I have said this before, one of my greatest fears about the future of Nigeria is our collective loss of the capacity for anger. The political class knows it, they can do what they want and get away with it because we simply note what they are doing, grumble and continue our daily hustle for survival. It was the Cameroonian author, Prof Celestin Monga, who reminded us in his book, The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa, that the capacity of civil society and citizens in Africa to advance the democratisation agenda of their countries is a function of their ability to express outrage at the destruction of their societies and its assets by selfish ruling classes.
The nouns that define how we feel are important indications of our capacity to act. Anger, rage, fury, ire, wrath, resentment and indignation are vital elements in creating human agency and carrying out a real transformation agenda. Fury denotes our marked displeasure at a particular situation and demonstrates we have not given up and substituted passive sadness for anger. Every week, Nigerians are inundated with news stories about massive corruption and bad governance. The least we can do is show our indignation at how our rulers are ruining our country.
Following the end of the Second World War, the anger of Nigerians at British misrule boiled. Nigeria had a leadership that could channel the anger. Herbert Macaulay, Michael Imoudu and Nnamdi Azikiwe organized a national strike in 1945 and in 1946, toured 153 communities to get the popular mandate to end colonial rule and use Nigerian resources for Nigerian development.
In Kano, Ibadan, Enugu and Lagos, tens of thousands of Nigerians turned up in the “cost of living” demonstrations and the death knell of colonialism was sounded. Herbert Macaulay, the 82-year-old “angry nationalist”, died on his way back from the Kano rally. The British authorities, seeing the anger of the people, were forced to stop making the claims that the nationalist leaders were talking for the elite and not for the masses.
Today, Nigeria is in misery suffering from a terrible cost of living crisis similar to the one experienced in 1945/1946 and all that happened is a one-day strike to make speeches about promises not kept. The second day of the protest was cancelled because the labour unions were afraid government could get angry and deal with them. That’s our lot, we have lost the capacity to really get angry at those messing us up. Over the past two decades, no general strike has lasted more than two days. It starts with apparent anger and ends with a whimper signalling some money has changes hands. The government knows the price it has to pay to “settle” a general strike. How can they take citizens seriously knowing the leadership to channel anger into effective results no longer exists?
Today, Nigerians are suffering because they can no longer feed their families as stagnant wages and food inflation makes it impossible for them to get enough to eat. They should have been furious because they know that the decisions to remove fuel subsidy and float the naira were made precisely to produce this outcome. By these acts, Nigerians were guaranteed to suffer extremely high costs for transport, food and other essentials. It is a policy framework aimed at deepening poverty and the suffering of Nigerians.
Today, Nigerian citizens live in deep fear because of the insecurity that defines their daily existence. Millions of farmers can no longer farm their land because gunmen attack and kill them or impose taxes to “allow” them farm because they have the guns. Nigerians cannot travel anymore because they cannot afford the fare or because they are afraid of being kidnapped for ransom. Nigerians cannot even worship in peace because they are afraid terrorists could attack and kill them while worshiping in their churches and mosques. Where is the anger that flows from their knowledge that government has constitutional responsibility to provide for their security and welfare and it is simply not doing so.
Every day, there are reports on massive corruption by government officials who simply pocket billions and billions of public money and accountability mechanisms are almost never not activated against them. Nigerians simply watch and wonder at the depth of corruption and simply show no appreciation that these are public resources that could have gone a long way in addressing the crisis faced by the people but are privatized and accumulated by a few.
In terms of the political process, the electoral choices made by or sought for by Nigerians are often subverted using money, violence or the courts that specialise these days in removing elected officials chosen by the people and replacing them with people “illegally imposed” by judges who interfere continuously with electoral outcomes. The judiciary which is supposed to be the last hope of the common people is today almost entirely controlled by the political class and the people continue to watch and wonder.
Increasingly, the rights of the citizens of Nigeria to protest against bad governance, the right to dissent and to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Constitution is denied, frustrated and challenged by the governing class. Meanwhile, Nigerians continue to watch and wonder. Dear Nigerians, when will we get out of the trap of passive sadness. Where is the anger, rage, fury, ire, wrath, resentment and indignation against bad and irresponsible governance in Nigeria?
This article was first published on March 1, 2024
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