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THAT a person is sitting on a keg of gun powder aptly describes the state of the Nigerian nation today as in any other time before a major implosion.

This is not being alarmist. It is just a forewarning to steer us away from yet another social breakdown as occurred in October 2020 and, before that, in January 2012.

The government in power at such times somehow managed to snatch victory from the jaw of defeat while we, the people, pulled back from the abyss of national disaster.

We are again moving quietly but steadily in that direction of the political upheaval of a major kind and nobody can well tell if we would succeed in our typical way of looking down the abyss of national disintegration, pulling back and surviving to tell the story. We’ve had a series of national debacles all of which might amount to no more than the warning signs that opened the flood gates of heaven in the time of Noah. The next storm might, in its effect, be worse than the apocalyptic fire of Armageddon.  

Last week, Londoners and residents of other cities in Britain were out on the streets in their thousands to protest against the rising cost of living. From Manchester, Birmingham to Edinburgh, they were loud in their protestation and angry about their grievances. They worried about the cost of basic food items and energy. Amid a rampaging pandemic that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, they were still able to demand changes from their leaders. Here in Nigeria, there are a thousand and one reasons to justify such protests.

But Nigerians have been generally silent if not somnolent. Many a commentator would as easily blame the abused people of this country as they would heap fulsome praises on a corrupt, abusive crop of political leaders.  

The people, it would seem, are content to remain silent, to forbear and take in the pain of their lives like a sheep being led to slaughter. But does their silence signal acceptance of their lot? Are they happy to be where they are? Granted they could be as opportunistic and corrupt as the leadership they often carp and curse about, the fact remains that the Nigerian people are far more abused and misused than they deserve; far more sinned against than they have sinned.

Purposeful leaders that lead by the force of personal example will always make an impression among the citizens of this country who expect so little that any two-penny politician could easily pass for a statesman however middling their performance.  

Never given to loud street protestation, Nigerians take in the pain, absorbing the pressure and seeking both the means and ways to stay off any encounter with their abusers. Not until things get to a breaking point, as they did in October 2020, a one-off event from which Abuja is still smarting.

 This can be seen from the recent statement of Alhaji Lai Muhammed accusing the Canadian government of double standard in its response to the truck drivers’ protest in Canada vis-à-vis the EndSARS protest in Nigeria. That protest, so far the most portentous and regime-threatening, in its capacity for a revolutionary transformation of Nigeria caught the ruling class flat-footed. It has left them more guarded and not ready to take any chances than ever.  

It started as a protest against the brutality of a unit of the police which the protesters demanded should be immediately disbanded.

This was simple enough. But soon that single demand took several shapes and ballooned into many dimensions (raising fears that the protest lacked cohesion) that included demands for the ouster of the ruling administration which wasted no time in seizing upon the situation to read the protesters’ demands in political terms, accusing them of pushing the agenda of opposition elements. It is clear, however, that the EndSARS protests were in fact an expression of popular will, the bottled anger of the Nigerian people as championed by the mostly youthful vanguard of the protests.

The protests were a culmination of the pent-up feelings of deprivation and outrage at the pervasive corruption and incompetence of the ruling elite and the superstructure that sustained the system.  

The protests rolled into one, and over the course of many years, the demands for political reform, an end to corruption in high places, massive youth unemployment, unbearable cost of living and the unprecedented inflation that had downgraded the economic power of the average Nigerian worker. It was a demand for redress by a youth demographic that defined itself in terms of its disempowerment, social exclusion and ostracisation from the structures of governance and political power.

It was an occasion, the people thought, to lay at the footstool of power the unrealised demands of many years during which Nigerians didn’t seem to know exactly who to hold accountable for the failures of power. The protests brought them close to putting a face to the tragedy that passes for governance and state power in Nigeria.  

We are, alas, again at that breaking point today in Nigeria, the point of simmering anger and helpless disgust that may implode into pathological violence. And this at the cusp of a national election for which a lot of stolen money has been dedicated and has left many enervated and listless even before the first ballot has been cast.

The times are indeed portentous. But the ruling government does not seem to have a sense of the imminent danger we are in. Stuck in its practised way of doing things, it takes the country down the slippery slope of national catastrophe with its cocktail of lies, vexing laxity and lack of will by a leadership that is self-righteous, self-satisfied and no doubt corrupt.

The more the government boasts of its self-proclaimed achievements, the less you see of them. Only days after unveiling pyramids of rice, proof of Nigeria’s self-sufficiency in rice production, a 50kg bag of rice that was about N28,000  ballooned to N35,000. Same for many households items whose prices have quadrupled in the last six months.  

The government chose to retain fuel subsidy but was somehow blind to the importation of damaging methanol-laced fuel that has resulted in nationwide scarcity and shot up fuel prices. Nigerians are not on the streets yet. But these are implosive issues. President Muhammadu Buhari does not appear to live more opulently than any former or present Nigerian leader of his status alive.

That is more than anyone can say of many of his subordinates. Not even President Shehu Shagari’s worst enemy can accuse him of personal enrichment. But he presided over one of the most profligately corrupt administrations in Nigeria. That’s the paradox of Nigeria’s leadership and Buhari may well be travelling in the same direction.

Vanguard News Nigeria