Not yet the talakawa revolution

The possibility of a talakawa revolution casts a dark shadow at the back of our minds. It may or may never happen. But will the poor continue to take it or would there come a time when they can’t take it anymore and take it out on the rich and the powerful? It is a darkening thought and a harrowing possibility.

I would imagine that every nation polarised by economic and social inequalities, for which read, capitalist nations, wrestles with the possibility of the table turning in favour of the poor one day, given the unfathomable quirks of nature. Remember the wisdom of the Onitsha lorry owner? No condition is permanent. The poor are the greatest threats to the rich, bar none. They far outnumber the rich.

We have some 100 million of them in our country. That is a scary number if you are entertaining a suicidal thought in your idle moments of doing battle with the poor. By the way, heaven has no intention of eliminating the poor. Jesus the Christ, obviously speaking for his father in heaven, let it be known that we would always have the poor with us. If President Buhari takes out 100 million extremely poor Nigerians out of poverty in ten years, he would not have eliminated poverty in the land. It would not be the end of poverty, I tell you.

When the mindless looters began to loot and destroy public and private properties and insult the integrity of the #EndSARS youth protest over police brutality, one of my friends saw the red light across the sky. He remembered our discussions about the increasing poverty and the circumscribed opportunities for young people and what they portend for our country now and in the future. Because he panicked, I think he mistook the fleeting shadow of his right hand for the handwriting on the wall. To reassure himself, he called me to ask if I thought it was the rise by the talakawa to make everyone equal socially and economically. Social and economic inequalities would be eliminated and we would all either be poor or rich.  In other words, the revolution of the talakawa would have turned the table and the state house and government houses would be occupied by the denizens for Ajegunle.

I did not think the riotous destruction and looting were indicative of the revolution of the talakawa. If the revolution of the talakawa ever happens, it would be more measured and more principled and undertaken by the talakawa to effect fundamental changes, not merely in their individual circumstances, as in an opportunity to loot, but more importantly in the reorganisation of the state to make it fairer and more just. What happened was a clear case of the reign of terror unleashed by young men using the instrumentality of the #EndSARS protest to vent their pent up frustrations on the state they believe has disappointed them. It was a riot of the frustrated and the disappointed intent on making the point that unless we commit to some fundamental changes in the management of our national affairs and challenges, we are merely sitting on  a tinder box. That is a darkening thought on our future, I think.

The scale of the destruction of public and private properties, the sheer freedom enjoyed by the looters who stripped public and private properties bare is a critical low in the management of our national affairs – our wealth and poverty as well as the widening gulf in a two-nation in one country in which alienation has become increasingly unmanageable.

We are not strangers to public protests over government policies we disagree with. We protested the pains of the structural adjustment programme, SAP, and we protested increases in the prices of petroleum products. In all those protests, we did not destroy and we did not loot. The scale of the destruction and the looting shows that we have lost it. Things have changed for the worse. The Nigerian state could not protect public and private properties from being looted, vandalised and in some cases torched. The targeting of some individuals whose homes and businesses were looted further shows an element of personal vendetta in all this. None of this is good for us and our country.

There must be a critical post mortem of the incident that has perhaps drawn a faint line in the sand, as in the youth have found their voice and their power and it could no longer be business as usual. Through acts of commission, our young people have tested the waters in the system and now know that they can make the state helpless, if and when they choose to unleash mayhem on our towns and cities for any number of reasons. We are sitting on a tinder box.

Before the #EndSARS protest was suddenly terminated in a panicky and bloody reaction by the Nigerian state, the youth had gone beyond the original five-point demand on SARS and police reforms and demanded other fundamental changes in the structure and the nature of our federalism. This, of course, is the lingering argument about restructuring, state police and resource control. It would be a big mistake for the government to think that these demands that preceded #EndSARS protests could continue to be conveniently buried under the carpet. I do not think there is a carpet large enough and thick enough to hide them anymore.

We are more and more dissatisfied with how the country is run and the management of its diversity. We cannot continue to run away from asking and addressing the critical questions about where we are and where we ought to be. The National Christian Elders Forum headed by General T.Y. Danjuma, recently issued a statement pretty critical of how the Buhari administration managed the #EndSARS protests. In what looks like a new idea on the lingering issues referred to earlier, the forum said: “It is time to re-negotiate Nigeria. The time is ripe for Nigeria to be re-negotiated. The political imbalance in the country has produced nothing but sorrow, poverty, and death for Nigerians.”

We can no longer re-negotiate with Britain on the structure of our federation and the nature of our federalism. But we can re-negotiate among ourselves. Time, once more, for the native sons and daughters to gather around the table and commit to saving an atomistic country in conflict with itself.