive to gain control of the government through well-organized campaigns that ask the electoral to vote for their candidates. They also should monitor the opposition, have platforms that identify and agglomerate issues based on the party’s ideology and interests. However, Nigerian political parties are expedient gatherings of people whose bandwagon-ing, cross-carpet strategies show that the only logic is that of capturing state power. Electoral campaigns are marked by violence, straightforward material inducements that ask the electorate to exchange votes for money, food, and other commodities. This transactional tendency is so strong that it has been dubbed “stomach infrastructure.” The parties also lack internal democracy, and primaries are often rigged. The two biggest parties—APC and PDP are indistinguishable. Each has people whose wealth cannot be attributed to anything but kleptocracy. Each has corrupt, expedient, unethical politicians.”?

Godwin Emefiele’s suspension, arrest by the State Security Service (SSS), and his ongoing interrogation by the EFCC bring to the fore, the face of the policymaker that brought the scourge that the new currency became into the lives of Nigerians. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that he did not make the policy all by himself. It is also clear that he was not sufficiently autonomous. Emefiele arrest notwithstanding, ATMs remain frustratingly devoid of cash in most of the country. Mobile telephones that work well are essential for not only decent communication but for the cashless economy that we were made to believe would materialize. Instead, we have the absurdity of multiple attempts to do transactions that should take seconds to complete. If we were to calculate the human hours wasted as a result of doing so many things several times that ought to be one-shot deals, we would be shocked.

In my humble opinion, inflation is much too high, and the removal of the fuel subsidy will make things worse for the majority poor. We are also not out of the woods when it comes to the economic downturn that is making life more difficult still.

Genuine democracy and economic development, personal and human security, the wellbeing and welfare of citizens, and the masses’ ability to meet their basic needs are all necessities that Nigeria cannot afford to delay.

The #EndSARS protests were also expressions of hope for a better Nigeria. The youth protesters also hoped that the 2023 elections would produce avenues to accomplish the breakthrough that would bring us closer to the new Nigeria. They voted in large numbers and otherwise contributed to the process but were frustrated by the manner in which the elections were managed. The 2020 #EndSARS protests demanded good governance, termination of police brutality, extortion, impunity, economic inequality, marginalization, profiling and characterizing youths and other minorities as miscreants. They called for political violence to end. They called for deepened democracy. State reaction was brutal, repressive, and punitive. Misinformation and disinformation sponsored by the state also described #EndSARS youths' protests as foreign-sponsored and unpatriotic.

The 2020 Lekki massacre at #LekkiTollGate & other locations are anathema to genuine democracy.

Nigerians hope for unity, peace, democracy and sustainable development. These are central to the petitions of the #EndSARS activists.

Kleptocracy is devastating. Resources that all Nigerians own in common ought not be seized by the oligarchs and their cronies, who are numerically, minute minorities. Present and future generations of Nigerians deserve an end to kleptocracy and all its deleterious effects.

Nigerians need progressive transformation, and collectively imagined as well as constructed democracy. It is a difficult process because it took us a while to get into the morass in which we now find ourselves. Nonetheless, we can take on the challenges that we face with fortitude, persistence, and enthusiasm, with a generoush dash of hope. We have to all get to work in unity to create the Nigeria we want.

#NigerianWomenArise #EndPoliceBrutalityinNigeriaNOW

#EndSars

#EndSWAT

#EndImpunity .

Howard Zinn’s words are relevant to Nigeria’s economic, political, and social development:

“Civil disobedience, that’s not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while, the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

Let me reiterate my weekly refrain:

Let the kleptocrats give back our stolen wealth so that we can fix our infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and also offer worthwhile social protection to our people. Let the masses enjoy the full benefits of citizenship in Nigeria. Let the leaders and political class repent and build peace with justice.

This is no time for politics as usual. The people elected should be those trusted to bring justice, equity and human security to the entire country, not expedient, unethical and egocentric individuals determined to dominate for self-aggrandizement or sectional gain. We don't need oligarchs' continued domination. We also need a government that puts the interests of the majority of citizens first. I remain optimistic that this will happen in my lifetime.