RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Contradictory Signals on the#EndSARS Protest by Ayo Olukotun

So Killings happened only under Obasanjo and Shehu YarAdua before the current incident.  None under Jonathan!

So Buhari is 'their man' of only northern traditional rulers and security personnel and not 'their man' for Oshiomhole and Obaseki.  When did the latter two insist on restructuring defying the SW's silence on the matter after ' their man' entered Aso Rock.

So only northern robber barons in the north orchestrated poverty in the North through their opulence.  The kleptocrats all over Nigeria did not

And who is Ikhide Ikheloa to dictate to the SW when to criticise and when not to criticise govermnment?

Why wasn't he leading the ENDSARS protests?

'The Lekki protesters had to be killed because they were a threat to the status quo.'

So who were those interviewed by the CNN?  Ghosts?

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>

Date: 20/11/2020 22:49 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Contradictory Signals on the#EndSARS  Protest by Ayo Olukotun

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Superbly stated.

Much needed-

''There is nothing to suggest, thus far, that it was the same group of protesters, many of whom maintained a dignified and urbane posture, waving the national flag and singing the national anthem to demonstrate patriotic commitment that masterminded or took part in the looting. It should also be remembered that in terms of sequence, hell was left loose after the tragic event of Black Tuesday in which security forces reportedly fired at protesters singing the national anthem.

Before then, there were also the provocative activities of strike breakers who directly confronted the #EndSARS protesters, beating up and wounding several of them, in part, escalating the terror quotient.''

I am amazed at Olukotun's faith in the Nigerian govt.

The Lekki protesters had to be killed bcs they were a threat to the status quo that sustains the political class.

Their level of organisation and discipline, within a festival like environment yet one operating in terms of a communistic distribution of resources in the Marxist spirit of ''from each according to their capacity and to all according to their needs'', sustained by ceaseless supplies of cash, demonstrated that they should be running the country, not the lootocracy, the officialized  kleptomania, that is Nigerian govt.

So, they had to go.

Olukotun does not seem to have addressed the broadening of demands to include transformation of govt in terms akin to the much canvassed but determinedly ignored restructuring agenda which used to be the identification mark of SW intelligentsia, till the Tinubu wing reached Aso Rock and jettisoned it.

That determined cry for restructuring, that bold effort to seize the initiative from the political class, is why the technocratic figures at the Lekki toll gate, who are clearly better leaders than the characters in Aso Rock, the house of assembly and Senate, characters feeding on millions as income to the tune of ten ten million or more a month, yet the country is defined by poverty, was why the Lekki protesters were killed.

Would Tinubu and Sanwo Olu stand by and let others wreck the foundations of their political fortunes?

Would Buhari watch helplessly as his Fulanisation agenda unraveled?

Would the numerous Igbo hopefuls groveling for the VPship and Presidency be silent when the ultimate prize was being dismantled?

Would the robber barons of the Muslim North, masters of poverty orchestrated through their own opulence sustained by feeding theories of ethnic and religious othering accede to their empires being dismantled?

Of course not.

Once Sanwo- Olu announced a curfew, as people were being killed in Mushin, it was clear to me that the crushing of Lekki was to follow.

I would have been shocked if that had not been done.

Failure to kill the Lekki protesters, relying on non-lethal methods, useless agst such determination as was demonstrated by the protesters, ineffectual force making them heroes as they resisted it, , or, even more astonishingly, letting them carry on their protest, drawing increasing global attention and approval as representatives of a youth centred population dramatizing citizen initiative, the core of the social contract in democratic govt, while the govt actually tried to meet their demands for transformed, people centred  govt, would have meant that Nigeria had been reborn into a country of humans, by humans, for humans.

I cant see how that can be delivered by  a terrorist-Muhammadu Buhari- the grand patron of the Fulani herdsmen's militia, publicly recognized as one of the world's deadliest terrorist groups, enabler of their command centre, Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organization, run by the extreme right wing figures among Nigeria's most elite Fulani, who are exempt from questioning, talk less prosecution, as they declare powers of life and death over entire states and communities in recurrent massacres as the govt rewards them with billions of the nation's money.

Beyond Buhari, how much have we grown beyond the general impunity of govt, from OBJ and Yaradua's military attack  on Fela's Kalakuta Republic and the killing of his mother by what the investigating  panel described as ''unknown soldiers'', all bcs Fela was a govt critic, no more?

ENDSARS is one of the greatest things that has ever happed in my life.

We have lost the fundamental advocacy of Soyinka, we have lost the Fela and Beko  Ransome Kutis, the Gani Fawehimis  and others who helped to galvanize a vision of Nigeria for Nigerians.

Soyinka is alive and may he long be so, but he is not the Soyinka of pre-2015, he is the Soyinka who voided the heart of his advocacy through his history of comfort with questionable govts, from IBB to Amaechi and 2015 Buhari, disowning his long standing critique of Buhari as unfit to lead Nigeria represented by his trenchant ''The Trouble with Buhari'' for reasons he is yet to say, trotting out an excuse that he was informed that Buhari had changed, an excuse that is deeply offensive coming from such an informed and otherwise insightful public figure  when he is not blinded by  assimilation into politicians'  arms.

He  criticizes the wrongs of the Buhari govt  but his critical persona has no more significance than that of practically anyone else of slight public  visibility.

In place of those titans of the long decades from the 60s to the 20000s, we have new people, represented less by individuals than by a mentality, an orientation among youth, particularly in Southern Nigeria, a diffusion making this new development more difficult or impossible to break, coerce or corrupt.

The social critic Ikhide Ikheloa once reasoned on Facebook that anti govt critique had subsided post 2015 bcs the traditional leaders of such protests, the SW, had been pacified or incorporated by the Tinubu/ACN/Buhari CPC alliance.

It is great to know that that may have been true for only a short time.

Its telling that the slogans of the protest ''soro soke,'' ''speak up'' as opposed to ''gbenudake,'' ''be silent,'' are Yoruba expressions.

This linguistic signal suggests the SW as once again the matrix of agitation for a Nigeria for Nigerians, a movement that embraces the entire South, but for which the cosmopolitan matrix of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial centre and part of the SW, has provided a network for actualization. 

I am emphasizing the South bcs the response from the  Northern Muslim populace was often cautious or critical of the movement, and did not go beyond ENDBANDITRY, advocating for an end to the carnage by  the various armed groups making life hell in the region. 

I dont understand them as having addressed fundamental problems of political and economic organization  as was done by ENDSARS, nor engage the questions of ideological, political and economic structures feeding the terrorism ravaging the region, as the ENDSARS protesters did as they expanded their protest from ENDSARS to the political, economic and social structures of which SARS is an expression. 

I would be happy to be  informed otherwise.  

Not surprising, because the Northern Muslim populace may be seen as beguiled into thinking the current political and economic system is working for them, on account of the successful manipulation of the levers of power by their dominant soldiers and politicians, when in fact consolidation of an elite class in the midst of even greater deprivation than in the South is the fundamental  game plan of those figures.

The Northern political and security services and traditional rulers  class of course formally denounced ENDSARS as directed agst the govt of their representative, Buhari, and as is expected from their even more determinedly feudal mindset than that of their Southern colleagues, who have a better understanding of the situation,   called for the censuring of social media, a central weapon in the ENDSARS struggle and which had first demonstrated its political force in Nigeria in the masterly way it was galvanized for Buhari's victory in the South in 2015.

I had given up hope in Nigeria. I did not anticipate any fundamental transformative development even in the next 50 years. It seems I could be wrong.

It is vital to sensitize the general members of the army and the police, the central weapons of the political class, to their own circumstances, represented, for example, by the inhuman horror that is  the Ikeja police barracks, making clear to them the enormity of their own deprivation.

ENDSARS could operate offshore, using traditional and social media in advocating for systemic change, and being outside Nigeria, escape govt harassment.

One view is canvassing change through participation in the political process, either through joining the existing parties or forming a new one?

Are the two major parties better than engines of underdevelopment?

Is the nature of polotiking enabled by the constitution, as one view argues, able to generate anything more than a parasitic political system?

Is a committed  discussion on the way forward and a national referendum on this avoidable?

toyin

On Thu, 19 Nov 2020 at 12:39, 'Ayo Olukotun' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

CONTRADICTORY SIGNALS ON THE #ENDSARS PROTEST

by Ayo Olukotun

The #EndSARS protest, one of the most extensive and organized civil uprising in our postcolonial history has continued to generate ripples nationally and globally. For example, the youth upsurge or what is now popularly denoted as the soro soke (speak out loud) generation, featured prominently at a Special Roundtable organized by the Olu Sanu Centre for Euro-African Studies on nationalist politician, Adegoke Adelabu, at Lead City University, Ibadan, on Wednesday, 18^th of November. 'Part of the problem', one of the discussants, Tayo Adesina, history professor at the University of Ibadan, told the audience, is the discursive manipulation of the term 'leaders of tomorrow' as a tool for relegating youths and talented individuals'. Narrated Adesina: "I was in secondary school when General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd) became Nigeria's military president". Then we were told, 'you are leaders of tomorrow'. "Soon after, I entered University for undergraduate and postgraduate studies and my designation as a leader of tomorrow became almost routine. I began my academic career at the University of Ibadan, where I rose to become a professor, yet I am still referred to as a leader of tomorrow. Now I am about to retire from the University, yet in some quarters, I am still considered a leader of tomorrow", the academic concluded amidst an uproar of laughter. In other words, are we as a nation, not chloroforming the youths, however we define that category, by calling them 'leaders tomorrow', rather than seeing them as today's leaders, capable of innovative interventions in their own rights?

Beyond the mischievous play on words and their deployment as negative signifiers, there is an ongoing double face and schizophrenia on the part of government regarding the #EndSARS protest. To take an instance, the president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), said on Tuesday, at a meeting of the National Security Council, held at the Presidential Villa, that his administration will carry the youths along in policy making and implementation, in order to prevent a recurrence of the #EndSARS protest. Speaking in the same vein, on the same day, at a press briefing, Mohammed Dangyachi, Minister for Police Affairs elaborated that the Buhari administration will pursue a policy of dialogue with all stakeholders, especially the #EndSARS protesters, in order to maintain peace and bring about a turnaround in Police activity, posture and visage. Of course, this is not the first time in which government has emphasized the imperative of dialogue. Along that same line, several state governments around the country and the National Human Rights Commission set up Judicial Inquiries in order to give vent and public space for airing grievances against the police and to determine the root causes of the #EndSARS protests. Unfortunately, however, contradictory signals actions and body language emerged recently as government began to subject some of the protesters to intimidation, harassment, seizure of travel papers, detention, among other things. This much became obvious with the recent statement by 32 Civil Society Organisations which accused government of oppression and abuse of human rights regarding #EndSARS activists. Some of the Civil Society Organisations include the Centre for Democracy and Development, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, YIAGA Africa and Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre. Part of the statement states that, 'Increasingly, protest organizers are being intimidated and coerced by various state institutions, there have also been situations in which travel bans which have no basis in the rule of law have been slammed on individuals for their alleged roles in the #EndSARS protest'.

Indeed, on Monday, the Punch reported a police plot to detain one of the #EndSARS protesters, Eromosele Adene, for extra 30 days, after an initial period of detention at the State Criminal Investigation Department. The point here is that it is difficult to reconcile the policy of dialogue with the youth protesters and other stakeholders with what is beginning to look like a post-event campaign of intimidation and victimization of members of the #EndSARS movement. Undoubtedly, this is bound to raise the issue of trust and sincerity, and whether the advertised policy of dialogue is itself a decoy. This contradictory posture which, on the one hand, raises the banner of dialogue, while on the other, abrogating the level-playing field that constitutes a facilitator of the meeting of minds is all the more astonishing because government itself had conceded the genuineness of the demands for reform made by the youths, a revolt which interestingly included the daughters of the President and the Vice-president. Moreover, the fact that government accepted to terminate the infamous career of SARS, as well as the 5-point demand made by the protesters, suggest that it has bought into the agenda. It is difficult to reconcile upholding the legitimacy of a protest with intimidating the protesters. Of course, we are not here talking about those who hijacked the protest and turned it into a looting spree, not just against government institutions but also against individuals, some of whom are struggling to put things together. To be sure, a number of those raiders were arrested either during or after the looting exercises. There is nothing to suggest, thus far, that it was the same group of protesters, many of whom maintained a dignified and urbane posture, waving the national flag and singing the national anthem to demonstrate patriotic commitment that masterminded or took part in the looting. It should also be remembered that in terms of sequence, hell was left loose after the tragic event of Black Tuesday in which security forces reportedly fired at protesters singing the national anthem.

Before then, there were also the provocative activities of strike breakers who directly confronted the #EndSARS protesters, beating up and wounding several of them, in part, escalating the terror quotient. Hopefully, an authoritative account of these events will be commissioned and written so that real lessons can be drawn from them. It is possible that those in government emphasizing dialogue are not fully aware of the persecution being meted out to the protesters by other arms of the state, who may be acting on their own. Though, even if that was the case, it does not speak well about the level of coherence and joint policy making in government. At any rate, because the protesters are Nigerian citizens, they ought to be entitled to the fundamental liberties granted by the 1999 Constitution (as amended) to dissenters and protesters. The right to disagree and of peaceful assembly are fundamental to the evolution of democracy worldwide. Imagine how colourless and hapless American democracy would look today if no American citizen can disagree with President Donald Trump's sit-tight tactics, as well as violation of some of the most ennobling norms of that country's democracy.

Coming back home, it should be recognized that every attempt to abrogate, even by subterfuge, the right of protesters is a blow delivered to the prospects of democratic development and our progress as a nation. For government to make good its promise of dialogue, going forward, it should put a stop to all activities calculated to punish, victimize or reprimand the protesters who have excitingly widened and deepened democratic discourse in a country groping for redirection. You cannot dialogue in fetters. Government, therefore, is enjoined to provide the buttressing infrastructure and ethos for meaningful and productive dialogue.

 

- Prof. Ayo Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Sikiru Adetona Chair of Governance, Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye.

 

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