Today is the set date for the Nigerian citizens to unleash their pent-up anger and frustration against their political leaders, nay the President Bola Tinubu government, through a channel popularised and sold as #EndBadGovernance protest. My fear is that because they have waited far too long, the rage may have a double impact. Just like a magma that seethes under the earth until it bursts out as a smouldering larva, no one can really predict how the emotions of the citizens would flow. This is dangerous because it feeds into the psychology of defence mechanism to cope with hardship engineered over the decades by our own peculiar but dysfunctional socio-political experiment, or democratic process.
The real culprit that Nigerians should be protesting against is the International Monetary Fund and the Bretton Woods system that it represents. It is the IMF that told the Nigerian government to remove all subsidies, on petrol and electricity. It is understood that in declaring an end to petrol subsidy on the day he was being sworn in, Tinubu was sending a clear message to the IMF that he was ready to work with their plan, regardless of its venom. In my opinion, Tinubu should look at China with a new lens. This is a country that has been able to successfully define its own prosperous economic path without looking the way of the Bretton Woods handouts or textbooks.
I believe the protest took a long time in coming because it would have naturally happened under the Muhammadu Buhari administration which failed to fulfil its key promise of ending the bad governance unleashed on Nigerians since 1999 by the political party it unseated. We must note that #EndSARS is not the same as #EndBadGovernance. However, this is not to say that Buhari is to be blamed for the woes of the nation. No. Yet, truth be told, the average Nigerian voted for him to replace Goodluck Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party because we believed he had a better deal than those who were looting the country blind.
The Buhari phenomenon became a historic reality on the consensus that corruption would be given the sucker punch. It was a revolution, led by Mr Anticorruption himself. This was the reason there was much talk about his body language forcing a change in the polity at the beginning of his tenure in 2015.
But as the new government dug in, we saw a total hijack of the instrument of power by unscrupulous politicians who rode in with the Buhari wave. Buhari did not vet them, either. Within a short time, all the good and bad politicians melded into one. There was no longer any recognisable difference between the PDP and the so-called Buharists. Just like the tale in the popular novel Animal Farm, Nigeria reverted to its original state – the animals are underfed and overworked with little hope of a better future.
Interestingly, Buhari was insulated from protests for the same reason that he was elected. He enjoyed cult followership, especially in the North. Still, he was shrewd enough not to grab the tiger’s tail by removing the subsidy on petroleum, to the very end of his tenure. Tinubu became the fall guy by removing the subsidy on the first day he ascended into office. But Nigerians must understand that it is not really about subsidy. It is about corruption, that old serpent that refused to die or be exorcised. It is behind bad governance and the scam called fuel subsidy. That is why even up till this moment, subsidy is still being paid in some other fashion. To be sure, once you kill corruption, bad governance is dead.
I am convinced that what drives Nigerians as they enter the street today is nothing but displaced anger. Displaced (or misplaced) anger is when someone transfers their anger to someone or something other than what initially triggered it. This can lead to displaced aggression, that is, physical or emotional hostility toward someone or something other than the initial trigger.
Are Nigerians angry? Yes, they are. Why? There is no concrete answer to this question. The issue is so convoluted that if you put all of us in one room, we shall each have our own personal demands to present. At the end of the day, you realise that it is not even about bad governance. There are existential problems troubling us. And they are fundamental, at the soul of our survival as a nation. It may be corruption, or ethnic hegemony, or religious repression, or political misperception. But for the lack of a concrete term, it is called bad governance for now.
Protests seem to have a life of their own. You may never know how they come and go. Even during the 2012 protests that were ignited when Jonathan increased the pump price of petrol, it was revealed that we had inadvertently joined a global movement known as the Occupy Movement. Hence, while we saw it as a fuel hike protest, the organisers led us into the global theatre of social uprising that was charted in the spirit of the Arab Spring. It nearly collapsed Jonathan’s government.
The Occupy Movement was an international populist socio-political movement that expressed opposition to social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of real democracy around the world. It aimed primarily to advance social and economic justice and different forms of democracy. The interesting aspect of the movement was that it had many different scopes, since local groups often had different focuses, but its prime concerns included how large corporations (and the global financial system) control the world in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority, undermines democracy and causes instability. I discovered that at the root of the Occupy Movement was the Zeitgeist Movement, an activist movement against market capitalism and historic religious concepts.
Therefore, we must be sure to understand and engage the philosophy of any protest we embark on, because some of them are demands to upturn civilisation as we know it. Populist politicians usually come into office riding on such promises. President William Ruto of Kenya enjoyed the massive support of Kenyan youths because they saw him as one of their own – “hustler-in-chief” as he described himself. But, alas, when he became the president, he did not commit to the class suicide required of him to fulfil his undeclared promises. Hence, the Kenyan youths were livid with disappointment.
This is the main reason I stated earlier that Buhari should be the one that would have answered to the anger of the masses. Just like Ruto, he enjoyed the support of the man on the street. But when he became president, he turned his back on them. As a matter of fact, Tinubu never made half the promises Buhari sold to us.
I suggest that in order to save a dying nation, the Tinubu team should adopt the standard treatment options for displaced anger. The first is talk therapy, which is a communication-based treatment, to better understand and manage thoughts and behaviours. In other words, the President must personally talk to Nigerians. The second is stress relief, utilising techniques and behaviours to calm the body and mind and decrease stress levels. This means that angry Nigerians must have their immediate needs met – revert to the old electricity tariff, support entrepreneurs, etc. The third is anger management, which utilises a set of techniques that helps people with anger react differently when they feel angry. This speaks to the ability of the president to present a better picture of his dream for Nigeria. The masses have lost the patience to wait for his economic plans to mature.
