In a rather belated stampede to establish a feel of the pulse of the country by his administration, President Muhamadu Buhari just deployed his ministers in an unprecedented foray to their states, ostensibly to harness a new consensus on a sustainable course for the government in the remaining 30 months of his tenure. According to the Presidential directive to them, the ministers were expected to visit their bases to market the government and solicit support for it from various interest groups such as youth, traditional rulers, political power brokers and community leaders, in order to obviate a repeat of the #EndSARS protests which wreaked incalculable loss to the country in terms of lives and property. Last week the President also dispatched his Chief of Staff Professor Ibrahim Gambari as head of a select team of government officials on another sortie to designated parts of the country, for the purpose of suing for peace and understanding by the sections of the citizenry.
Intending not to be outdone by the Federal government, the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) followed up with its own complement of responses to the protests, which feature mouth-watering and virtually indulgent concessions to the protesters. Beyond accepting to honour the seven point demands of the protesters as a body, various governors have launched different fora to engage the youth in their respective states, pursuant to establishing sustainable interfaces with the later. For clarification the demands of the protesters which started as five later extended to seven and comprise institutional reforms to the country’s security architecture with the police as starting point, reducing cost of governance, meaningful review of the Constitution, reforms in education, health-care and youth affairs administration as well as streamlining public office processes.
Being direct outcomes of the recent #EndSARS protests which clamped the administration into a state of panic, it is expected that the dispatches by the federal government and the concessions by the state governors are programmed to deliver actual dividends beyond mere belated efforts at window dressing and just calming frayed nerves and deep seated grievances. This expectation is informed by the unmistakable lack of congruence between the expectations of the protesters, the rhetoric of the administration in respect of its disposition towards the protests, and the discernible incapacity of the establishment to deliver on much of the touted promises by government at the various tiers. Granted that as a result of the protests a new sense of urgency may have dawned in government circles, and led to the deluge of concessions, Nigerians need to take up such gestures with a pinch of salt given that in this country government business with the public is usually tall on promises but short on delivery. This is especially so whenever the government is put under pressure, like with #EndSARS.
In the circumstances however, it is obvious that the primary target of the various gestures by respective governments remain the youth of the country; a cross-section of whom participated in the recent #EndSARS protests. Hence the gestures actually qualify as palliatives of sorts by the executive arm, to mollify strained nerves and simmering grievances among the protesters. Suddenly, the youth who hitherto were the instruments for riding roughshod on the polity, are being treated as the political bride who every power bloc intends to court and pacify. However it is not too much to hope that this new found dalliance between government and the youth will be sustained by the former. For as the situation still remains, any contemplation which considers that the street rage which propelled the #EndSARS protests has abated, is tantamount to misreading the situation. The rage has not abated. Rather the aggrieved have only offered the government and the status quo, a temporary reprieve for the latter to deliver on the cascade of promises made in the wake of the protests.
Seen in context, if ever there was a youth conundrum that was misread and glossed over by the powers that be, the recent wave of protests not only constituted its perfect playout, but also amplified the danger of allowing as wide a disconnect as existed between the status quo and the younger generation. To amplify the situation is the open admission of guilt and plea for clemency by the respective governments, given that all that the protesters were asking for is the guarantee of their inclusion in the nation’s common patrimony, as of right and as guaranteed by the Constitution. Thus it can be deduced that the youth resorted to the protests as a channel for compelling rightful change in the status quo, in order to break the proverbial glass ceiling, which denied them access to the very dividends of being Nigerians which they sight, but are denied the opportunity to reach.
In a country where the subsisting architecture of social relations is built on the dubious framework of political and economic exclusion of the wider cross-sections of the citizenry, the typical youth without ‘connections’ remains for obvious reasons the most vulnerable elements. Hence in their perception, the prospects of a better life for them rest only with the evolution of a new and better Nigeria which as they have expressed in various fora, cannot be unless the status quo is overturned for them to benefit from the common patrimony. This disturbing and growing consensus is fuelled by the irreversibly increasing levels of education and enhanced use of social media, among them. And rather ominously, the dispensation is not confined to any particular segment of the country, but spans from Sokoto to Calabar and Lagos to Maiduguri. The existential challenge from this scenario lies in how much the status quo is disposed to appreciate it and do the needful to avert class suicide. It is that bad.
When viewed from an ontological perspective, it is also not difficult to see that the new Nigeria is already beckoning irrevocably and may emerge with peaceful change or violent transformation of the present order, depending on what antecedents the present leadership community of the country avails it. At this stage it needs to be recalled that just about two decades ago when the global revolution in information technology was incipient and the wave of globalisation was imminent, countries like India, China and others which embraced it are reaping the benefits today, while Nigerian leadership community are still fixated on the celebration of sterile demagoguery in defining the leadership sensitivities and power dynamics.
With due apologies to the Presidency and the NGF, without any verifiable, concrete reliefs to offer the protesters, it is difficult to see much value beyond the playout of demagoguery in the various peace missions to selected power centres and lobby groups across the country. And such is hardly what the Nigeria youth went out to the streets to protest, suffer and die for. Rather the government needs to from now on, operate along lines of convergence between its governance style with the aspirations of the Nigerian youth, without whom there is no tomorrow for the country.
For instance, it is significant that one of the demands by the protesters called for the creation of sustainable employment opportunities through the increase in capital component of the country’s budgets from 2021, to at least 50% from the present average of sub 20%, in order to boost capital growth, stall stagnation in the economy and thereby accelerate economic development. This is just one of the changes the aggrieved Nigerian youth want to see, as evidence that the government has learnt valid lessons from the #EndSARS protests.
