Crying is a way by which people, especially babies, express pain, discomfort, sorrow or need. Seeing someone cry draws our human emotions, empathy and urge to help the person crying. However, some children abuse cry to extort their parents to get or do everything they desire. When adults start crying like babies, instead of studying to understand and address the causes of their problems, they appear weak, noisy and toothless. Likewise, without understanding and creating systems for organic growth in the society, constant protests are overlooked as extortionist noise and empty threats.
Many Nigerians quickly resort to protests, insults, blames and ultimatums to demand different social services or actions from the postcolonial government. Like helpless babies, they troop out to protest after massacres, crises, blackouts, official looting or restrictive policies. Since they lack sustainability for the protests, they easily disperse after government settles few of the conveners. These protests often use fire brigade approach by starting with loud threats and agitations, which they cannot sustain. So, government officials often learn to ignore or violently disperse the protesters without expecting economic repercussions.
Having a true right to protest
Consistent economic progress in a society grows on the principle of producing and exchanging goods and services. What gives you power to demand other people’s products is what you produce and can hold back when your demand is not met. So, if you produce rubber for tyres, tools and other gadgets, you earn a right to demand something from the people who need your rubber or its proceeds. For your rubber contributes to agriculture from tractors, transportation from tyres and other industries and products that use rubber.
Like other users, governments require some portion of your products as tax for regulating the society or providing roads, schools and other public services. So, you must give something to get something, not just get something by crying, cursing and protesting. And if you are not intellectually or materially contributing in the social network for productivity, you can be easily ignored. Hence, apart from the inalienable gifts of nature like your life and freedom, you must pay to get other people’s products.
Losing the moral right to protest in Nigeria
“You cannot eat your cake and still have it.”
British colonialists created Nigeria by brutally merging unconsented kingdoms and communities[1] for exploiting people’s resources.[2] So, Nigeria’s government’s function is not to supply your needs, but to hold people down for former colonialists to exploit resources. The size of resources that colonialists exploit from the communities determines how much products they supply to Nigerian government. Since the crude oil era, the colonialists mainly exploit crude oil from Niger-Delta communities, and pay Nigerian government as the gatekeepers.[3] Then, Nigerian government creates states and ministries to share few foreign products and services to console the Niger-Delta communities, as well as to gain support from the other people’s support in exploiting the Niger-Delta communities.
By sharing in free foreign goods that come from holding down Niger-Delta communities for foreign exploitation, the other communities abandon the development of their own resources. These are the natural resources they could have used in industry to earn their living and right to protest or demand amenities. Now, they lack both the courage and knowledge to retrieve and use their own resources for production. Also, they lose the moral rights to protest by supporting and depending on other people’s exploitation, while neglecting their own productivity. Thus, their protests and demands for more roads, electricity, jobs, schools, police stations, amenities and even security can be ignored.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul always count on Paul’s support to rob Peter. Once you are stained by sharing from other communities’ exploitation, you lose the moral authority to protest. You remain vulnerable to their humiliation and manipulations, “for once you do what they want, you won’t be able to do what you ought.” And your cries of not getting ‘enough’ shares from exploiting others will remain as hypocritical as asking for more share from a robbery.
How effective are protests in Nigeria?
Protests are aimed to get the government to act in a certain way, or restrain from some actions. When productive population truly reject something or demand something from a tax-receiving government, government has to yield. This is because their protests can extend to refusal to work and crumbling of the economy.
But, due to lack of productive network in Nigeria’s exploitative formation and administration, Nigerian protests lack united front. So, when a section protests, other sections counter, mock or frustrate them in retaliation for previous betrayal. By sharing consumption, government exploits the differences in tribe, religion or party to keep people distracted from having a productive common purpose.
So far, Nigerian governments view and treat protests in Nigeria as negligible and temporary noise. Some others enact laws to ban protests as distractions. While Nigerians who either benefit or are untouched by immediate tragedies regard them as foolish disturbances.
What are the better alternatives to protest?
“He who comes to equity must come with clean hands.”[4]
To demand anything apart from your free gifts of nature or cultural heritage, you must have something to trade for them. But neglecting your ancestral lands and possibilities, in pursuit of other people’s resources, robs you of your transactional power and potentials, and renders your protest insincere.
A sincere alternative to protests in Nigeria will be educating your people to develop a system for them to discover, own and use their potentials and resources for industry, trade and tax. [5] Getting the right to your lands and resources requires allowing others to retrieve, own and use their own resources for industry, trade and tax. Thus, Confucius states that “he who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.” Though many of us are used to benefiting from the exploitative system, we need to have the courage to build our own system of productivity.
But, as long as people expect benefits from Nigeria’s exploitative system, they will always lack courage for true protests. And Nigerian government will not take them more seriously than some cups of rice and coins to be tossed around.
[1] S. O. Oyedele, “Federalism in Nigeria” in Issues contemporary political economy of Nigeria (edited) Hassan A. Saliu, op.cit, p.57
[2] Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, 2009 edition (Abuja: Panaf publishing Inc. 2009), p.273
[3] Chukwunwike Enekwechi, “African politicians as moral scapegoats for postcolonial exploitation” in Restartnaija.
[4] Maxim, in The free dictionary, www.legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/%22He+who+comes+into+equity+must+come+with+clean+hands.%22
[5] Chukwunwike Enekwechi, “The social research for a new Nigeria” in Restartnaija June 5, 2018. https://restartnaija.com/2018/06/05/social-research-new-consented-nigeria/ retrieved 22nd December, 2019
