Who flipped the script? What changed? How did a million Lagosians end up at Ojota for a rally against something like increase in the pump price of petrol? Whatever happened to the docile Nigerian who will readily find an excuse to justify his/her sufferings, whether as the wish of the good Lord or payment for sins from a past life? It isn’t for nothing that we were once adjudged to be the happiest people on the planet.
Something changed.
For five days during the recent strike and rallies protesting the sudden increase in pump price of petrol, I stood stunned at the Gani Fawehinmi Park in Ojota, as people from divergent walks of life stood in solidarity against the federal government’s indecent decision to arbitrarily remove subsidy of petrol, often the only form of subsidy the Nigerian citizen enjoys from an otherwise uncaring government.
More impressive, perhaps, was the calibre of people who came for the rallies. Protests and rallies in Nigeria have always been the prerogative of labour unions, human rights organisations, students and ‘area boys’. The elites and middleclass have often seen protests and rallies as rascally disruptions to their otherwise great lives. This time it was different as the realities of more than 100 per cent increase in petrol price forcefully brought about a new set of concerns on all levels.
Many have wondered what was responsible for the success of the Gani Fawehinmi Park and Falomo in Lagos, as well as the rallies elsewhere in the country. Beyond the harsh realities of the increase, I think something just snapped in all of us. Maltreatment from the government is a daily reality for most Nigerians. An abject lack of infrastructure has toughened us in a way that we expect little or nothing of our government. I suppose we just got really fed up with it all and the rallies became a viable platform to vent our pent up frustrations. In my time in protests and rallies, I have never seen a more committed gathering at a rally than what I saw for five days in Ojota. To stand in the sun for at least six hours a day is no mean feat.
The important question now, I suppose, is: so we have found our collective voice, what do we do with it? How do we carry on insisting on being heard on all issues that have bearing on our lives? How do we ensure that no longer will Nigerians be taken for granted by a government that claims to represent them? How do we ensure that the people in charge of our affairs at state and local government levels also get the feeling that they are under close scrutiny from now on and we will occupy their realities henceforth should they carry on business as usual?
This, in my opinion, is what we will eventually have to measure the success or failure of those days under the scorching sun at Ojota by.
If we over celebrate the ‘victory’ of having forced a retreat, albeit in part, on the government, we would have lost the essence of the protests and rallies. If we become despondent that we did not achieve a full reversal of the subsidy removal policy, we would equally have missed the whole point of what the rallies and protests were all about. This was about refusing to be taken for granted any longer.
That message, in my view, has been firmly communicated to the government. There’s no need for a winner takes all mentality here.
There are bigger tasks ahead that demand our full attention and onward to them we must march.
Permanence in nature is achieved through evolutions, rather than revolutions. This is what makes me smile every time I remember the moments at the rallies. Something snapped…the process of evolution reached a tipping point and the course of change was set in motion. We may not have reached Uhuru, the proverbial land of freedom, but we are no longer tied to the stakes of ineptitude and indifference; we are no longer where we were. We moved. We may have ‘lost’ the war but we won an important battle. We won the battle of the mind. We found our collective voice and said NO loudly. The process of evolution has been restored; change is imminent.
2 comments
Very well said!
Thanks Chris. Yes! We may not have reached Uhuru, the proverbial land of freedom like u said-one thing is certain- the ‘stakeholders’ will be more careful with their laws/decisions.