By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi An unprecedently seismic youth-led force is convulsing the foundations of Nigeria, whi...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
An unprecedently seismic youth-led force is convulsing the
foundations of Nigeria, which once and for all settles the widespread notion
that Nigeria’s youth are lazy, ignorant, and detached. I call this the EndSWAT/EndSARS
youth steamroller.
Like the literal steamroller, this Nigerian youth steamroller
is massive, resolute, persistent, fearless, implacable, and determined to crush
everything and everyone that stands in its way. Its momentous passion is
energized by the vigorous eruption of years of raw, pent-up rage over the
murderous impunity and crippling incompetence of the Nigerian state.
Its confidence is buoyed by its lack of fear of loss because
it has nothing to lose. The vast majority of young Nigerians feel indestructible
because they have already been destroyed. You can’t destroy what is already destroyed.
When a young man pays
through his nose to get a crummy higher education that was perpetually
punctuated by strikes and, after graduation, is required to pay hundreds of
thousands, sometimes millions, in bribes to get a hopelessly low-wage civil
service job, he has nothing to lose by confronting the state.
When a man defies the odds, surmounts the state-imposed
structural impediments placed in his way, and takes advantage of the global
digital economy to earn a decent living but automatically becomes the target of
ignorant law enforcement agents who torture him based on evidence-free
suspicion that he is an internet fraudster, he has nothing to lose by fighting.
When a smart, hardworking young lady with as good
qualifications as—or even better than—the next person can’t get a job without being
trapped in the lecherous snares of arrogant and degenerate bureaucrats and
politicians, she has nothing to lose by fighting.
When the annihilators of the Nigerian state transcend the dysfunctions
that they created at home by misappropriating public resources to go abroad for
services their incompetence deprives the less privileged of, they enkindle the
fury of young people who are condemned to deal with the insensate cruelty of
the elites.
Young people see that the elites send their children to overseas
schools while public institutions wither away irreparably. They see that as
healthcare gets progressively worse, the elites have become perpetual patrons
of foreign hospitals.
They see insatiably greedy, short-sighted, senescent geezers
in government relentlessly borrowing and stealing massive amounts of foreign loans
they won’t be around to repay. They know they would be burdened with and
compelled to repay these foreign debts they didn’t benefit from. They know their
futures are being literally mortgaged. So they have nothing to lose by
fighting.
In a January 21, 2012 column titled “Labor’s Treachery against the ‘Occupy Nigeria’ Revolt,” I despaired that the
revolutionary fire of a splendidly promising, spontaneous, unscripted, and
unexampled mass insurrection against an evil ruling class was extinguished by Nigeria’s
thoroughly compromised labor movement.
I ended the column with the following ominous warning: “Lastly,
this battle isn’t over yet. The suicidal
and clueless Nigerian elite are unlikely to relent in their cowardly and
egomaniacal violations of the poor. When the combustion does erupt again, it
would take a decidedly different course. Labor leaders would no longer be able
to stop what they didn’t start. A wise government would learn from this,
retrace its steps, and respect the will and wishes of the people it claims to
govern. But is any Nigerian government wise?”
My warning turned out to be accurate. The current #EndSARs/#EndSWAT
revolt is a recrudescence of the 2012 #OccupyNigeria protests that the Nigerian
labor movement betrayed and squelched from within. As I predicted, the current
face of the revolt of the Nigerian youth excludes labor and the traditional wheeler-dealing
“pro-democracy” and “human rights” entrepreneurs. It is fierce, decentered,
leaderless and yet intensely consequential.
As I pointed out on
social media recently, the current #EndSARS/#EndSWAT revolutionary ferment in
Nigeria has been successful precisely because the Nigerian Labor Congress and
its evil twin, the Trade Union Congress, aren’t in it.
The debauched labor aristocrats in NLC and TUC habitually
hijack, neutralize, and extinguish the people’s revolt. They didn’t just do
precisely that in the #OccupyNigeriaProtests in 2012, they’ve been doing it ever since. They did it again a few weeks ago. There is now no doubt that the
Nigerian labor movement is officially an extension of the government.
But why are young people now waking up? The seeming complacence
and self-satisfaction of the Nigerian youth in the face of their continual rape
by a rapacious, decaying elite class—and their curious obsession with sports
and entertainment—had worried me and caused me to question my confidence that a
second OccupyNigeria rebellion in a newer, more ferocious, less predictable form
would materialize someday.
In trying to understand
why the Nigerian youth appeared disengaged, “ignorant,” fixated on strategies
of emotional escape such as binge-watching BBNaija but suddenly energized to
confront their oppressors, I encountered a concept in economics called “rational
ignorance.”
In his book titled “Against Democracy,” Jason Brennan
explained rational ignorance as the intentional avoidance of knowledge that has
no immediate utilitarian value. “When the expected costs of acquiring
information of a particular sort exceed the expected benefits of possessing
that sort of information, people will usually not bother to acquire the
information,” he wrote.
Nigerian politics is a source of unrewarding emotional
strife and distress, so the youth chose to disengage from it, not because they
don’t understand the power of knowledge and engagement but because they realize
that they are and will always be systematically excluded from the orbit of power
and influence. They also realize that conventional engagement with the state
would do nothing to assuage their continued structural exclusion.
Now they’ve come to the realization that their very lives depend
on their unconventional engagement with the state. Malcolm X once said, “Preserve
your life. It’s the best thing you’ve got. And if you gotta give it up, let it
be even Steven.”
The Nigerian youth
are fighting back with vigor and defiance because it’s their only chance to
live. They are suddenly engaged because they are enraged. The only thing they
have to lose is their oppression. That’s not a loss anyone regrets. The
political elites should be wise enough to know that they can’t crush a people whose
only hope of living is to risk death.
In Monarchs and Mendicants, Dan Groat said, “Not
interested in scarin’ anybody, but people with good sense are afraid of a man
with nothin’ to lose.” Lance Conrad captured the same sentiment in The Price
of Nobility. He said, “Only a fool would underestimate a man with nothing
to lose.”
The #EndSWAT/#EndSARS are only the trigger of a much deeper
youth resentment against the Nigerian state. The protests aren’t just against police
brutality; they are also against the oppressive and obscenely unequal character
of the Nigerian society.
Although I live in America, my heart is with the valiant and
resilient young men and women who are risking everything to take back their
humanity from wretched scoundrels in the seat of power.
Fuel Subsidy Removal: Time to “Occupy” Nigeria!
The youth are getting it right now.
ReplyDeleteThis is just the beginning.
Expecting more of this kind.
The Nigerian youth are fighting back with vigor and defiance because it’s their only chance to live. They are suddenly engaged because they are enraged. The only thing they have to lose is their oppression. That’s not a loss anyone regrets. The political elites should be wise enough to know that they can’t crush a people whose only hope of living is to risk death.
ReplyDeleteThis is beyond someone who is not in Nigeria Sir. Keep up the good work. God bless.
The Nigerian youth are fighting back with vigor and defiance because it’s their only chance to live. They are suddenly engaged because they are enraged. The only thing they have to lose is their oppression. That’s not a loss anyone regrets. The political elites should be wise enough to know that they can’t crush a people whose only hope of living is to risk death.
ReplyDeleteThis is beyond someone who is not in Nigeria Sir. Keep up the good work. God bless.
This concept of "rational ignorance" struck me like a tonne of load. Suddenly, nothing rightly done is worth the effort again because the system has been massively compromised.
ReplyDeleteI just hope this zeitgeist take us farther and away from where we are presently and set us in the the right direction.
When a people feel they have nothing to lose, then those who have something to lose better beat it or do the needful and that they should very fast
ReplyDeleteThank you Professor for doing your bit.
ReplyDeleteThanks prof. It is a fight to the finish.
ReplyDeleteBut the elites in power are still pretending to be asleep. Can someone please wake them from this pretentious sleep before they become objects of sympathy (That's if they will get any from the public).
ReplyDelete