Nigeria: Our Disappearing Progressives

 By Sunny Ikhioya

Judging from its trajectory, the 2023 election was expected to be different from previous ones, and it did go that way. What we never imagined was the betrayal of the so-called Progressives, who claim to be the conscience of the nation, and are more patriotic than the rest; the lodestar of the nation’s compass. Before the 2015 elections they were everywhere: in the academia, labour, civil societies, NGOs, media and others. 

They were preaching freedom, equity, fundamental human rights, free and fair elections, infrastructure and welfare to uplift the common man and many more. It has been eight long years. Many things have happened in the country within this period: the citizens have been battered black and blue; those who couldn’t stand it have taken the Japa route.

Peter Obi And His Supporters

 By Promise Adiele  

Femi Osofisan’s play Morountodun derives its historical substratum from the Agbekoya uprising of 1969 in the Western part of Nigeria. Popularly known as the ‘farmers’ revolt’, the incident occupies an iconic place in Marxist revolutionary ethos which is why many critics describe Osofisan as a helpless Marxist writer, an emblem he unsuccessfully tries to discard. 

*Peter Obi

In 1969, while the civil war was raging in the Eastern part of the country, illiterate, uninformed, uneducated farmers, without any political structure, took up arms and fought the government in Western Nigeria. Their pain was manifold but they bore it with equanimity. They lived through deprivation, government irresponsibility, official rascality, decayed infrastructure, and many other aberrant social conditions. 

But a time came when the farmers could not take the pains anymore, they revolted. The immediate cause of their revolt was the introduction of higher taxes which meant that they had to pay more. Throwing all cautions to the wind, they adopted a guerrilla approach, fought the government and overthrew the prevailing superstructure. In the end, the government was forced to the negotiating table.