By Ochereome Nnanna
ABOUT a week ago, I was on my way to the office at about 11am when I drove into a crowd of young men aged between 16 and 30 in a street next to mine. I would have thought nothing of it if not for the fact that such a large number of able-bodied young men who should either be at work or school were idling away, with some of them smoking weeds.

The following day at about the same time, the crowd gathered again. I became suspicious. I moved to a safe distance away from them and I called my vulcaniser whose shed was located around that gathering point. I asked him who those people were, and what they were doing there. He told me they were “boys” from all the adjoining areas, and they just come there every morning to “relax”.

On exactly the fourth day as I drove past, a huge young man in his late twenties (probably their leader) moved towards my car. I stopped and wound down my glass to know what he wanted. He leaned on my car, and with a polite smile, he said: “Good morning sir. We are your children. We are your boys”.

I gave him thumbs up, spoke encouraging words to him and wished him and his group the best of luck. He thanked me and walked away. The worst you could do in such circumstance is to display hostility or arrogance. It was equally counter-productive to dish out money, assuming you have it. I did not have any.

I was both apprehensive and sad. I knew the danger everyone who looked “well fed” in the vicinity faced with this turn of events. An idle hand, the old saying goes, is the devil’s workshop. What could possibly pull these young men together every morning that could be positive? It is a dangerous new development in that neighbourhood where I have resided for some years. And I can imagine that this is more or less the same everywhere.

As the years fly by and we produce children, those of them who go to school eventually finish their education and join a horde of those who did not go to school in the labour market where there is no job opportunity. To make matters worse, more than two million Nigerians have lost their jobs since Muhammadu Buhari was sworn-in as an elected President of Nigeria in May 2015. Some days ago, I had issues with my account in a bank and called my account officer. She told me she was no longer in the bank. She was now at home, jobless. Out of four of my former account officers I called, only one was still in employment. The others had been retrenched!

That there is hunger and great suffering in the land is an empirical reality. The only people who might not feel it are those enjoying plum government appointments, like Femi Adesina and his pair, Garba Shehu. When you complain of hunger and suffering, they would retort with asinine logic that you must be one of the wailers who are still sore that Buhari defeated former President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 election. That was what Adesina said in response to the planned protest which some Nigerians artistes, led by Innocent Idibia (2Baba) are scheduled to stage today nationwide.

The other day I read a newspaper report that some communities in Jos, Plateau State, refused to participate in a polio vaccine exercise because of hunger. They asked officials to bring them food instead of vaccine. They asked the government to ensure that the prices of food items are reduced to affordable levels to enable them feed. Plateau State voted APC, so let me see what Adesina will say to those complaining of hunger there. Government officials had better do something about the suffering in the land or we might be headed for a social Armageddon now that our erstwhile docile youth appear to be gathering at street corners and eyeing every decently-dressed passerby with unfriendly, speculative gaze.

That the period of “honeymoon” for Buhari is over is obvious. We are beginning to see a semblance of what happened to turn the tide against the Goodluck Jonathan regime. After about seven months free period, Jonathan walked into the beginning of a tide that eventually swept him out of power when he attempted to deregulate the downstream sector of the petroleum sector on 1st January 2012.

It was within this period that the “Occupy” protests against extreme capitalism were rocking Europe, America and Asia. Some political forces in the Lagos area reached out to civil society groups, Area Boys, Labour, and musicians and staged their own version of “Occupy” protests which grounded the nation’s economic capital. There were spinoffs nationwide. Not to be outdone, the Jonathan regime also funded counter-protests, but eventually capitulated by retaining the subsidy regime; a mistake that eventually zapped about four trillion naira in a largely corruption-riddled squandermania from our national coffers. This was one of the precursors of the ongoing recession.

These were the kick-starters of the general disposition of Nigerians towards change, which a new political coalition, All Progressives Congress, APC, capitalised upon, with sweet-tooth electoral promises, to unseat Jonathan.

After twenty months in power, Nigerians have waited for Buhari to make One Naira equal to One US Dollar as he promised. Instead, One Dollar is now about N500, down from about N198 when Jonathan handed over to Buhari. Nigerians have waited for Buhari to make petrol N45 per litre. Instead, it has climbed from N97 to N145. Kerosene (poor man’s cooking oil) which was being dispensed by Capital Oil at N50 per litre before Buhari took over, is now N400 in most places. During the campaigns, Babatunde Fashola, the magical Governor of Lagos State said in a lecture that any government that cannot fix the electricity problem of Nigeria in six months is incompetent. Buhari promptly saddled him with three critical ministries – Power, Works and Housing. Today, the magic is gone.

The 2Baba-led protests are generally against bad governance which has been our lot since the return of democracy in 1999. But more importantly it is about the failure of the Buhari regime to deliver its campaign promises. Worse still, new dimensions in bad governance have shown up in the free reign of armed Fulani herdsmen who have been killing Nigerians and destroying communities without check by our law-enforcement agencies who prefer to deploy against cattle rustlers. This regime does not respect the rule of law, as it brazenly ignores court decisions. The armed forces are mobilised against unarmed and non-violent protesters such as the Biafra self-determination groups and Shiite Muslims who want the Federal Government to obey the courts and release their leaders. While pursuing former regime officials who allegedly stole from the public coffers, the Buhari regime is actively shielding flunkeys of the President. APC Senator, Shehu Sani describes the Buhari anti-graft war as “insecticides” for the opposition and “deodorants” for Buhari’s acolytes.

These protests are taking place as President Buhari returns to Nigerian from his luxury vacation in the UK. We hope he is strong and ready to embrace the post-honeymoon challenges that will be surging at him from now on. Labour will soon be on his neck. The continued luxurious lifestyle of our leaders who prefer foreign-made self-indulgences to our locally available ones in the face of this recession, will spur Labour to ask for pay rise and hold the government to ransom until it is granted.

It is not going to be an easy ride for the President until Nigerians begin to feel the relief that comes with good governance. Only a total reset of governance template will bring a change for the better. If Buhari continues along his chosen path, we may be at the threshold of a breaking point, especially now that the hungry youth have become visibly angry.