Segun Olatunji
At the slightest disagreement with the Muhammadu Buhari government, it becomes jumpy. It propels its primordial impulse of insecurity to take over its diacritical instinct of winnowing a bluff from substance, a threat from criticism, and a peaceful protest from bloody revolution. It only embraces sameness of ideas. Any dissention is perceived as a source to be eliminated. Any dispassionate court ruling against her is flouted with arrogance. This panicky government must be run through a crash programme in conflict management as an integral component of statecraft.
In a variegated society like Nigeria, it is not only insulting to demand compliance to unpopular government stance; such a command also erodes the credibility of the government. This government must know that conflict is inherent in any group: marriage, family, friendship, association, corporation, ethnicity or nation. Conflict is natural to homo-sapiens. An absence of it is anomaly. If a homogeneous unit as a family is not spared of conflicts, it is not surprising that a nation made of different families, associations, organisations, religions, and tribes would.
The management of varied forms of conflict—disagreements, strikes, agitations, criticisms, intolerance, sectarianism, and even war—is a statecraft essential to the unity of any country. But a government that is habituated to disdaining the court decisions has taken its incompetency at managing conflicts to another level.Agreed that conflict resolution is segmented and contextual; one does not take a sledge hammer to kill an ant. In a civilised and democratic society, the government does not apply full force to peaceful protest or kill members of a peaceful religious sect it considers heterodox or incarcerate a citizen who has been free on bail.
A government that is mindful of its policies to transform Nigeria for better would let its actions speak for herself. Such a government would not be jittery at queries from its critics. But a government that has nothing to justify its occupancy of Aso Rock for circa five years would lash out at its critics with anything to rationalise its brutalities against the very citizens it vowed to protect.
In a democratic setting, it is an eyesore to witness the massacre of an Islamic sect for the simple reason that it does not share the doctrine of the majority Sunni sect that populates the Caliphate and dominates Buhari’s government. How could one validate the undemocratic government’s hypersensitivity to tagging a call for revolution against pervasive corruption, prevalent insecurity, suffocating privations and bleak prosperity as an attempt to topple a decrepit government that has so far failed to label the Fulani herdsmen or the bandits ravaging the North-East a terrorist group?
Many groups and individuals have called for bloody revolution, without being apprehended. Omoyele Sowore did not galvanise the country for any violent or bloody revolution. He surely summoned for revolution to edify the public about the incompetency and tyranny of this belligerent government to polite discourse. Thus, when is a revolution a change of government? The mere fact that you christen a boy a dog does not turn him into a dog!
Renaming a protest a revolution does not transform it into a Red October. Revolution can connote protest, demonstration, civil disobedience in practice, and not necessarily a change of government. It could be a call for fundamental change in the way the governed act and behave. Online Merriam Webster Dictionary. After all, we had a Green Revolution in this country; we have heard of peaceful revolution.
This government’s fidgety in face of opposition is self-admission of its glaring delivering of widespread absolute poverty, infrastructural decay, substandard social amenities, inequality galore, runaway corruption, endemic insecurity, brazen nepotism and serial defiance of court orders. A responsive and responsible government does not revert to the use of force as first response to criticism. Notwithstanding the degree of manageability of crisis, this government has one response: more dehumanisation of the perceptive citizens.
A gestapo’s banditry against the perspicuous citizenry is a manifestation of deep-seated intellectual invertebrate and atavistic bestiality unfit for managing contemporary complexities which Nigeria epitomises. Needless to say this government neither possesses the temperament nor the mental alacrity to govern the competing complexities.
It is a sorry case that this government cannot discern among grandstanding, genuine discontent and power-grabbing protest; it does not know when to ignore, embrace, engage and when and how to apply repressive apparatus. Because of its penchant to avail violence, it easily plays into the hands of its critics, causing the public to accuse her of high-handedness and tyranny.
Demonstrations have beneficial or dysfunctional roles. Someone or a group could protest any government policy in order to sensitise the public, play watchdog and educational roles; grandstand to gain visibility or recognition; show strength of dissatisfaction with the government; or ignite mass protest with the goal of replacing a government. Resorting to incarceration or killing of a few disgruntled opportunists may make them bigger than life, thereby creating government-in-waiting or cloning copy-cats.
Therefore, governing with a paternalistic model of leadership perceives citizens as subjects because compliance to authority’s order is mandatory all the times; disobedience is punished into subordination. Any cacophony, no matter how sincere or reasonable, is demonised as heresy that must be panel-beaten into conformity.
This paternalistic model mimicking the military orientation and feudalistic ambience that begot President Muhammadu Buhari cannot survive the ecumenism, diversity, laisez-faire orientation, and civil ethos embedded in most parts of Nigeria, making them allergic to the prevailing paternalistic carte blanche.
Patriotism is no exclusivity of the government. A government notorious for condoning corruption, ignoring killer Fulani herdsmen, and rewarding marauding bandits with amnesty, disrespecting judicial orders, superintending prodigious poverty, and accentuating underdevelopment has lost any patriotic credibility. It has no legitimate claim to labelling anybody or group as terrorist when she employs terroristic approach to usurp the constitution, compounds citizens’ privations and squelches opposing voices or minority sect.
In actuality, within this scenario, the dissenting voices are the bona fide patriots.A continual reliance on violence has the potentiality of driving the patriotic voices underground, making them intractable and insurgency-prone.
In order to avert the predictable consequences of the ill-informed tactics of massacring and imprisoning unarmed protesters—anarchy, guerilla war, orange revolution and massive protests— this government must listen, engage, adopt and involve the critics and dissents in the development of the country.
Moreover, Abubakar Malami should not have been returned to the position of Attorney General of the Federation for misguiding this government into ignoring unfavourable court orders and perverting the laws he vowed to uphold and whose actions partially stirred counteractions from the public.
[Punch]
