Nigeria: After The Protests Storm

 By Sunny Ikhioya

Let us call a spade by its real name. The address by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu fell far short of resolving the issues raised by protesters. It only helped to exacerbate the prevailing situation. But what can the cowed masses do? It ended as expected. So much senseless destructions, time and money wasted, avoidable deaths and the battle shifted to another auspicious time and, that will be the day.

 The protests exposed the high level of neglect in the North as evidenced by illiteracy and poverty. The people are hungry down there in the streets; that is the real situation. If government does not vary its strategies to address the scourge of poverty in the land, there will surely be another protest, because you cannot keep a hungry and angry man at home. What we have been offering is just palliative, and palliative is not a final solution to problems, it is ameliorative and temporary. 

What are the immediate solutions? Give the people back their subsidies and cut the huge wastages in running government. Remove the humongous allowances of the various strata of government, including the National Assembly and State houses of assembly. Redirect our focus inward towards food and manufacturing. Decisively deal with all manners of bandits, terrorists, kidnappers and insurgents threatening our combined survival. 

And, finally, be ruthless with corruption. You must strive to prove wrong the Pini Jason (Jasonian) theory of corruption, which states that: ‘The further away you are from the center of the action (government), the higher your voice decibel against corruption ‘. Those in government at the federal level were once in the opposition and we heard your noises. It is now your turn to prove that you are not all hypocrites; the ball is in your court. 

While we are at it, even with the level of discouragement that the Nigerian situation confronts you with, we still have good men of conscience, working underground  and doing their little bits, here and there, to make sure things work out fine for this nation. One of them is the President of the Salimo Wits Foundation, Mr Dan Ekoko. You must have heard of Salimo Wits Foundation through the podcast of Dr Charles Apoki; they have been partners in running enlightenment and empowerment programmes for youths in the country. The objective of Salimo Wits Foundation is to train youths with the right mental/leadership capacity to stimulate positive change in society. 

Concerned about the worrying situation of the country, Dan sent me this message: “There are some strategic low key hanging fruits any responsible leader should strive for without any goading or reminders. These include Ajaokuta Steel Complex and associated steel mills. The power sector should have been ramped up to supply well over 20,000 MW by now. The basic road networks across the country left un-maintained have  generally become death/kidnap traps. The LGAs that should have been granted autonomy and aided to be the grassroots for local empowerment “. 

He went further: “The painful thing about this whole situation is that you do not have to be highly educated to know the effects of mismanagement of resources. For instance, the steel complex at Ajaokuta which has gulped several billions in US dollars and left uncompleted for over 20 years is criminal negligence. Talk of the economic impact it could have generated by the production of several industrial goods and products for the country, ranging from steel bars and plates. We also have the four refineries that could have stopped the importation of petroleum products, make us net exporters and conserve our foreign reserves.” 

These are the concerns of Dan Ekoko and it is also the legitimate concerns of every well-meaning Nigerian. The welfare and well-being of every Nigerian should be the immediate priority of any focused President and not the hurried recourse to the Bretton Wood solutions. Sometimes we are forced to ask the question: which one is the priority of this government? 

To quickly ameliorate the situation of the poor masses or to follow the guidance of the foreign economic bodies? That is the clear choice before the president. But his actions, so far, have tended towards these foreign tendencies and the consequence is what we are having now through the protests and other avenues the people are using to dissipate their frustrations. 

It is a clear choice for the President to make, but it is not going to be an easy one. He will be confronted with the kind of challenge Dangote Refinery is going through now: multidimensional conspiracies to kill the process. There will be pressures, threats, sabotage, blackmail and all the rest, but the will and resilience, plus the peoples backing, will see us through.

It is becoming clearer to all that the forces against our combined progress is a massive one: covert, sinister and deadly in their methodology. You cannot directly pin-point who is pressing the buttons: the British- American intelligence services, the EU, various multinational aids organisations, big multinational companies, even China and India; all of them have their hands on the deck of African affairs, not leaving out Putin’s Russia. 

How do we wean ourselves of the strangulating holds of these behemoths on our collective destiny? Can we call their bluffs? If yes, how do we go about it? That is the challenge for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his team; he says that we should not pity him, he must give us the right solution. 

Clearly the nation is a divided one, the recent protests against bad governance has made it so glaring that we are not a nation state. This continuous divisions are also part of the imperialists designs to keep us so. We know that we have very selfish set of elites in control of the affairs of the country, but what has made our situation worse is the attempt by these people to sell our common patrimony to foreign interests.  

Look deeply into the religious and cultural conflicts bedevelling the nation, you will find them linked with foreign organisations and interests. How do our people get radicalised? They travel abroad to such countries like Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran and others. They get pumped up with strange ideologies and doctrines, introduced into weapons-arms handling and smuggling, they come back home and form bands of fanatics and insurgents, using religion to cover their activities. 

Our security architecture should be directed towards containing these activities by nipping them in the bud. A leader who is interested in solving Nigeria’s problems must begin to look deeper into religious and foreign interests in this country. The leadership must also look inward for solutions and the peoples interests must come first.

* Ikhioya is a commentator on public issues