Nigeria Shut on Day One of People’s Power

Nigeria remained shut throughout on August 1^st, 2024, the first of a 10-day popular action against bad governance. It marks the spilling over to the streets of deep fissures bordering on irreconcilable differences between ‘the power of the people’ and ‘the people in power’.

The outcome: the entire vast country was effectively shot/shut down. It was shot in Kano and Minna in Niger State where six persons were killed but only shut down in the rest of the states, going by reports so far.

An empty Abuja street in an otherwise super busy area

Uhm!

In other words, Day One of a 10- day test of strength between the people and the Nigerian State has ended in both symbolic and empirical victory for the people. How the people can consolidate is a different question but, for once, otherwise boisterous, assertive and querulous Nigerians have put all that aside in favour of consensus to speak their own truth to power.

Hitherto, ethno-religious and regional sentiments have been mobilised to make that impossible. In 2024, Christians were seen watching over Muslims observing their own prayers, all in the interest of speaking truth to power and rupturing the Tinubu power imaginary now narrativised as bad governance that must be ended.

Mass trekking on Airport Rd, Abuja on May 30th, 2023 after the fall of subsidy May 29th

Doing it the Jos style. This is not the first time but it needs to be consolidated!

Intervention’s collation shows how the protests went beyond the defining Nigerian cities of Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Benin and Enugu. Ibadan, Akure, Oshogbo, Gombe, Jos, Sokoto, Daura and Minna were also theatres of protests.

In Lagos, the Joint Action Front (JAF) which is a key group started off with the ‘TAATAN Aluta Advance Forces’ caravan of 100 protesters from Ikeja Under Bridge in the direction of Ojota, growing to over 2000 by the time the caravan got to Oregun and over 5000 as at arrival in the Ojota destination.

This band of protesters defied what it calls a ‘Jankara’ (fake) court order restricting the protest to specific points. On hand to give confidence to the protesters were old hand comrades and professional organisers of street battles, it was learnt. The implication is that Lagos or this arena of the protest was not where any elements could hijack the protests as government scare mongering stunts had it. The outcome of skirmishes with perceived state sponsored thugs and hirelings at Under Bridge was, for example, a foregone conclusion as the thugs reportedly evaporated when in contact with superior street battle tactics.

Mass protest as the feast day of the people!

It was not violence all the way down in Kano. There was spectacle too

Reports of the protests in Kano has appeared to over centralise the looting of a National Communication Commission (NCC) facility to the detriment of the spaces of peaceful protests. The reports from Kano also fail to cite the looting of the NCC facility as manifestation of one of the dangers of oasis approach to development – building one ultra-modern facility in a sea of poor and excluded majority. They will respond to their exclusion with violating the facility as soon as an opportunity provides itself. A curfew is now in place in the city.

The circumstances of the killing of six persons in Minna are still lost in unclear details but that is a different dimension of the fissure, especially if planners of the protest were to weaponize the memorialisation of such victims. So also is the instance where a Policeman is lying down obviously killed. Unless under severe stress for self-defence. That is why the best thing would have been to find ways and means of undercutting a mass protest by engaging in systematic rather than rhetorical dialogue. That didn’t happen.

Memories of 2012

A bikini showing as much as it is hiding

Abuja was naturally a hub of battles, in several outskirts and in the city centre. Security operatives and protesters appear to have managed themselves better than elsewhere to the extent that no deaths have been reported although reports say it was no fun at all in Kurudu, Mararaba and Maitama. The Police have said protesters were oozing from more corners than anticipated.

Few cars that could be seen on Abuja roads later in the evening carried green leaves, a gesture to peace. Under the gesture is a society in decay, full of and fissures but with not a single player weaving and waving banners of hope that can calm.

Is it possible President Tinubu is making history in his own way by successfully radicalising the poorest of the poor to go for broke in taking on state power over quality of governance? Even if the president thinks so, he might need to re-read history making because the vote of no confidence by the total shut down of the country in opposition to his set of devil – may – care policies today could be something he may never be able to reverse. What a pity!