I watched the video clips of his Excellency, Governor Oyetola of Osun State and that of Comrade Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji. The former represents the voice of the ruling generation while the latter represents the voice of the angry youths in our complex Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Both speakers were very eloquent and correct in their assertions. I seriously emphatize and sympathize with our leaders who are left to address the ongoing displays of displeasures by Nigerians. When toddlers fall, they look forward. When elders fall however, they look backward to find out what tripped them.
While his Excellency, Governor Oyetola, rightly deduced that over sixty percent of the electorate in Osun, and plausibly in Nigeria, are youths, he was also correct by saying that the attackers on his convoy could not have been members of the youths that started the peaceful #ENDSARS’ protest.
Ms. Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji too was accurate in her assessment that Nigerian youths are now divided into classes than ever. She broadly classified Nigerian youths into two – the first being the educated, the empowered and privileged Nigerian youths like herself while the second category by her being the poor, the deprived and angry young people.
I want to advise that the Nigerian youths of today belong to more than two categories. Aside from the two already mentioned by Toyosi, there are other categories of Nigerian youths. The third category being reasonably educated but unemployed young Nigerians, who were able to attend good public and or private schools in Nigeria based on their parental financial abilities to afford such. The fourth category being the poorly educated, employed or unemployed, Nigerian youths who could only afford poorly funded public schools to some extent before dropping out to become political thugs, learn trades, etc. The members of the fifth category of Nigerian youths are not even educated at all.
Unfortunately, the only category of Nigerian youths that may not be violent during “peaceful protests” like that of the #ENDSARS are those that belong to the first category – the educated, the empowered and privileged Nigerians youths like Toyosi. This class of Nigerian youths constitutes less than 15% of our current Nigerian youths. They are the ones that have everything to live for and to be proud of being called Nigerians. They have achieved as privileged Nigerians and they can rub shoulders with, and cerebrally engage, their peers and elders across the globe just as Toyosi just did with Professor Patrick Utomi in the video clip that featured her.
The remaining majority of Nigerian youths belong to the remaining categories – the educated, but jobless; the poorly educated that are tools of political or similar thuggery; the uneducated that can easily be preyed upon at any time because of their ignorance. All these remaining Nigerian youths have little or nothing to be proud of for being Nigerians. They are frustrated, unhappy, disgruntled, and rightly so, because they are wallowing in semi and or abject poverty while they witness other Nigerians, especially those in the political class,openly displaying opulence that these neglected Nigerian youths can only dream of. They watch the videos of our political leaders like Senator Dino Malaye with broken hearts and sorrow tears.
They witness being oppressed by their privileged peers who cruise around the cities with very expensive exotic cars and live in expensive mansions while they, themselves, cannot afford two meals in a day. They wonder if they all belong to the same Nigeria that Senator Malaye and other privileged Nigerians belong to. These are the classes of Nigerian youths that may likely engage in activities they ordinarily would not have subscribed themselves to. The well educated and poorly educated, but unemployed, Nigerian youths are likely the ones you find in yahoo-yahoo scamming; kidnapping; armed robbery; political thuggery,etc simply because the instinct of survival of homosapiens can drive desperate youths into crime.
His Excellency, Governor Oyetola, and other witnesses know that everyone in the crowds of the civil unrest in Osogbo on October 16, 2020 was, by definition, most likely a Nigerian youth whether violent or not. The available video clips did not show anyone above age of seventy among the protesters, except perhaps, among the mothers in Osogbo that also protested. But this procession of our mothers and sisters was not chaotic. In other words, the attackers of the convoy of his Excellency, Governor Oyetola, were most likely violent Nigerian youths who could plausibly be hired political thugs or self appointed hoodlums. The fact however remains that these were most likely Nigerian youths as well. Anyone that attacked a Nigerian governor’s convoy, with heavily armed uniformed men and women, definitely knew that he or she was on a suicide mission. The implication of this is that these violent youths were ready to die. They were on suicide missions. This is a very ominous sign.
Whenever a human being is desperate enough to put his or her life in the arms’ way, whether legally or illegally, the responder or responders must not only tread carefully, but also must look backward to find out what went wrong. This is the point we are now as a nation or as a people, if we can put it this way.
It appears that violent revolution is knocking at our doors unless we quickly look backward and make urgent amendments.
Possible Solutions:
First, Toyosi touched on one fundamental issue that is wrong with our nation at the moment. She accurately captured one of the widely quoted words of wisdom of sage Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo of blessed memory, which stated: “the children of the poor that we fail to train (educate) will not allow the children we train (educate) to live in peace”.
What we are witnessing now appears to be a little different from what Pa Awolowo warned us about. It now appears that the children of the poor that we failed to educate are now trying to make life unlivable for all of us, but not only the children that we discriminatorily educated.
We need to reform education of our youths and future leaders immediately to urgently stop the segregation that is currently very pervasive among our youths because of the current education system in Osun State and in Nigeria generally. At the moment, the children of the poor are either not educated at all or they attend poorly funded public schools staffed by disgruntled teachers that even do not educate their own children at the public schools they are working as teachers. The children of the middle class families attend private schools whose qualities of education range from poor to very good depending on the costs of providing this commercialized education. The children of the affluent receive their own education largely from outside Nigeria because they know that the education system in Nigeria is not good enough to prepare these privileged kids to compete with their peers across the globe. Unfortunately, majority of Nigerian youths believe that the children of the governors, the senators, the ministers,etc belong to this last class of Nigerian youths that are or were educated outside Nigeria. Whether such belief is correct or not, that is the unfortunate perception.
The solution to this segregation is for us to urgently go back to the education system that Nigerians of my generation enjoyed. While I was a student from low socio-economic family at St. Charles Grammar School in Osogbo, many of my schoolmates then were children of affluent and powerful people from many parts of the country. Among my schoolmates then were children of directors of National Youth Services Commission and other parastatal organizations; sons of bank managers; wards of principals;sons of highly successful lawyers, doctors, senators, vehicle dealers, business tycoons, etc. Till today, many of us still connect as former classmates, and it is practically impossible for any of us to bear arm against one another. The bond that kept us together for about five years in those days is still alive. If the public school systems in Osun State and across Nigeria can revert to the old good days’ status where all children from different socio-economic levels mingle together and learn together, the chance of having violent revolution in Nigeria will be significantly reduced.In addition, such will ensure that every Nigerian child receives high quality education irrespective of his or her parental financial ability. Such will bring back the lost patriotism and fraternity.
Secondly, the gap between the poor and the wealthy is becoming wider daily for many reasons. One of such reasons is the financial gratification in our current democracy where some privileged Nigerians suddenly become billionaires overnight simply by becoming elected or politically appointed public officials. This has seriously eroded the old culture of hardworking as the key to success. Nigerian youths do not want to invest their time any longer in tasking legitimate ventures. They now want quick money so that they too can compete financially with the few privileged Nigerians that have access to political power and largesse.
There are numerous reports out there that an average Nigerian Senator goes home monthly with about twenty-nine million naira, which is equivalent to about $75,000 (seventy five thousand US dollars) per month while his or her counterpart in the United States of America gets paid about $14,000 per month. Nigeria is a country with numerous angry and unemployed youths with official minimum wage of less than $50 a month. This means a single Senator in Nigeria is allegedly earning the equivalent of monthly salaries of one thousand and five hundred Nigerians on minimum wages. Nigeria has over one hundred Senators. This means all the remunerations of all the senators can give jobs to about one hundred and sixty thousand (160,000) unemployed Nigerian youths. That is the senate alone. What about the house of representative members? What about our ministers? What about the presidency, the state executives officials, the state legislators, the local government elected and appointed officials? Putting all these together, we can now understand why unemployed Nigerian youths have reasons to be angry.Thus, the ongoing protest is not about the SARS alone.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the metric of economic success of any nation, of the USA is not comparable to that of Nigeria. While the GDP of the USA is about 22 trillion US dollars, the GDP of Nigeria is about or less than 1 trillion US dollars. It is highly illogical for Nigerian Senators to be earning more than their USA peers by this metric alone. Politics is a clarion call to serve in true democracy. True politicians abandon lucrative jobs for poorly paid political assignments simply because they want to make changes, not because they want to enrich themselves. Majority of the USA Senators that earn about $14,000 per month each are physicians, lawyers, accountants, etc who were making far more than $14,000 per month in their various professions before choosing to contest for senatorial seats. The fame and joy of serving humanity that come with political offices in true democracy are what attract true politicians into politics in such climes, not the lust to enrich themselves. Nigerians of 2020 are wise enough to know all these differences. When they observe that what is being practiced in Nigeria is not true democracy and gives no room for them to participate, what we are currently experiencing becomes inevitable.
There is urgent need for political reform that will make politics a humanitarian service rather than being a blank cheque to self-enrichment in Nigeria. The combined monthly take-home of any political official should not be higher than twice the amount of the monthly take-home of public official of such level of government. Meaning that a federal political office holder should not earn more than twice the amount a senior publicly employed federal employee is earning. Same thing for state and local governments’ political officials.
The money saved from above measures should be partly spent on reforming public education sector to the aforementioned old standards that afforded all Nigerian children opportunities to learn and mingle together in the same classes irrespective of their socioeconomic situations. Other things to spend such money on include providing jobs for unemployed youths that are employable;train or retrain the Nigerian youths that require training or retraining to be employable and be useful to themselves and the society.
Thirdly, the Nigerian security system requires urgent reform. Ending or dissolution of SARS is not the ultimate solution. Members of SWART that was pronounced as a replacement of SARS, and many other armed men and women in uniforms across Nigeria, are not in any way different from the Nigerians that were in the purportedly banned SARS. Ending SARS is just like a knee-jerk response. It is not the ultimate solution.
It is time for us to give true federalization a serious reconsideration. If each state and each town has its own police force, the members of such armed teams will less likely kill and or maim their fellow citizens of their communities recklessly. Such security officials will also have family members residing in the same communities, thus they will have ownership interests in the security of such communities. They will likely be able to track down criminals in their various communities without resorting into unnecessary violence. This is what is expected in true federal system that the Federal Republic of Nigeria is supposed to be.
After the aforementioned political reform, which would have maken politics none attractive to those that are not prepared to serve Nigeria, and would have re-energized Nigerian youths’ interests in hard-work, merit and excellence, the very next thing to do, if truly we want to end police brutality and vices, is to truly combat corruption and corrupt practices at all levels, including the grassroots. This was tested in Nigeria during the WAI (War Against Indiscipline) between 1984-85. WAI was found to be very effective, though criticized by many. There are numerous ways to reinstate check-and-balance measures like WAI that will be compatible with the ethos of modern human rights. If the policy makers are interested in the blue print of these strategies, such can be discussed, but these are beyond what this write-up can address.
Lastly, but not the least, Nigeria is currently like the “Animal Farm” captured in the satirical allegory in the novel authored by George Orwell in which animals were described as being equal, but some animals were considered more equal than the others. Nigeria is largely not at war, neither is it under despotic military leadership. It is very difficult to understand why elected officials would be cruising around in bullet-proof vehicles and be surrounded by tens or more heavily armed men and women in uniforms or muftis, when they are not combat military generals in the war-fronts.
In climes where true democracy works and is practiced, senators, house of representative members, governors,etc mingle freely in the public with ordinary citizens with little or no one noticing who they are and without being escorted by any one, let alone heavily armed officers and or thugs. Nigerian youths are not happy with these because they are wise enough to know that this is not normal. The Prime Ministers of UK and many other nations commute in public transportation without heavily armed security officials. If our president requires to be protected, do other members of our political class have to be cruising around with heavily armed officers as well? The money being spent on such unnecessary security displays can be better utilized in reforming and improving security to all Nigerians. This will make all Nigerians, including the youths, believe that Nigerian leaders are truly representing and protecting Nigerians, but not themselves and their family members alone.
The current security practice in Nigeria, that only protects few privileged Nigerians while maiming and killing majority of Nigerians, can only guarantee provisional security to these privileged people if, and only if, everything is okay without civil unrest. In the face of violent revolution, these heavily armed officials too may become attackers against their privileged clients because the fact is that not all of these armed men and women in uniform or mufti are happy serving as slaves that are watching over the very few that are steering the ship of our dear fatherland to extinction.
We have seen many of these heavily armed brothers and sisters of ours in uniform expressing their displeasures. We have seen them lamenting that they cannot afford to educate their children in the commercialized education system we are creating all over the nation. We have seen them weeping because they are being evicted from their rented apartments because they cannot afford to build their own houses despite the fact that they have spent their whole lives protecting the lives of our leaders and their children in their multi-million dollars mansions across Nigeria. We have seen them complaining that they have to buy their own uniforms. We have seen them complaining that they are spending their own money to treat themselves for injuries they sustain while serving our fatherland. We have seen them lamenting that their future when they retire is not bright because of what they are experiencing happening on daily basis.
Our armed men and women in uniforms and outside uniforms have warned us many times that they are also Nigerians, many of them are also youths. They have given us clear signs that they too may not have too much hope as Nigerians for their future. Please and please, do not let us wait until armed men and women in uniforms and outside uniforms support our unarmed Nigerian youths in expressing their displeasures before we look backward and make necessary corrections. Africa and the whole world cannot afford having a Nigeria with bloody revolution. Nigerians cannot afford it. It is our joint responsibility to prevent this from happening.
Long live Federal Republic of Nigeria. Long live Nigerians.
By: Omoniyi Yakubu Adebisi, MD, CCFP, DipABFM
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