A Dictator’s Tantrum.
It’s two more years until 2023, and because tomorrow is uncertain, we do not know what will happen, but one thing is sure: it’ll get worse. One doesn’t need a soothsayer to know this; the events preceding the swearing-in of Mohammadu Buhari in 2015 are enough to show anyone willing to see them. Everything that would go wrong has. When you try to imagine that nothing could shock you anymore, something new happens that triggers a fresh bout of deep-seated anger at the inhumanity of this government.
Finding ways to cope with the consistent state of this madhouse has been the default instinctive mantra of an average Nigerian. For this, a peculiar sense of humour has played a key role. The sprinkle of comedy on the ridiculousness of the action of the men in power leaves so much more to be desired but serves as a buffer to the truth that if we think about it deeply enough, the rage will spur us to action. It did. In October 2020, we refused to deploy our defense mechanism. We had had enough of the extrajudicial killings by SARS and the blatant disregard for due process in conducting their affairs. These men had become a law unto themselves and needed to be stopped; hence, the start of a redefining protest. Logic said this was just initial gra gra and a waste of time as it would do nothing. People in whom empathy was a living thing but lost hope in Nigeria amounting to anything good looked on with skepticism, expecting the energy and righteous indignation that fueled this movement to wane in a day or two, but it didn’t. Maybe it was the third day, maybe it was the fourth or another, but it was not up to a week before the fire that burned in the protesters razed all doubt in them. Suddenly, the voices were louder, and the uproar could no longer be ignored. Activities were temporarily shut down, and for those who couldn’t get away or were engaged and interested, they joined the online protest. Contributions were made towards sustenance, medical bills, and other needs. It felt surreal until it didn’t. demands were made and were met on air as usual, yet the protesters persisted because this time it was change or nothing else.
Our children are not listening, they said, employing the parent/elderly-child strategy to call us to heel. The strange thing was that a man who had only just stepped into his foolish 40s a few years ago, someone who had been campaigned for on the platform of #NotTooYoungToRun, also called us his children. It earned him a scar he’d have to live with all his life. He turned his back on his own and joined vultures to clamour for a means to shut our voices. On October 20, 2020, they unleashed the army on Lekki toll gate protesters after announcing an impossible curfew. In the cover of darkness, they let fly bullets that found home in the bodies of citizens whose only armour were the Nigerian flags they kept waving. A live recording of the event was done by the courageous DJ Switch, whom I had only heard about a few weeks before from her unique DJ-ing on BBN. She didn’t ask to be a hero or an activist but was forced to by these strange circumstances. Different stages of disbelief enveloped Nigerians who had only been reborn one or two weeks before. We watched on our phones as some of us screamed as bullets pelted them. Chaos reigned that night. No one with a conscience slept. As dawn came, so did my tears. More people would die, and corruption would remain firmly seated on his throne.
No one could go back to how we were before this. Not us, not the opposition, and most of all, not the government. Something had changed in all of us that night. A ticking time bomb, if not nipped in the bud, seemed to be the summation of the thoughts concerning it all by the government. All they have done after the protest will always point back to the protest. The cryptocurrency ban, the renewed vigour for the regulation of social media, etc.
On June 4, 2021, they banned Twitter operations in Nigeria. They had the worst excuses to give. Two days before this, a presidential speech had been posted on Twitter that had a genocidal undertone following the happenings in the south-east of Nigeria. It was this tweet that sparked mass reporting of the president’s handle for targeted harassment. Even a blind man could see that speech for what it was, and those who were not willfully blind got Twitter to take it down. It was barely 10 minutes later that Lai Mohammed called a press conference to accuse Twitter of interfering in Nigerian governance. This is a man aptly nicknamed for his propensity to tell the most outlandish lies for the sake of extricating the government from extenuating happenings in the country. It was horrifying how fast they responded to a rightly deleted tweet when, this same week, over 200 students were kidnapped in Niger State and they have yet to utter a word.
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, has taken actions that are in equal parts laudable and will forever humanize him in our eyes. First, he had shown support during the #EndSARS movement; second, he had heeded his instincts by situating the Africa office of Twitter in Ghana as opposed to Nigeria, which was a strong contender owing to our being the largest users in Africa; and finally, he verified that the tweet was indeed genocidal and deleted it. We might have to struggle with using Twitter now, but we know that on that platform, when it is time to do the right thing for our voices to be heard, Jack will.
Adamu Garba, CEO of IPI Solutions and former APC presidential candidate, in a gleeful tweet, urged Nigerians to go download his Crowe app. As deserved, tweeps while dissecting the uselessness of the app also cursed him to high heavens. If it were the last social media app left on earth, I’d be happy to die without ever accessing social media through it. I have never loathed an app as much as I loathe this. I woke up this morning after the ban and could access Twitter with some difficulties. Tweets were not loading fast enough, and pictures were not coming on, although I have enough data. An hour later, it could do neither anymore. So, it’s a Twitter blackout in Nigeria. I have no intention of getting a free VPN due to the risks involved, and I cannot afford to get a paid one. We are getting there, confused, bruised, and angry as we take the long walk to watch a senile man run this country aground while fiddling with our emotions like his plaything. A man bereft of empathy clings to despicable and high-handed ways akin to military rule. One who seemed to have fulfilled his greatest wish to rule a democratic Nigeria and live out his remaining days in the splendor that fraudulent practices would afford him. His wife, our first lady, is presently living in Dubai and has obeyed her husband by deactivating Twitter. We wonder where she’ll come crying next time she is locked out of the presidential visa. At least we know she is observing the other room from the comfort of a working country. This is not new to us, as we have seen governors govern from states governed by others, scared of the state of theirs and collecting fat checks for deigning to give the people they govern bragging rights of having a Govanor. It hurts, and we are drowning with no hope in sight.
After trying to access the internet, I finally succeeded. I log in on Facebook and see the timely post by Temī Dāyø — a brilliant thinker with one of the best think-pieces on social matters — about this issue. She says they are doing a test run in their attempt to “off light,” yet it is a good thing that “that which impels and sustains Al as a whole and the IoT is far greater than the provincial despotism that powers them.” There is hope that “we’ll be left standing when the lights are back on.” If nothing else helps us achieve this, our resilience will carry us that far. One line keeps reverberating in my subconscious though: “The real work is ahead,” which completes the line before that states, “Take note of all the ‘alabarus’ and e-rodents.” I am no longer struggling to keep my tears in check as I round this off while battling with the cramps that come with PMS. We owe it to ourselves to resist their tactics to kill our spirits. The real work is indeed ahead.
