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Happiness Monday has wrestled with poverty and hunger for many years. Things got worse when her boyfriend impregnated her and abandoned her to her fate. When she could no longer bear the situation, the young woman reportedly connived with a midwife and sold her newborn baby for N400,000. Both Happiness and the midwife are said to be in police custody in Rivers State.
Many other Nigerian women have sold their babies due partly to hardship. Essential food items are scarce and unaffordable. Many people have no job. Crime rate has ballooned. Death has become very common as many people cannot even afford basic medical care.
Angered by this turn of events, Nigerian youths decided to embark on a nationwide protest tagged #EndBadGovernace. It started on Thursday, August 1, 2024, and is billed to end August 10. The protesters’ demands are simple and clear: Nigerian government should put an end to bad governance, high fuel and commodity prices, cut in the cost of governance, among others.
A sympathetic government should have engaged the organisers of the protests, calmed frayed nerves and nipped the protest in the bud. But what did we see? Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, reportedly committed what amounts to crushing pepper and spraying it into the eyes of Nigerians. He was widely quoted to have said late last month that “those who want to protest can protest, but let us be there eating.” He spoke at an event organized by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in Rivers State. Akpabio’s media handlers later engaged in damage control. His Consultant on Communications and Strategy, Kenny Okolugbo, denied the statement credited to his boss. According to him, the motive of the negative report was to bring Akpabio in conflict with the Nigerian masses.
Let’s even assume that Akpabio didn’t say what he was quoted to have said on the nationwide protests. What about some past statements that presented him as insensitive and garrulous?
Earlier in the year, he taunted Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State during the funeral of the late CEO of Access Bank Plc, Herbert Wigwe. Reflecting on the death of Wigwe and the vanity of life, Fubara had wondered what the struggles of politicians were all about when they could not make impact in the life of their people. In a mocking tone, Akpabio told Fubara to stop struggling since there was nothing in the struggle.
The other day, he took on the Senator representing Kogi Central, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. The woman commented on a motion without his permission during plenary. His reaction was to tell Natasha that the Senate was not a nightclub where anybody could talk anyhow. The outrage that followed his comments made him recant and apologise to the woman. We have not forgotten the money he shared to senators for their holiday last year only to turn around and call it prayer token when his comment backfired.
In sane countries, he will not come close to the seat of power. But Nigerians are wired differently. Some people will not see anything wrong with Akpabio’s inanities because they are either of the same ruling party with him or he is their tribesman and benefactor. Blinded by these selfish tendencies, Akpabio’s acolytes and cheerleaders have continued to goad him on. Soon, they may begin to chant ‘alleluia’ when he laughs and ‘bless you’ when he coughs. But all these will end the day the majority of Nigerians realise that though tribe and tongue may differ, they stand in the brotherhood of poverty, hunger, and other vicissitudes of life.
And this brings me to people like Bayo Onanuga who thrive on ethnic profiling and hate speech to maintain their jobs. Onanuga is President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy. His present pastime is to make the Igbo the butt of his hate speech. He demonstrated this effectively during the presidential campaign in 2023. When people complained, he said he owed no apologies to the Igbo because they were an existential threat to his people.
In the heat of the plans for the ongoing nationwide hunger protests, Onanuga came out with a verdict that Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 election, and his supporters were masterminds of the protests. According to him, these masterminds are anarchists and bad losers who seek to destabilise the country through a civilian coup.
In haunting Obi, Onanuga closed his eyes to the fact that protests against bad governance are gaining momentum in Africa. Kenyan youths protested recently against the finance bill which would have amounted to higher taxes for them. Government agents killed some of them. Earlier in the year, there were protests in Senegal against the attempt by its then-President Macky Sall to delay scheduled elections. Ghanaians also protested against economic hardship and unemployment last year while Ugandan youths protested against corruption last month. Even in the United Kingdom, there have been violent protests across many cities following the murder of three young girls in northwest England. It was the most widespread rioting in that country for 13 years. The difference between the British riots and ours is that while the British police were professional in dispersing the rioters, our own security agents reportedly fired live ammunition at protesters, killing a number of them and injuring others.
The questions for Onanuga are, was it also Obi that asked security agents to shoot at protesters in Abuja, Kano and elsewhere? Was he the one who paid the youths to loot and destroy some properties in Kano and some other northern states?
It is ironical that one of the spokespersons of the President is the one fanning the embers of divisions in the country. Apparently taking a cue from Onanuga, some faceless elements issued a fatwa against the Igbo people living in Lagos and the South-West. They want the Igbo to leave the South-West in what they tagged, #IgboMustGo. This originated from a verified social media handle, Lagospedia. The characters behind this are known, but beyond the nationwide outrage and condemnation, nothing much has been done to sanction the culprits. This is how Rwanda’s genocide started in 1994.
It is obvious that the majority of the Igbo did not take part in this nationwide protest. And they made it clear that they wouldn’t be part of it. Their non-participation in the protest is a form of protest itself. They have been agitating for good governance, freedom, free and fair elections. Their agitations were not heeded. Rather, they became targets of ethnic bigots who harassed and attacked them for wishing to participate in the political and electoral processes of their country. They became victims of a civil war which consumed millions of lives of their compatriots. They have been treated like second-class citizens in a country they are supposed to be equal partners.
It is pertinent to note that ordinary citizens relate well with one another. They intermarry and do many things in common. Pa Ayo Adebanjo, the Leader of Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-political group, supported Peter Obi, an Igbo, all through the campaign for the presidency in 2023. Some of his kinsmen vilified him for supporting Obi against their own Tinubu. He stood his ground even up until now. There are many other liberal, detribalized South-Westerners who discard primordial sentiments in their actions and utterances.
Our major problem lies in some politicians who want to exploit our differences to achieve their sinister motives. They know that unity of purpose among the various groups in the country will kick them out of office. So, they tell some of their gullible followers that their quest to snatch and grab power is to make their lives better. But once they rig themselves into office, they bother less about the same people they swore to protect. What then occupies their minds more is how to acquire new presidential jets, fresh loans, new sport utility vehicles, new houses and how to cruise around the globe with trusted allies in search of elusive foreign investments.
It is unfortunate that we have many good and qualified candidates for leadership but the corrupt system we have does not throw them up. This is why we have continued to grope around as a country for over 63 years. There is every need to sanitize the system. And it should start from the top. Tinubu should prepare to hand over in 2027 as it has become apparent that he has nothing to offer. Before then, he should rejig his cabinet.
He should follow up with his warning to those who have taken undue advantage of the current protests to threaten a section of the country. “The law will catch up with you. There is no place for ethnic bigotry or such threats in the Nigeria we seek to build,” he said in his speech on Sunday. Let the President start with Onanuga. Akpabio should either leave now or wait until 2027 to be shown the way out. And that is if there will be any free and fair election in the first place.
