The Concourse
By Soney Antai
Is Kenya visiting Nigeria?
Henry Kissinger it was, who once said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” While it’s not too clear what the renowned diplomat and scholar meant, the meaning seems to be that just as aphrodisiac offers a temporary inorganic surge of emotions, power makes its wielder believe that the transient feeling of importance and relevance is for a long stretch. But it’s surreal: long in assumption, but short in creative rationality.
If that is the content of Kissinger’s submission, then he was spot on. It’s also not out of sync with Lord Acton’s assertion that, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is so true that disgraced US President Richard Nixon would say, “When the president does it, it’s not illegal.” Apparently, he was referring to the principle of plausible deniability in Uncle Sam’s homeland.
Now, power is not necessarily the same thing as authority. While authority has power embedded in it, power could be a loner. A bandit who has their way because of threats exercises power, and not authority. But a parent who is obeyed because of their parenthood enjoys authority. Curiously, “Power”, as Ragnar Lothbrok observes, “is always dangerous. It attracts the worst, and corrupts the best.” You can see that in your neck of the woods. All too suddenly, your friend of decades becomes distant when they grab political power, which oftentimes comes with unearned economic privileges. But shortly after leaving power, they oftentimes seek reunion with you! If you don’t get it, ask Henry Adams what he means by, “A friend in power is a friend lost.”
On 25 June, 2024, Kenyan youths showed their president, William Ruto, that he is in office because the Kenyan people allow him. On that day, they rose in unison and poured into the streets to protest Ruto’s Finance Bill 2024. It was the biggest nation-wide march in decades, as the protesters stormed 35 of Kenya’s 47 counties. Ruto was forced to reject the latest version of the Finance Bill which had an extra US$2.3b of tax hikes. These were taxes the government claimed were necessary to meet the fiscal targets of its IMF programme. That sounds familiar, or doesn’t it?
However, no fewer than 39 persons are said have been cut down by government agents in a futile attempt to put down the protests. It reminds one of the October 2022 #End SARS riots in Nigeria, where troops hewed down unarmed civilians just to preserve an indelicate and lacklustre regime in office. PMB would later claim the protesters wanted to come and remove him from power. It’s ok that he is still in power!
Now, some Nigerians are warming up to hit the streets in massive protests against hunger in their land from 1 – 10 August, 2024. Perhaps the most visible of the groups in this is the Northern Initiative for Growth, even as another northern group is opposed to the protests. Folks like Sahara Reporters’ publisher, Omoyele Sowore, and Charlie Boy Oputa have reportedly indicated their full support. But do deprived Nigerians have a right to protests against the power elite-created hunger in the country? Our lawyer friends would say that it is their right to do so peacefully. That’s okay as a parasitic power class whose weevil mentality has weaponised penury in the land should be told that we are suffocating.
But there is twist to the tale. Sheikh Ahmed Gumi, a celebrated sympathiser with terrorists, whom he prefers to call bandits, is supportive of the planned protests. Going by the ethno-religious trajectory of Sheikh Gumi, a penetrative observer of our religious ecosystem will interrogate the man’s interest in the protests. Here is the point: While President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) was in power, Islamic teachers were cited as telling their followers that their religion forbade them from protesting against government. Now, what has changed between PMB’s days and now?
But more fundamentally, why are Nigerians facing this kind of hunger at this time? Speaking straight, we can aver that the failure of successive governments, especially the Buhari regime, to rein in terrorism and banditry in the North which forced farmers off the farmlands, as well as the failure of the same governments to stop Fulani killer herders from massive destruction of farms and killing of farmers in the name of open grazing, are major drivers of the current mass hunger. If people like Gumi had not backed the bandits; if our governments with all the power of legitimate violence, had not been ambivalent over the treatment of the herder criminals, farmers would be there on the farms working, and there would be food across the land. We sowed to the winds of religious sentiments and political correctness, and now we must reap the harvest of a whirlwind of famine.
Back to the touted protests. I don’t see any meaningful protests anywhere. Kenya is not coming to Nigeria. Before you know it, ethnicist sentiments, like the ethnic bigot, Onanuga, is streaming, will erode everything, especially in a regime of establishment -preserving security apparatchik, and we will return to ground zero. The road to take is for PBT to engage in an auto-retreat and shortly reach out to leaders of the protest planners, listen to them and act on their grievances via the lens of patriotism. He should cut down the extravagance of a bloated executive, reduce recurrent expenditure, stop unwieldy taxation of the poor, and address our productivity deficiencies.
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Published in WatchmanPost of 24 July 2024
