By GOJI EGBUJO

Another lousy precedent has been casually constructed. Someday, we will have no teeth against a naked dictator. Many good but shortsighted people enable intolerance and ineptitude through ignorance or cowardice. Soon, we will be clapping fawningly like North Koreans when our leaders approach. This must be how that Rome of mass subservience was built.

Some bishops run daily soup kitchens to tame the inferno of democratized hunger with teaspoons of water. Despite their acquaintance with the enormity, they think it’s unruly and sinful to ask the victims of bad governance to stare down at their political oppressors. The role of religious leaders in facilitating the passivity required for the reign of corruption in this country through their dubious and tokenistic philanthropy and enervating sermons that dull the will of the people to fight for their rights, cannot escape the wrath of God.

 Noble men and patriots are now united in cuddling budding Mobutus and their thugs. In the name of patriotism, they are chaining and caging the youths, forcing them to sleep on their constitutional rights.  The supposition is that hungry people are feral and should be leashed for their own good. They want to prevent hungry people from crying out because the noise will rattle the roof, discomfiting the powerful and exposing the country to international ridicule. A huge oil-producing country with infinite arable lands and endless clement weather that can’t feed its children

They do not seek to banish protests altogether. They will keep it so that their hired town criers can march around the town and stomp the villages to tell the suffering people that the morally flabby and bumbling government is doing well and needs their patience. During the day, they will affirm the right to protest; at night, they will gather to plan to criminalize and undermine it. With that subterfuge, they can continue to cling to the banner of democracy. But having laid their traps, the right to protest will become subject to the approval and circumscription of perennial corrupt politicians in every ruling party.

Suddenly, protests are now ignoble acts of rascality. Once accused of involvement, even leading opposition politicians jump out in fear, writhing and pleading innocence. Cheap submission to the bully’s antics will only quicken the slide into a full-blown dictatorship.

It’s now a taboo to organize protests. The police would want to have the names, addresses and phone numbers. They call them sponsors.  Because protests are now inherently disruptive and potentially treasonable. Since the police are crippled by poor funding, training and equipment, patriotic citizens ought to know to desist from all acts of dissent and protests. That’s the new assumption. Only traitors and black sheep will protest because they will not know that protests in lawless and badly governed societies are vulnerable and amenable to hijacking by thugs and foreign terrorists.  That’s the point the federal government is making.

Opposition parties and leaders can no longer sponsor or facilitate public protests because that will make them bad losers. To be good losers, they must hibernate with heads buried in ashes for four years. In the alternative, they can redeem themselves by shamelessly defecting to the ruling party to join Senator Akpabio in ‘eating’ and frolicking. If the opposition partakes or leads the masses to protest against hunger, then the opposition is engaging in a treasonable act of calumny designed to instigate a regime change. A good opposition must, therefore, be one that disowns itself to become a subsidiary of the ruling party. To help the ruling party build the country. That’s APC’s conception of modern democracy. Otherwise, the opposition must stay deaf, dumb and blind and wait four years for the next round of elections to receive another round of silly beating. 

Indeed, elections are held every four years. So we are still a democracy. But post-2023, elections have become all too predictable. The rules are replete with loopholes. Before now, we had tried to reform away discrepancies and enhance transparency. But we have now learnt that without good faith laws are porous baskets. So we have lost interest in legal reforms. The last time, the Supreme Court didn’t manage to upturn any consequential election. So the protocol of perfidy has been legalised. The party in power at the federal or state level will arrange ad-hoc electoral officers for INEC. That’s where the manipulation starts. After the capture of the local INEC by a governor or minister, all that remains will be the recruitment of police and thugs to implement the heist on election day. The rule now is to win at all costs on election day and taunt the aggrieved and sulking loser to go to court.

Since March 2023, no election of significance has escaped rape. Soon the apathy that made the youths prioritize Big Brother over politics and elections might return. With protests now regarded as anathema, we can’t even leave our homes to demand that serious electoral reforms be enacted. Some of the youths who tried to do that recently lost their lives.

 No judicial reforms are in sight, and the judges are often not in sync with reforms. Once a politician snatches a win by hook and crook on election day, he is almost home and dry. He will be sworn in. With the treasury under his armpit, the courts become his home ground. The electorate can wait for four years, but when it does, it can easily end in another sham. Some of the judges who are worse than Soyinka’s Brother Jero have become dealers in election verdicts.

But can the judges be blamed? The rot is too widespread. If there is no incentive to resist temptation, why expose oneself to reprisals in the hands of vindictive politicians?  Why bother to stand for justice and take avoidable repercussions if judicial colleagues might collect money and sell justice?  With the electoral laws and regulations replete with exploitable lacunae, with judges chasing materialism and quick promotions,  finding ways to protect a dubious victory and earning hundreds of millions while at it needs no rigorous effort. And now that the public cannot protest against judicial shenanigans, our fate is sealed.

Democracy is often summed up as the vestment of power in the people. That supposes that the people will choose and keep the government, which will govern according to the rules established by the people. More importantly, when all else has failed, the people can rise up and wield the power, voice out their frustrations, and pressure the government to make amends or renew its legitimacy. A government that sponsors hooligans to disrupt legitimate protests cannot pretend to be democratic.

We have hollowed out democracy. We have discarded the values and principles. We are marching around with the shell. An Attorney General goes to court to obtain a court order to sequester protesting youths in a hole. There is no depth our leaders wouldn’t plumb to emasculate the people. During  military rule, students protested against local vice-chancellors by blocking major highways. The military didn’t ban protests. Now, any government can go to court to secure a jankara

court order to restrict protesting students to their school farm. That’s  the innovation introduced by the current chief law officer of the country who came to renew hope. He didnt learn it from New York or London, he must have studied Pyongyang. A minister who won no election had the temerity to tell the country that he had prohibited protests in the nation’s capital. He said it, and people cheered.

For clarity, elections are held regularly in North Korea too. Instructively, that country is called a democratic republic. They have a legislature  too. All they lack, fundamentally, is the right or freedom to dissent or protest which is treasonable.  With the recent concerted effort to delegitimise, demonize and criminalize  protests, Nigeria is well on its path to a one-party state. Perhaps the time has come for God to fight for  the poor.