Nigeria and the reality of hunger protests

For a while now, Nigeria has had advance warnings of impending nationwide protests over the prohibitive spikes in the cost of living.

The protests are aptly named #HungerProtest, among other hashtags, which in itself does not speak well of the country. The leading oil-producing country in Africa, according to OPEC, the country with an abundance of natural resources, fertile lands and industrious human resources, a country where the state expends billions of naira in procuring luxury yachts and cars for its rulers, is faced with nationwide protests over hunger. The reality is jarring.

If all goes according to plan, or not according to plan (depending on from which perspective one sees it), those protests are going to kick off today. Nothing about that is surprising. The only surprise is that we allowed ourselves to be here, to be in this position at the very last minute where the protests are inevitable. In a way, that really isn’t a surprise considering our last-minute culture.

Whoever was supposed to manage this crisis seems to have skipped English Language class on the day the idiom “a stitch in time saves nine” was taught. These protests were not spontaneous. The reasons for them are well-known, well-documented, and advertised. What the crisis manager needed to do was simply address the demands of the protesters. No one is expecting a miracle to fix the country, but everyone is expecting some sincere effort to. Nigerians already know that things in the country are pretty messed up, and what any government will be measured on is the effort put into fixing the rot. These efforts must not be misapplied to unnecessary monkeyshine.

• You have no right to destabilise Nigeria, Akpabio warns Protesters
• There’s No more need for protest – FG

Yet ironically, what we have witnessed in the efforts to quell the protests has been misapplied efforts. Government officials have been talking to everyone else but the people who needed to be talked to.

Religious leaders were called to meetings. They came out spewing doctrines about how protests are haram, fueling rumours that they had been bought, allegedly. The police and even the military issued threats, and truckloads of policemen were sent out on the streets in what they call a show of force.

The most worrying part of this is the military taking the position to issue threats against Nigerians proposing to exercise their civic rights. The idea is basically to threaten would-be protesters against protesting.

Finally, subterfuge has been employed. A rented crowd was sent out to the streets to protest against the protest that was yet to happen. I saw a trending photo of one of the “No to Protests” protesters and marvelled at the irony. He was caught by the camera counting his pay for the protest, his face and body language indicative of the hunger that he was feeling. The paradox of a hungry man protesting against a hunger protest is probably one of the most bizarre things one would see.

Everything that has happened in the last few days and weeks seems designed to treat the symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself. And in the last couple of days, there has been our trademark fire brigade approach to addressing situations.

The general standard is that protests are ways of civic expression, guaranteed by the constitutions of nations and the International Human Rights Charter. The police are often charged with protecting protesters and protecting other people from the protests as well. Occasionally, things get out of hand. Not in Nigeria though. Here, there is nothing occasional about things getting out of hand because it is a given that things will get out of hand. Every protest is seen as an attack on the state or individuals occupying positions of power. It is often treated as a personal affront, an attempt at regime change, one that must be quelled by sheer brute force, one that is poisoned with intrigues and the thuggery of rented counter-protesters. Because one holds the hammer, it doesn’t mean that everything should be seen as a nail.

This perception often arises because our civic education does not include in its curriculum the etiquettes of protesting without causing havoc, without breaking people and things belonging to the people on whose behalf the protests are being held—the hungry Nigerians who can’t scavenge for the urgent 2k, the sick ones in need of vital medical attention trapped in protest roadblocks, the struggling widow whose stall is shattered and used for bonfires, the merchant whose shop is looted or torched, the poor trees that are ravaged, as if they are the causes of the problem, and whose branches and leaves are littered on the streets. We are messy protesters in this country, and that is why I am not a fan of protests.

The government should have been serious about these planned protesters, and instead of going through clerics, they should have addressed the issues definitively. Of course, the excuse is that the protest planners are faceless (not if the words of the director of NOA, Lanre Issa-Onilu, are to go by when he declared that the government has the names and details of the protest planners).

As far as protests go in Nigeria, the most organised has to be the #EndSARS one. Protesters were cordial, they behaved themselves and picked up after themselves, and their demands were clearly stated. How did those protests end? With bullets and blood, because the government decided the protests were an attempt at regime change, and decided to hire thugs to form a violent counter-protest so the authorities could use a sledgehammer to squash a fly.

Silence is not always golden, and the Nigerian government ought to have learned that lesson by now. Sometimes, all people want to know is that their troubles and pains are acknowledged and that something is sincerely being done to address them.

The disdain some officials in this government have demonstrated over Nigerians’ cry for help is shocking, to say the least. The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, who, by his office and position, should be the bridge between the Nigerian electorate and the executive, seems to be mocking Nigerians.

He is reported as saying, “Those who want to protest can protest, but let us be here eating…”

While Akpabio probably believes he is reiterating his loyalty to the government with this statement, it only serves to widen the gap between the government and Nigerians at a time when that gap should be bridged by genuine concern and empathy. Such callous and dangerously unrefined comments from a highly placed public officer are a disservice to the objective of calming nerves.

The truth—and both the government and the protesters must recognise this—is that no one really wants these protests. No one wants to be inconvenienced by them. Even the protest planners would rather be at their places of work trying to make a living, and the government would rather be governing in peace without fearing that a legitimate civic action is a covert regime change operation.

If these protests happen, it is only because both the government and the protesters, through words, actions and inactions, have conceded to them happening.

It doesn’t take much to stop the protests, and no one needs to die for that to happen. The government needs to act with sincerity and tact and, above all, be genuinely empathetic to the suffering of Nigerians. This should be done with respect for the right of Nigerians to freely express themselves through civic actions and peaceful protests should they choose to.

Times are hard, frustration is mounting, and the situation will create cracks in the walls for unsavoury lizards to crawl into and profit from the chaos. Nigeria needs to focus its energy and resources on addressing the numerous problems confronting the country, not quelling protests that, in the end, might just shred the fabric of our national unity.

Let calm heads and humanity prevail!