Sustaining the momentum

The fuel subsidy protests have come and gone. The dead have probably been buried, with only the pain, deeply etched on the heart of mothers, siblings and others connected to the deceased, left to mark their passing. Whatever the circumstance of their passing, the sacrifice of those martyrs that fell to the bullets of their own police force is great; greater even, than many may care to know. For upon the blood of these ones, Nigerians laid a foundation for a future that may well be bright.

While death, injury and perhaps permanent handicap to some victims can be said to be prominent among the things that the Occupy Nigeria Movement would be remembered for, they are by no means the only ones.

It is true that the Occupy Nigeria movement did not achieve all it set out to achieve. It is true that the average man on the street shouting heartfelt anti-government slogans would have been happier had that power to activate sudden change been activated with the people. Sadly, the wheel of governance, democracy at least, does not move that way. It would have been unprecedented if it did. It would have been heart warming if things were different, but they are not; and patriots have no option but to accept this, gird their loins and prepare for the battle ahead.

We may lose focus thinking about what we failed to achieve, or how the cause many had given their lives for was truncated in a now familiar pattern—the alleged sell-out of those who should have nurtured the struggle.  However, it would make better progressive sense to dwell on what the Occupy Nigeria movement did achieve. Those achievements, when put into perspective, are outstanding and heart warning.

For example, though it could not return the price of fuel, the main catalyst of the movement, to its previous rate, the movement put in motion a process, which if well handled, will achieve in the nearest future the simplest yearning of the average Nigerian patriot: good governance within an atmosphere of accountability.

However, achieving this requires the same level of commitment that got the government running scared and gave some dissenting voices in government the will to speak up. It will require the input of the people to sustain the pressure. For the Nigerian politician has shown the capacity to only act in the interest of the people when pressurised by the people.

The House of Representatives public sitting on the fuel subsidy issue, though still at surface level, has raked in more murk than required to sink the average democratically elected government in other parts of the world and even some dictatorships. The murk stinks to high heavens and the money that is its catalyst nothing short of mind blowing.

“We can now see them for what they were,” I said recently to a commercial motorcyclist who was bemoaning the leadership we are saddled with. “No,” he replied. “We’ve always known what they were; we just didn’t care enough to do something about it. This is not to say we’re going to do much about what the current information we’re getting.”

I agreed with him; yes we have always known what sort of people ruled over us. I disagreed with him also, for now we appear willing to do something about it.

“Do something?” he asked, “Do you consider standing around a podium watching musicians prance and sing doing something? Didn’t you see that it took less than an army platoon to get the marchers off the streets and back into their homes like scared rats?”

“Rats we may be, scared for our lives too, but we got the government shivering,” I told him.

“Shivering? That is not an issue. If cold catch you, you get a blanket and you’re ok. Those guys know our weakness; they planned all along to win,” he retorted.

The conversation angered me. It was not the bemused smirk in the man’s weathered face that angered me. It was not even his assertion that those who chose to walk the streets for their rights were cowards, or that the politician knew how to divide them for his own gain. My anger stemmed from the fact that this nation had dealt the man too many hard blows that he has now lost hope of a better future, lost hope that the oppressors can be defeated, and is left only with a belief that the country would continue on this path to gloom.

It is for that man, and others like him, people for whom a real change to something better means the difference between penury and a life worth living, that I beg that we sustain the current movement towards a better Nigeria.