I AM TRIGGERED. For the whole of August, I have been constantly triggered by the thought of losing my freedom and sleeping in a detention cell for doing something perfectly legal. Anytime I think about the fact that Adaramoye Michael (Lenin), Mosiu Sodiq, and about 2,000 other protesters have lost their freedom for doing something as legitimate as joining a protest against hunger, hardship, and bad governance, I am triggered.
The media has become so bombarded with blackmail about these Russian flags that it takes an unbiased mind to be able to disconnect from the public opinion against raising such flags and state clearly that it is their democratic human right to symbolic expression to raise it. In a democratic society, people have the right to express their views and affiliations through symbols, including flags. People will only signify with a symbol that works for them. During the #EndSARS protests in 2020, young Nigerians raised the Nigerian flag at Lekki Toll Gate and they still got shot by soldiers sent to kill them.
I am so triggered that for a month now, I have not been able to journal my personal thoughts in a political article like this. Just for doing something as honourable as participating in the #EndBadGovernance protests, I have had so many nightmares that I had to confront the thought of getting detained in terrible conditions and tortured like my fellow protesters!
I had to confront that fear because I am also more triggered by the avoidable hunger and hardship that we see every day in Nigeria, and I know a protest to push the system of governance is the only solution. Fear not, for this is not written out of despair. I am writing this to open our eyes to our victories.
For a country of more than 220 million people, we need to recognise that we had so much victory in one month. Before we allow anyone to judge our August 1-10 protests as unsuccessful, we must put our review of the protests in the context of the number of people that occupy this colonial contraption called Nigeria. For us to bring that quantity of minds to a consciousness that they can resist their suffering for 10 whole days – that’s a highly underrated victory.
For us to successfully trigger a dictator who controls not just Nigeria, but the ECOWAS, and who is a favourite of imperialist powers like the United States, we have done successfully well for our capacities.
Some might wonder if there is any advantage to triggering a dictator like President Tinubu, but there is! The political will of a dictator can hardly be pushed. The only thing that pushes them is a threat to the power with which they carry out their dictatorship. The citizens of Nigeria successfully used their rights as the unwilling employers of President Tinubu to threaten to fire him, and we are ready to make that threat a reality if he does not sit up and carry out the task he forced himself into.
So, beyond the personal victory that the child who gives me sleepless nights does not get to sleep too, I am happy that we have achieved the political goal of inspiring the most populous black nation not to take their suffering lying down.
Let us not doubt that the Tinubu Presidency is much more afraid of the Nigerian masses than ever. He is much more afraid because, as the Yorubas say, the King’s executioner is always afraid when someone holds a sword around his head. He is afraid because Nigeria’s unintelligent intelligence community corruptly makes a case for suspected insurrection so as to get bootable government funding in billions to protect the regime by stating that revolutionary and brave mass protests, Russian flags in the North, and a protest mobilizer in Abuja named ‘Lenin’ automatically means that a democratic socialist revolution in the form of the one led by Vladimir Lenin in Russia in 1917 is afoot. We are glad to be aware of this fear, and we will exploit it accordingly in the interest of a better Nigeria.
The use of the Russian flag in this context could be interpreted as a symbolic gesture of solidarity with ‘anti-West’ movements worldwide, and this can sometimes be the first stage of an anti-imperialist consciousness, especially in Africa and other parts of the world that were previously colonised by the Western powers. Painting something as understandable as these Russian flags raised as a symbol of foreign invasion is intentionally narrow and reductionist! Same with the claim that the protest is a threat to national security.
Presently, out of the 124 protesters who have been detained for the next 60 days because of the #EndBadGovernance protests earlier this month, 75 of them are accused of raising Russian flags during a protest against hunger in Nigeria, while the remaining 49 of them are about to spend the next 60 days under an inhumane condition in detention because they participated in a protest where such flags were raised in another part of the country.
The media has become so bombarded with blackmail about these Russian flags that it takes an unbiased mind to be able to disconnect from the public opinion against raising such flags and state clearly that it is their democratic human right to symbolic expression to raise it. In a democratic society, people have the right to express their views and affiliations through symbols, including flags. People will only signify with a symbol that works for them. During the #EndSARS protests in 2020, young Nigerians raised the Nigerian flag at Lekki Toll Gate and they still got shot by soldiers sent to kill them.
One way in which the Nigerian government has recently co-opted public opinion for its agenda is to claim that these protesters raising certain flags and participating in demonstrations where those flags were raised, were engaging in activities that warrant their detention under suspicion of terrorism or treason. This is a pure manipulation of public opinion to conflate the peaceful exercise of our constitutional rights with criminal activity. This is a brazen attempt to conflate protest with treason because the Tinubu government does not like dissent or the exercise of human rights. The mere act of participating in a protest, even if symbolic flags like that of Russia are used, does go close to the legal threshold for such serious accusations like terrorism and treason, not to talk of meeting such legal thresholds.
The Russian flag might be very symbolic because of the ongoing geopolitical tensions between the Western world and Russia in Ukraine, and especially in the Sahelian parts of Africa. For protesters and the rest of the masses, Tinubu’s austerity policies like fuel price hikes, naira devaluation, etc., were handed down to him by the West through the World Bank and IMF loan sharks. These policies have thrown us all into hunger, and hardship.
This is a government that takes billions of dollars for themselves from Western foreign entities in the name of Nigeria and throws Nigerians into hunger, hardship, social crises, and instability so that they can have enough money to loot and fund their ‘work stay’ in France and buy private jets and yachts to junket around the world. It is therefore not only uncritical but also hypocritical to ask anyone protesting against this kind of government (that the West protects against her own people) not to symbolically crave for Russia if they see the country as the only international alternative to the World Bank and IMF, whether that’s true or not and whether Russia is also imperialist or not.
So much ado about Russian flags – a piece of clothing that can be sown anywhere! We must not be blackmailed by the whole noise of Russian flags, but we must take advantage of the fear. It’s just much ado about nothing really. It’s making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s calling a dog a bad name so as to hang it. It’s just the continuation of the attempt to delegitimise protests or civil disobedience (an attempt that started long before the protests commenced) being carried out through other means.
The use of the Russian flag in this context could be interpreted as a symbolic gesture of solidarity with ‘anti-West’ movements worldwide, and this can sometimes be the first stage of an anti-imperialist consciousness, especially in Africa and other parts of the world that were previously colonised by the Western powers. Painting something as understandable as these Russian flags raised as a symbol of foreign invasion is intentionally narrow and reductionist! Same with the claim that the protest is a threat to national security.
How can the Nigerian government claim that a protest against hunger and hardship that they knew about and kept talking about for up to three weeks before it happened was a threat to national security? The protest was not a secret and the law does not require protests to have organisers or to have their names and phone numbers submitted to the government! So, the protest was lawfully organised and intended to be peaceful until the security agencies unleashed violence on protesters.
Despite Tinubu’s obvious participation in the January 2012 #OccupyNigeria protests that were also held in London, no one claimed that the fact that he participated in a protest that was also held in a foreign country made him a foreign agent sent to destabilise the country. That would be a long stretch, except we are trying to be ridiculous! It is also a long stretch that breaks the truth to make such claims in this situation too. This is because the fuel price reduction demand of the #OccupyNigeria protests is as justified as the fuel price reduction demand and other demands of the #EndBadGovernance protests.
The idea that peaceful protesters should be treated as criminals simply because they are expressing their views is a misuse of the law to punish the people for exercising their fundamental rights. We must recognise that the real issue here is an unlawful suppression of dissent by President Tinubu, not any genuine threat to national security.
Polish and Spanish students on an exchange program are taking a picture of the #EndbadGovernance protests in Kano, ‘Pick them up! Pick up their lecturer! Transfer them to the DSS facility in Abuja!’ A white man with a Western look runs an activist bookshop inside the NLC building in Abuja, ‘Pick him up! Raid his house! Raid NLC! Pick up the NLC President! Pick up his employee! Pick up his wife and step-children!’ Is this enough evidence of foreign intervention? Is this not hypocrisy given that this government has destroyed our economy and environment for foreign multinationals and foreign debts? This is from a President who has fought to keep his 2,500-page criminal record and deal with the FBI sealed, live proof of having a deal with Western intelligence. This is from a president who was ready to immediately obey the West when they called on his ECOWAS leadership to invade Niger after the Niger coup that drove out the West, never minding the implication of that invasion on the peace and stability of his own country that shares a long northern border with Niger. Thanks to public opinion in Nigeria, that invasion would have happened and destabilised Nigeria, and our president would have been off to ‘work-stay’ in France!
Fortunately, fear is not a naturally long-lasting emotion, except when reinforced. At some point, people will get pushed to the wall and face their fear. Rationality lasts longer. Rather than presenting rational arguments as to why they suspect these protesters of treason, the Nigerian government has only presented an alarmist exaggeration of the Russian flags that were raised during protests in the North. Such sensationalist repetition of the references to terrorism and national security by the Tinubu government is clearly designed to provoke an impossible emotional response from hungry Nigerians and to justify the unjustifiable – the wrongful detention of peaceful protesters like Lenin, Sodiq, Angel, Opaluwa, and all others. No sane person is patriotic enough to stay loyal to a country that keeps them in hunger. Statistics of how many Nigerians would relocate if given the opportunity (70% of Nigerians aged 18-35) prove this to be true.
It is either the Nigerian government is woefully ignorant of constitutional law and the human rights enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution at best or deliberately choosing to ignore them to serve their political agenda at worst. Either way, this calls into question the competence and fitness of President Tinubu to serve in a top role that requires upholding the law impartially and without bias. This calls for us to query our employees and make them face a disciplinary panel.
Resorting to fearmongering and baseless accusations to justify the unlawful detention of innocent citizens and labelling peaceful protesters as terrorists is not only a gross misuse of power that must be penalised, but it is also a cowardly tactic designed to silence dissent and such cowardice must not be tolerated in the task of building our society. Anyone exhibiting such behaviour is not a democratic public servant, but a tyrant. It is nothing short of an abuse of power, and those responsible can only be held accountable by the mass of Nigerians.
So much ado about Russian flags – a piece of clothing that can be sown anywhere! We must not be blackmailed by the whole noise of Russian flags, but we must take advantage of the fear. It’s just much ado about nothing really. It’s making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s calling a dog a bad name so as to hang it. It’s just the continuation of the attempt to delegitimise protests or civil disobedience (an attempt that started long before the protests commenced) being carried out through other means.
But the protests were successful and it has not ended, and we need to continue it while bearing the triggers of this dictator in mind so that we can maximise it. These triggers have exposed why Nigeria needs a revolution, like the 1917 Russian October revolution that the Nigerian government seems to be afraid of. The protests will continue before or by October, just like the Russian 1917 Revolution happened in two phases.
Unlike those who are afraid we want to rehash the events of the Russian revolution, we did not mind having our ‘February’ revolution in August, so we do not mind starting our October Revolution now if all protesters in detention are not released!
Comrade Ibukun (an #EndBadGovernance protester) writes from Abuja, Nigeria, and can be contacted on 09167636201.
1 Comment
Hi nationalrecord.com.ng admin, Thanks for the well-structured and well-presented post!