The 'Jasmine Revolution' and the Nigerian nightmare

EDEGBE ODEMWINGIE | Thursday February 24, 2011 00:00

 That 'moment of madness' that later picked momentum originated in the sleepy town of Sidi Bouzid. There, a young man named Mohamed El-Bouazizi paid the supreme price in a courageous attempt to say 'enough is enough.'

An Abuja-based labour activist, Asuzu Echezona captured the event in his opinion piece made available to Leadership Sunday. Protests inspired by the revolt in Tunisia have been replicated along Egypt, Yemen and Algeria, Bahrain and Libya. Also, there is a striking semblance between the popular Middle Eastern and North African uprising to colour revolutions seen in post-Soviet countries- in Georgia with the Rose Revolution and Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2003-2004. The protest so far has paid off, at least in terms of unseating two prominent sit-tight leaders - Tunisia's Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, both holding on to power for fifty-three years-twenty three years and thirty years respectively.

To illustrate with an incident in Nigeria similar to those that sparked-off the revolution in Tunisia on January 31, an angry mob attacked and torched a commercial bank in Mpape, a suburb in Abuja, protesting the killing of a woman (some say a recently-married pregnant woman) by a policeman guarding the bank. The taxi driver insisted on dropping a passenger in front of the bank-supposedly a 'Restricted Area', despite being warned by a mobile policeman attached to the bank, not to do so. Reportedly angered by the driver's effrontery in ignoring his order, the policeman shot at the taxi, instantly killing a female passenger and injuring three others.

To follow was a mob action. Strikingly, this was first of its kind in the country's capital. Outraged by the policeman's action, an angry mob swarmed the bank. Nine cars parked within the bank premises were torched; the bank's ATM, was burnt. The bank was also torched. But before the mob could completely overrun the bank and probably lynch some of its staff, the Brigade of Guards, led by its commander, Brig Gen. Emmanuel Atewe, anti-riot policemen Armoured Personnel Carrier, and the Federal Capital Territory, Fire Service, swarmed the scene to quell the unrest.

Bloomberg reported that the bank fell 4.4 percent to 15.30 naira, its lowest level since December 31. Although not in the scale of the mass protest witnessed in the aforementioned countries, effective and largely successful protests have been carried out in Nigeria. The 'Resign Now' call on late president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua at the height of the intrigues that followed his incapacitation by the Save Nigeria Group and the subsequent confirmation of the prior vice president, Goodluck Jonathan as de facto president is a striking example.

'Don't forget that the trend of countries falling into coups is no more fashionable in Africa, and because that is going off, that is why you see revolutions coming up. So, we now have to be fighting revolutions now. How can you fight revolution? ...Good governance goes along with peace. Where there is no good governance, there cannot be peace. And where there is no good governance, there cannot be democracy. Democracy brings good governance, good governance brings peace. And this is the new trend that is going to better the lot of African nations,' President-General, African Peace Foundation, Professor Ola Makinwa told Leadership Sunday.

In recent times, Nigeria has endured fighting between Christians and Muslims and a spate of bizarre killings, targeting government officials and security forces carried out by Boko Haram; all these coming close to crucial elections scheduled for April. Even though the uprising ended up removing two of the country's leaders, the underlying factor remained the rife apathy, hopelessness, oppression to name a few, suffered by its citizens following years of government's neglect, under-representation, bad governance and misrepresentation that left them disillusioned. That was the driving force of the uprisings.

'Bouzizi's immolation was a solo demonstration against the oppression, corruption and dehumanization that had characterized the twenty three-year reign of Ben Ali. The young El-Bouazizi was not only dehumanized of his dignity, he was also deprived of any means of livelihood.  The same government that failed woefully to provide him a job, clothing, shelter and food was the same oppressor that spitefully confiscated his basket of vegetable wares. That for him was the breaking point; the last straw that broke the camel's back. As sad and painful as Bouazizi's death is, it proved potent enough to break the back of an ultra repressive and irresponsible regime...' Echezona said.  Without going into the dynamics of a revolution, the Tunisian tsunami are part of the recipe of the menu called 'the Nigerian nightmare'.

Observers have warned that if the intractable knots that define 'the Nigerian factor' are not speedily untwined, the sustainability of the Nigerian Project might be thrown into serious jeopardy. The American government had made this point known but they were hurriedly dismissed as 'meddlesome interlopers'. Ambassador John Campbell also gave his own assessment of what would become of us if we refused to change our ways. But some Nigerians dismissed his report as the ranting of a senile, biased and mischievous.

In Tunisia, the level of despondency, frustration and social dislocation had forced many, including graduates to sell vegetables. In Nigeria, graduates are not only vegetable sellers, cobblers, okada riders, recharge card vendors; they are increasingly becoming drug couriers, gigolos, street prostitutes, and more lately, errand boys for politicians.

The bottom line is that majority of Nigerians have been systemically turned into on-lookers in their own fatherland. Governments at all levels prepare annual budgets but Nigerians hardly feel a pinch of it. This horrendous state of affairs has forced upon us a different kind of apartheid where the few rich get richer and the rest of us get miserably poorer.

Do we need the Tunisian tsunami to make serious efforts towards exorcising the demons of the Nigerian nightmare?