What good are ‘peaceful protests’?

From initially expressing unease about the protests billed to start today, the government changed its stance to advocating “peaceful protests.” It was a smart move. If they had refused people the chance to protest outrightly, they would have fuelled the rage driving them. By asking them to exercise their rights, albeit peacefully, they took the bite out of the whole affair. Almost everyone with a previously radical stance is now chorusing “peaceful protests.”  Do not be surprised if, despite all the noise about a coming tornado, we end up with a slight gust of wind.

Violent protests are not necessarily the answer; in our present situation, it would in fact be unhelpful. It will direct issues from people’s registration of their suffering with an indifferent government to discussions of the incidence of attacks. That will present the perfect distraction for an administration that perennially seeks excuses to justify irresponsibility. From my reading of their attitudes so far, I suspect that as much as they claim to be afraid of violence, they in fact need it to change the narrative from their administrative failings and make themselves out to be unjustified victims of a maniacal public. Former information minister Lai Mohammed played that to advantage after the EndSARS protests in 2020. I hope no one, no matter how much they are goaded, falls into that trap.  Look at Bola Tinubu saying that he finds it hard to forget the buses burnt during the EndSARS protest. Imagine! He has no memory of those who died, but he remembers the buses. That is telling of his mind and character.

Coming soon after the Kenyan protests and all the havoc that attended them, governments everywhere should truly be afraid. Given how much the culture of protest feeds off another elsewhere, another country might take up the refrain anywhere, anytime. The dust had barely settled in Kenya when Bangladeshi youths started theirs. Currently, the death toll stands at 200 plus. It is quite understandable why the Tinubu government has overreacted to the mention of protests. They know how many calamities they have imposed on the country in such a short time. Nigerians saw hell under Muhammadu Buhari’s government for eight years, but all the hardships of those years have been quickly outweighed by just one year under Tinubu’s government. Even God in all his rage did not send the 10 plagues in a day!

There are economic situations caused by the global downturn and which hardly anyone could have helped; there are also situations consequent of mismanagement and lackadaisical attitude; Tinubu’s government combines both. Yes, the post-COVID economy and the wars have had negative impacts on most countries’ economies, but the case of Nigeria is such that we are also dealing with an incompetent and corrupt government. Administrative decisions are about what ends up in their pockets; God help the masses! So far, they have inflicted different measures of pain. Even worse, they lack fellow feelings for the poor victims of all their poorly conceived and badly executed policies.

Despite my not supporting violence, I am still wary of well-meaning people joining paid contractors to chorus “peaceful protests.” When the people against whom you want to take a stand tell you that you can protest, but only if you do it peacefully, what they are saying is “make it very easy for me to ignore you.” Because, what good will peaceful protests really do in a political context where leaders only respond to the force of power? Now they are all over the place shouting “peaceful protests” as if peace was ever their love language. All these months, they have either ignored or even gaslit people’s groans. Now that things have come to a head, they want “peaceful protests.” If you truly believed in peace, why did you wait so long before responding to the restless cries of a people that you have systematically diminished?

With the way they have been throwing accusations at political opponents as the ones sponsoring the protests, you can tell that they are already preparing a grand narrative of political persecution that they will use to turn the protest in their own favour. Think about it, why else would Bayo Onanuga and the rest of the Tinubu “scream team” be blaming their political opponents for sponsoring the protests if not because they are readying the grounds for plausible deniability of their own responsibility in the anger that bubbled up and eventually spilled onto the streets? To delegitimise the protests, they are also alleging spurious issues (hardly of any immediate concern to anyone) as reasons people are mobilising. What they succeed in proving with all that spin is their detachment from the realities of the people they supposedly administer.

Senate President Godswill Akpabio—whom no one has ever accused of deep thinking anyway—preferred to believe that the protests are being sponsored by “election losers.” Vice President Kashim Shettima even called those planning to protest “idiots.” While no reasonable person expects better from someone like Shettima who complements his bad mouth with a bad memory and an equally bad faith, his language is still shameful. When the government views you as an “idiot”, it means they do not think of you as human enough to consider giving their policies a human face.

You wonder, do those so quick to deflect issues on their political opponents even have the capacity to understand the public sensibility and reflect on it adequately? Other than protecting their self-interests, what else have they got? They do not care about peace. They have never had peace in mind for anyone but themselves. For them, Kenya is merely a spectre to be weaponised and threaten us. Their aides now tell us to be careful, otherwise we will all end up as losers if mass violence breaks out. But at what point did flesh and blood reveal that to you? The fear of losing everything is for those who have things to lose and does not mean much to people impoverished by your policies.

When Tinubu proclaimed “subsidy is gone” without making adequate plans for how people would fare, did it occur to all these geniuses now writing facile nonsense that they were pushing people to the wall? There is virtually no area where people are not feeling the mad squeeze. What other options are they left with than to fight back with protests? Now that they realise they cannot stop the protest, they issue a set of prescriptions, “do not block the road,” “do not inconvenience anyone,” “do not do this or that.” So, what exactly is left if the protests are non-disruptive? People might as well not bother.

In any case, the Tinubu boys should perhaps not have bothered with all the drama. I do not believe it is a pre-scheduled protest like this they should worry about; it is the spontaneous ones that might erupt if things continue this way that should keep them awake at night. The Storming of the Bastille and the Arab Spring did not set a date, neither did the Romanian Revolution that drowned Nicholas Ceausescu. They all appeared unthinkable to the political establishment until they happened.

That is why all those aides crawling out of their WhatsApp group to dish us lessons about Kenya have it all wrong. This is not the protest you should fear. For all we know, it will be anticlimactic. The over-preparation and over-reaction are likely to dissuade people from participating. Nevertheless, they will do well to remember the Negro spiritual that formed the title of James Baldwin’s classic and take this as a sign of what looms on the horizon if they persist in their incompetence and indifference: God gave Noah rainbow sign; no more water, the fire next time!