“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch the evil doers, in silence.”
Albert Einstein.
We live in troubling times. A thick, dark cloud hovers over Nigeria. The youths of this land groan in desperation and despair over an uncertain future. A future that is stripped of all hope and promise. A future that is heavily mortgaged to a needless debt burden. A future that has been hijacked by a weak and pernicious constitution.
In African folklore, it is heinous to beat a child and gag him from crying.
*Twelve days of peaceful protest.
*Lekki Toll Plaza plunged into darkness.
*Security cameras blinded.
*Stampede as military vehicles arrive.
*Protesters barricaded in from both ends.
*Piercing sounds of firearms.
*Searing pain from penetrating metal.
*Groans of anguish and imminent death.
*Clothings of crimson. *Litters of human flesh. *Rivers of innocent blood.
*Cleverly concealed from a bewildered world.
*Ripples of shock wave. *Tears of hearbreak. *Inconsolable Grief.
*Untamed public outrage.
*And in the aftermath, lies, denials and more lies.
*Frivolous arrests and freezing of accounts.
*Detailed CNN investigation.
*And finally, admittance by the army to #LekkiMassacre.
It is common knowledge that evil thrives in darkness. What is not common is that it also festers in silence. Scientists unanimously agree that in physical terms, darkness does not exist.What we see as darkness is merely an absence of visible light or reflective medium. Conversely, silence does not imply absence of sound. It has its own unique sound. The sound of silence is either complicity or cowardice, though more of the former than the later.
When Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the rest of Europe looked the other way in convenient silence. They were not the targets. Six years down the timeline, Europe was reduced to rubble and everybody lost, including the silent. When the same aggressor surreptitiously undertook the systematic extermination of the Jews (The Holocaust), other German citizens were muted to the state-sponsored atrocities. They couldn’t care less. Afterall they were not Jewish. As World War 2 drew to an inglorious end in August, 1945, every citizen of Germany was either dead, displaced or impoverished. Germany became an occupied territory till this day! The silent were not spared.
Silence is always an expression of incompetence, ignorance, complicity or cowardice. In the case of Nigeria, all of the above are at play. The political elite are silent to the evils of the land, because they are either complicit or incompetent or both. The masses maintain sealed lips in the face of misrule, because they are either complicit, cowardly or simply ignorant.
The thrust of this article is that we all share a moral burden to condemn what we don’t like, as a nation. The collective energy of peaceful dissent will destroy every device of the oppressor, in form of undesirable thoughts, words and actions. Ultimately, the enemy will be disarmed!
From the history of revolutions around the world, it could be safely deduced that non-violent protest, remains the most potent weapon, against human oppression and bad governance. Mahatma Ghandi’s non-violent resistance and Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience, remain the best examples.
Tragically, the most populous and promising black nation in the world, is tethering on the brink of failure. All indices speak to that assertion.
The leaders are simply aloof and impervious to the sufferings of the masses. Instead, they bask in obscenely conspicuous lifestyles of profligacy, at the expense of the impoverished. Curiously, the majority of Nigerian citizens have remained silent, despite compelling signs of imminent collapse. The entire world has wondered for too long, why Nigerians do not protest against their exploitative government. In this regard, the President of Ghana once had this to say:
“We must learn from the mistakes of Nigeria and never in our entire history be ever so foolish. The Nigerian government is an ethnic government, not a nationalistic government. What I cannot understand is why Nigerians themselves are NOT ANGRY ENOUGH to change the situation “.
Nana Akufo-Addo Dankwa, President of Ghana
A few theories have emerged. One of the foremost says that: Two groups of citizens exist in Nigeria – ‘those looting the treasury presently and those waiting for their turn to loot’. If you belong to the later, then you are ignorant and complicit. Collective wealth enriches and secures everybody while individual wealth impoverishes everybody and keeps nobody safe. Treasury looters only amass individual wealth which ultimately leads to general poverty and insecurity.
The people of Owerri, in the eastern heartland of Nigeria, have an interesting proverb:
“When a king becomes oppressive and condescending, the subjects rebuke and dethrone him, wielding masks of baskets”.
The underlying rhetoric is that of peaceful defiance.
More than 50% of Nigeria’s population falls below the age of 35 years. Yet, 90% of political office holders are 60 and above. These figures do not add up!
On October 8, 2020, the youths of this country decided to cast off the spell of silence and rebuke their erring leaders, after one of theirs was almost killed by a SARS bullet. They sought to change their narrative and reclaim their destiny. They wore basket masks of non-violent defiance, and staged the first digitally managed protest in the world.
For 12 days there was zero violence, despite the depth of anger and hunger in the land. It was purely a benign, disruptive resistance against inequity, injustice and bad governance.
Expectedly, the political class became jittery and sent thugs to infiltrate and disperse the protesters. When that ploy didn’t work, somebody pulled the trigger. The violence that ensued was unprecedented. It was a volcanic eruption of anger, frustration and despair. Some people have opined that hoodlums, hooligans, vandals and miscreants hijacked the protest, to loot and burn down businesses as well as police stations.
In sane societies and under normal circumstances, the arson, the destruction and the looting are clearly insane, condemnable and convictable.
But then, pause.
Is Nigeria a normal country? Do we live in a sane society?
No.
In normal countries snakes don’t swallow currency as food.
In normal countries, the military and the police do not shoot at unarmed, peaceful protesters.
In sane societies, the police is not given license to kill citizens without benefit of trial.
In normal governments, 90% of political appointments are not invidiously skewed towards one ethnic group.
In sane democracies, the budget for the welfare of lawmakers does not exceed those of health and education.
In normal societies, pandemic-palliatives are not stored away in warehouses, while citizens are locked down without food and money.
In normal democracies, the apex court does not impose governors on and against the choice of voters.
The string of anomalies is endless.
Why should we then expect normal behaviour from the lowest segments of an oppressed society?
Why should we expect sanity in a gathering of mad people?
Do we have the moral clarity to condemn this class of voiceless Nigerians?
In truth, are they really hoodlums, hooligans, arsonists, looters and miscreants, as we have branded them?
Could they have emerged as the abused, denied, deprived and dehumanised outcomes of a depraved government?
Could they be manifesting the results of a broken ‘social contract’ between the leaders and the led?
Could their actions be viewed as symptoms of a more serious and festering underlying disease?
Until these questions are answered, we shall continue to endure the moral burden of our collective silence.
It may be mystifying to report that a certain Police Station in Fegge, Onitsha, Nigeria, was spared and even protected by the same hoodlums and miscreants, throughout the duration of protests. More intriguing is that this station is headed by a humane, assiduous, muslim officer from northern Nigeria. Surely, the people know their enemies and oppressors. Religion and tribe have no place in this protest.
It is common knowledge in Nigeria that whenever big money is stolen, arson happens to obscure trail and erase evidence.
Are we now living in denial of the true identity of looters, arsonists, hoodlums and miscreants?
It is worthy of note that similar looting and destruction trailed the #GeorgeFloyd protests, in the US. The politicians in that country also used words like hijack, hoodlums, miscreants and terrorists to describe the angry protesters. Yet, the US is the wealthiest nation on the planet. Sadly, America has continued to build more prisons to accommodate the growing number of hoodlums and miscreants in the land. In contrast, the Scandinavian countries are shutting down existing prison facilities, due to low occupancy.
What is the difference?
Economic gaps between the rich and the poor in both countries are like night and day.
Wherever the presiding government widens this gap through irresponsible use of resources, crime goes up; looting and arson accompany protests.
The #Lekkimassacre of October 20, 2020 will go down as one of the darkest episodes in the history of Nigeria.
As usual, the world was fed with shameless, bald-faced lies and denials, despite the weight of incontrovertible evidence.
This brazen deceit is most disrespectful of the souls of the departed; most condescending to our collective intelligence, and most unworthy of the best episodes in our human rights history.
It would take the forced intervention of CNN for Nigerian Army to shamelessly admit responsibility. In a premeditated manner, the army and the police took turns to fire live ammunition into an unarmed crowd of Nigerian citizens, wielding the National Flag and singing the National Anthem. The shootings by the army alone, lasted for about 101 minutes. Then the disbanded SARS moved in to finish the job.
Now that the army has broken their silence of complicity, may we know who ordered this atrocity?
In this regard, it would be a waste of space to comment on the belated and affectless broadcast, that left most Nigerians unhinged in the wake of the #Lekkimassacre.
The recent uprising in Nigeria provided an excellent opportunity for self appraisal, self correction and self retraction, on the part of the torch bearers. Instead, a choice was made to kill the protesters, arrest those that escaped death and freeze the accounts of perceived sponsors.
How idiotic!
How ill-advised!
Are these the appropriate responses to the genuine demands of protesting citizens?
A chain is always as strong as its weakest link. Accordingly, normal societies are rated according to policies that protect the weak, the infirm and the vulnerable. Expectedly, Nigeria’s rating in this category is zero.
Sound is a mysterious energy. A spectacular reference is made to the biblical account of the conquest of Jericho, using the seemingly innocuous sound of many trumpets.
Today, we must awaken from the slumber of silence and harness the energy of sound.
We must speak out against Kleptocracy.
We must ignite conversations with a view to repealing and replacing our present constitution. It has proven to be a worthless document designed to enslave the masses, while perpetuating lines of privilege.
We must sound our trumpets against the walls of endemic corruption. Public lectures must resume to educate and sensitize voters, in future elections.
Non-violent protests should be integral to the ‘Checks and Balances’ of any true democracy. Going forward, the youths must organise to use the advantage of numbers, as a bargaining chip towards 2023.
We must lend our voices to support our courageous youths, so that judgement of history may be kind to us.
If we chose to remain silent over this insanity, the predictable outcome of smouldering ashes, would serve as guilty reminders of our collective cowardice and complicity.
