By Ugo Onuoha
THE ‘Ides of March’ are now set for August. And that month is two days hence. Typical of Nigerians the ides of March have been re-branded and rechristened and restructured. Our own, if they actually happen, will not be for one momentous occasion. They are programmed to last for days, all of 10 consecutive days, from August 1. What a time to be alive.
Nigeria, with its history of bloodletting and the highhandedness of its security agents, is on edge. The regime of this president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is worried. Look beyond the tough guy posturing. Strategy meetings of its henchmen and security goons have become almost a daily affair recently. The truth is that no administration covets any demonstration or protest, not even the so-called peaceful variety. In every such situation, the line between peace and violence is thin, indeed blurred. And it is worse in Nigeria.
In the case of the widely advertised ‘Days of Rage’ planned to begin in two days, the elements that could spark violence, destructions and deaths are embedded in the demands of the organisers and the inevitable highhanded and deadly reaction of a regime that has been struggling with legitimacy from the get go. The precarious position and hypersensitivity of the regime is not made any better by its struggles in many areas.
As we know the two most important duties of any government are securing lives and property of citizens, and ministering to the welfare of the people. It will be a stretch even for the choristers of this regime to remotely claim that the administration is meeting the minimal expectations of people in the two cardinal areas of governance. It does not appear that the regime has made a dent in securing the country. Insecurity is actually becoming endemic. Its scorecard on the economic front is woeful. Worse still is that the prognosis is not looking good.
Last week, the central bank of Nigeria raised its benchmark interest rate for the umpteenth time. Many more Nigerians are projected to slip below the poverty line. That should be concerning for a country that is officially designated as the poverty capital of the world. The monetary czars appear fixated with using only monetary tools to cure the ills of an economy that is afflicted in many sectors. There are no indications that there’s a consciousness to align monetary and fiscal policies.
The confusion and desperation in the government circle is palpable. The evidence was writ large last Wednesday night when the national secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress political party, Senator Ajibola Bashiru appeared for a programme on national television. He strained to deny the evidence of economic devastation before our very eyes even to the extent of disclaiming the inflation data published by their own government agency – the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
It’s the in-your-face lies and denials of APC apparatchiks such as their national secretary that infuriate many Nigerians and that make the imminent ‘Days of Rage’ almost unavoidable. But danger looms. A regime marked by serial bungling is a danger to everyone. It is worse when that regime is populated by opportunists and pseudo democrats. And headed by a man incapable of hiding his dictatorial tendencies. ‘Days of Rage’ could be bloody and may end up achieving little or no results worth the potential losses. The inevitable is that when the cloud lifts, the Igbo people and the Igbo nation will bear the brunt. That has been the story of Ndigbo in Nigeria since the 1940s, and even earlier.
Igbo -hating is a pastime for some Nigerians. In fact, sometimes the hating comes from inside of the Igbo themselves. For instance, long before the furious debates on the impending protests hugged the national media headlines, Joe Igbokwe, from Nnewi in the heart of Igbo land had affixed Ndigbo in the bull’s-eye of the protests. Two weeks ago, Igbokwe wrote a gratuitous letter to the Igbo in Lagos, warning that the authorities in the state will deal decisively with them if they participate in the August protests.
“I am the leader of Ndigbo in APC Lagos… I know what I went through and what I experienced during the #Endsars protest in October 2020 which opened a can of worms that shook the long existing cordial relationship and understanding between (the) Igbo and the owners Lagos”.
The summary of Igbokwe’s warning are that the Igbo were culpable in the #Endsars protests of 2020 and the destruction of public property in Lagos; that there are indications that Ndigbo are in the thick of the planned August protests; that relations between the ‘owners of Lagos’ and the Igbo are irretrievably bad; that the owners of Lagos had learned valuable lessons from the events of 2020 and will finish off the Igbo in Lagos if they dared to join the protests; and, that the Igbo who are unwilling to lay down and be trampled upon and rolled over had better leave Lagos.
Joe Igbokwe may not be a fool, but he at times says patently foolish things.
The leadership of the conveners and protagonists of the ‘Days of Rage’ are well advertised. It’s scanty on Igbo. How Igbokwe, therefore, conjures and dumped Ndigbo in the heart of the agitation can only be befuddling. The other day I happened on the same Joe Igbokwe arguing at the top of his voice in Igbo language that the Igbo do not like the APC. That encounter with his kith and kin appeared to have happened on twitter (now X) space and then exported to WhatsApp. His opponents, who were mostly female, were equally insistent that they would not approve of APC for as long as the party approximated maladministration beginning with the regime of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s affliction. By his stance in the encounter, Igbokwe may have said that the Igbo political elite in APC, including himself, are charlatans who are not representing the yearnings and aspirations of Ndigbo. Could this be true?
We have heard isolated but strident voices in the weeks leading up to the ‘Days of Rage’, many of them suggesting, without any shred of evidence, that the Igbo are orchestrating the August protests. There was a video about one unidentified Islamic teacher in the north who asked northern youths not to participate in the protests because Ndigbo were the people stoking the fire, and that they were using other means to attain Biafra by fueling the disintegration of Nigeria. He said that any protest is ‘haram’. Other sheikhs promptly shot him down.
One fellow, Very Revd. Edward Obumneme Joseph who identified himself as president of the PFN youth wing offered different reasons why the protests should be shunned. He said that the protests were being promoted by sponsors of terrorism and the Igbo were the ultimate target of the fallouts.
By last weekend all the security agencies have busied themselves with running political commentaries on the protests, the organisers, sources of their funding, the modus operandi, why the protests should be aborted, how deadly force will be used, and the resolve of the regime to protect life and property of Nigerians.
The most comical of the running political commentaries came from the federal secret police otherwise called the Directorate of State Services (DSS). By last Thursday the Agency said it had identified the promoters of the protests, ignoring the fact that the names of the promoters had been in the public domain for weeks. It claimed it had identified the sponsors but provided neither evidence nor clues. It said it had unmasked how third parties were plotting to hijack the protests for regime change. It said that the protests were political and not economic. And that the claim about hardship was a ruse.
It may not be entirely correct to say that the Nigerian secret police are the dumbest in the world, but they may be close to the bottom of the scale. Except in dictatorships the secret police in other jurisdictions are not known to be loquacious. They are usually taciturn. That code of not talking much was on display last week when the US director of the secret service, Kimberly Cheatle, appeared before lawmakers investigating the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. It did not matter that it cost her job.
If the DSS had iron-cast evidence that the protests were political with sinister motives, the expectation is that it will move fast, arrest the insurrectionists and let them have their day in court. Of course, the DSS was lying. It had no evidence that could stand up in court about its claims. Is this not the same DSS that was scheming to arrest the former governor of the central bank, Godwin Emefiele, last year on allegations of sponsoring terrorists? The same Emefiele has been in detention and restricted movement since June 10, 2023, yet the secret police have failed to charge him with terrorism.
Even before the protests commence enough grounds have been prepared to make Ndigbo the fall guys. Whether they participate in the protests or not will count for nothing. For more than 70 years they’ve borne the burden of striving to be Nigerians by losing their lives, limbs and livelihoods.
The truth is that the Igbo really do not have any stake or interest in the looming ‘Days of Rage’. The majority of them did not believe that Bola Ahmed Tinubu would make a good president for a country that was, and still is, in dire straits. And they rejected him at the ballot box in 2023. They also did not believe in 2015 that Nigeria’s affliction, Buhari would be a good president. They were vindicated after eight years of disaster.
The Igbo are masters in diverse fields but their expertise in commerce is unequalled. Commerce thrives in a conducive environment, not in uncertainty, chaos and war. Protests, no matter their ultimate outcome, enthrone chaos and so bad for business. It is bad for Ndigbo. It is especially so for people who have been deliberately excluded from Nigeria’s governing structure at the centre since 2015. They are punished for voting their conscience.
The danger for the Igbo during the ‘Days of Rage’ is that the government will, as usual, bus thugs to infiltrate and disrupt the protesters and cause violence. The situation will degenerate to arson and destruction. The regime will then order its security agencies including the army to move in, to shoot and to kill the unarmed marchers. In America the Conservatives say that when the looting starts, the shooting starts. But here at home it’s usually when the shooting starts, the looting starts. And the Igbo will be left to count their losses. Whether they participate or not, Ndigbo will lose from the ‘Days of Rage’. That’s the default button of Nigeria’s crisis for decades. No reason to believe it will be different this time.
