Towards an Effective Revolution in Nigeria

A real minimum wage should be able to help the least worker in Nigeria own a car, not a bicycle.

Owning a car is no longer a luxury but a necessity in our modern age. Where this is not the case, such a wage only merely represents a slave's wage.

"How do our National Assembly members feel going home every month with a bogus salary and allowance in expensive SUVs funded by tax payers in a country where youth unemployment has sky-rocketed to a worrisome height and the minimum wages of many teachers, street sweepers, security operatives, drivers, nurses among others are grossly inadequate to meet their minimum weekly upkeep? We equally demand an unconditional downward review of the jumbo allowances of our National Assembly members to reflect the current harsh economic realities of our nation."

"Faced with a choice between religion and humanity, I will chose humanity. I can only please God in the service of humanity but may not necessarily please humanity in the service of God. Love of neighbour is a huge measure of our love for God. This is why we must jointly say no to every injustice or every manifestation of unfavourably twisted justice against humanity." It is going to be tough knowing we have to defeat political madness with reason. I accept that one of the most difficult wars to win is the asymmetric war between reason and madness. But in the end, reason always prevails.

We have been so divided along religious, political and ethnic fault line that we no longer see one another as children of the same God. We don't want that anymore. On Fridays, when Muslims are in their mosques for prayer, Christian brothers find a duty in it to protect them. And, when Christians are in their Churches on Sundays for worship or prayer, Muslims find themselves duty-bound in the spirit of unity and fraternity to equally protect them, not harming anyone.That is the kind of a Nigeria we want, not the one some of our greedy, power-mongering politicians have created for us. That is the real change we crave for."

Religion and ethnicity are the twin instruments often manipulated and dangled by the elite before the poor whenever they (elite) are besieged by highly ambitious demands for good governance from them (the poor) so that the gullible poor, either out of naive ignorance or deliberate ignorance, chooses religion and ethnicity, in which the same elite have no serious belief, in place of good governance. Where this trick is not easily detected and overpowered by superior education, sustainable national development is held away from the people for a very long time.

The elite are masters of the art of unfair twists in political, social and economic narratives which they always cunningly tilt in their favour.

We must always be on the look-out for this.

"Ask yourself: is this the kind of a Nigeria you read about in your History book? Remember your days in the primary, secondary and probably tertiary schools? Is this the Nigeria you learnt about in your History classes? Would you believe this is the Nigeria that provided endless opportunities for notable personalities like late Dr Yusuf Maitama Sule, late Professor Mrs. Dora Akunyili, Professors Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe(Late), General Yakubu Gowon, General T. Y Danjuma, General Olusegun Obasanjo, the late Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa among many others to become who they were in their youthful years? Abubakar, are you happier as a Nigerian today than they were then? Tunde, is this what you deserve from your country? Emeka, are you getting a better deal than they got during their time? Ene, can you, honestly, convince me that you are proud of your country as it is currently structured? There is a missing link between those days of theirs and these days of ours. As youths, therefore, we have the onerous responsibility to find the link and close the gap. No time is better than now" The Nigerian youths are not lazy. It is lack of opportunities that makes many appear lazy.

"At the age of 70 to 100, my father should no longer be the one giving me money or providing for me as his youthful son once I am of age. Instead, I should be in charge of our estate making the money in order to take care of him and the entire members of our family. Why, then, is it different with some of our leaders who are now too old and out of touch with modern realities of dynamic leadership but have still shamefully and greedily continued to hold on to power in Nigeria?

This has to change."

"A youth with an attitude of change and who is awake to his rights and responsibilities as a citizen is the one that can truly effect the needed change through purposeful participatory actions in a polity. The question is ' are the youths ready for real change?' We have to be ready. We have to fight, not in violence but in peace, to reclaim our mandate as bona fide citizens of this great country. Yes, we fight in order to win. We win in order to fight for more. We need to do what we have to do so we can have what we want to have. Never give it up! 

"It is lugubriously despicable that in this modern age of abundant enlightenment when we should know better, we still often allow ourselves, as youths, to be transfigured into ephemeral mesmerism by the cacophonously unrealistic propaganda of some government officials who obviously are victims of intellectual idiocy."

Our aged fathers have refused to handover to us probably because we have allowed ourselves to be injected with the opium or aphrodisiac of pecuniary manipulations and bogus propaganda to the extent that we have now been cowed into deliberate silence in the face of provocative inequalities and glaring injustices. You may attend and pray in the same mosque, Church, Synagogue, temple or shrine together. It doesn't matter. What matters is this; in the pursuit of social, political and economic interests, does he or she fight for you?
It is imperative for us to understand that the change we desire in our country will not easily come from the political actions of the septuagenarians and octogenarians still on the saddles of our political leadership. No they won't do it. It won't favour them. They are comfortable with maintaining the' status quo ante'. They are averse to change in the way that we understand it today. It can only come from the youths with our elders playing advisory roles. We are the ones to do it." 

Unfortunately, they chose to dictate rather than dialogue with us. It is not surprising though.I have come to observe that one of the most latent reasons many of these leaders take to dictatorship is that they lack intellectual power to comprehend, defend,embrace and manage the dynamics,contradictions and fascinations of democracy. For these people, brutal dictatorship comes handy. A dictator is more impatient than a Democrat. A democrat is more likely to make concessions than a dictator is. A true democrat does not easily engage in buck-passing or play the blame game; instead, he admits his mistakes, acknowledges the severity of a national crisis, tells the people the truth about it while making frantic efforts to provide solutions. These attributes are almost unpopular with a dictator.

"Many of you paid before you got your last real job in the civil or public service. Many of you are currently looking for money to pay to get a job in the civil or public service. Is it not disturbing that you have to pay, in your own country, my own country, our own country, to get admitted into tertiary institutions of higher learning or to serve our fatherland in the civil or public service? And because racketeering has taken a centre stage, the best of us who were not born with silver spoons in the mouth are usually denied numerous opportunities so that the worst of us are let in. Do you believe that a system that encourages these practices is a just system? No it is not. That is why we should, all the more, clamour for its unconditional change with a more inclusive, merit-oriented system."

Think about this, at the age of 35, you are already considered too old and so ineligible to apply for some job openings in some public and private organizations in Nigeria. The question is " At what age did you graduate from the University, Polytechnic or College of Education in Nigeria supposing ASUU, ASUP and COEASU strikes remain constant? At what age do those who cannot afford private education or studying abroad graduate from school? And after enduring so much in school and eventually graduating perhaps at the age of 30 or above, you hit the labour market or what some have euphemistically referred to as the "favour market " only to be told by your government that you are too old. Is this fair? Some, in a bid to fit in, have gone ahead to adjust their ages. Why should we continue to tolerate a system that encourages people to tell lies.The system that encourages this practice is an unjust system.

This has to change in real term

"If you, with an invigorated spirit, can face the bullets, you can win the war. The influence of fear on the demand for real, enduring change must be toned down all the time. The biggest enemy of a soldier is not the enemy's guns or the bullets or the bayonets, it is fear. The biggest enemy of an activist is not the police teargas, firepower or the narrow jail cells, it is fear. With fear, an activist or a soldier is already crippled by the manacle of indecision or complacency so that he is already dead inside before facing death outside." It is this fear that can make some of our youths to allow themselves to be hired by beneficiaries of an unjust system to hold counter protests in support of what we generally abhor and want abolished. A true revolutionary must be able to break himself or herself free from the chain of febrile fantasy about the consequence(s) of getting involved in the pursuit of a positive change in the status quo ante.

"The Arab spring began with a single spark of decided choice and commitment by the people to displace the status quo ante causing it to give way for a new order. The social media was quite instrumental to the entire process involved in the conception, execution and, eventually, the success of the mass action instituted by the people. But are we ready in Nigeria? Yes we are. 

We have for long, in the eyes of those who are supposed to have handed over power to us, appeared unready to take hold of the reins of leadership because we have seemed to be obsessed with Iphones, sagging of jeans, wearing of unnatural dreadlocks, earrings and goggles.  That is why they have never taken us seriously. As youth, therefore, we must pull off our sagged jeans and replace it with better, more respectful trousers, so we can stand, walk, run and work well towards establishing the kind of a future we will be proud of when we are long gone. We should take away those artificial dreadlocks so we can prepare to carry on our heads the burden of building our dear country into a developed high-tech society.

We (the guys) should remove those earrings so we can flap our ears painlessly while listening to voices of reasons that tell us to rise and take hold of our common destiny and work towards fulfilling the dreams of our forebears. We must remove those goggles or spectacles of complacency and decided apathy so we can clearly see into the future of our today with hope. To those of us who may have lost or are in the process of losing hope in our country because we have suffered untold employment or admission discriminations and denials on grounds of age, religion and ethnicity, now is the time to put our hands on the arc of history and tilt it towards hope.

We have to be ready in words and indeed for we are the ones we have been waiting for.

The social media space is there for us to use in changing our common destiny for good. We only need to know how to use it within the ambit of the law."

"Any authentic or effective revolution must begin from the inside. We must purge ourselves, from the inside, of the same things we rebel against on the outside. We must first win the war against the various internal proclivities that motivate unacceptable demeanours in us and on the outside. For, it is difficult to win the external fight against corruption without a victory over our internal corruption proclivities. It is difficult to have a revolutionalized country in the absence of citizens with revolutionalized minds. For instance, we cannot stamp out dictatorship unless we first rid ourselves of dictatorial tendencies seeking a chance to manifest outside us. We cannot stamp out nepotism, ethnic chauvinism and religious extremism until we first rid our minds of the various tendencies towards nepotism, ethnic chauvinism and religious extremism.

 To have a truly revolutionalized country, therefore,we must first make efforts to have citizens with revolutionalized minds." Education that centres on bringing an individual into a "critical consciousness" of himself (to borrow from the Brazilian educational philosopher, Paulo Freire) is key in this regard.

-Ogiri John Ogiri.

Source: 

Ogiri J.O (2020) Towards an Authentic Revolution in Nigeria

Unpublished Article.