115 years ago, in 1909, Walter Egerton, the barrister-turned-colonial administrator, and then governor, introduced the Sedition Ordinance into the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. This drew a sharp response from Christopher Sapara Williams, Nigeria’s first lawyer, the son of an Egba mother and an Ijesha father, who challenged the Ordinance, describing it with considerable prescience as “a thing incompatible with the character of the Yoruba people, and (which) has no place in their constitution…. Hyper-sensitive officials may come tomorrow who will see sedition in every criticism and crime in every mass meeting.”

Sapara Williams was Nigeria’s first articulate defender of civic dissent. The promulgation of the Sedition Ordinance was one of the fallouts of the Lagos Water Riots of 1908. The antecedents go back to the encounter between Lagos and colonial England. As the countries of Imperial Europe concluded their carve up of Africa in Berlin in February 1885, Oba Dosunmu of Lagos died, and was succeeded by his son, Oba Oyekan 1.

At the death of Oyekan 1 on 30 September 1900, a fierce succession battle ensued. Sapara Williams was one of the lawyers instructed by the parties to the dispute. When the dust settled, his client, Adamaja, lost to the eventual winner and Oba Dosunmu’s grand-son, Eshugbayi Eleko, who ascended the throne in 1901, but this did not becloud his clarity of principles on the rights of the peoples of the territory to protest. Unlike the supporters of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Williams’ views on the right to protest did not depend on the ethnicity of the person in power.

That was one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of Lagos and it coincided with a most intense period in the colonial territorial consolidation that would ultimately result in the notion of Nigeria. An inevitable conflict between the colonists and dissenting natives revolved around two issues: racial segregation, which privileged whites; and free expression, which patronised the native populations. Over one century later, these same issues – discrimination and freedom of expression – continue to plague and define governance in Nigeria.

Williams was implacable in his support of the right to protest. Long after his untimely death in 1915, his position remained a source of inspiration to the Eleko and people of Lagos, in an even more consequential dispute over the control of traditional lands in the colony. This issue ended up before the highest court with jurisdiction over the territory in the case of Amodu Tijani, decided by the Privy Council in July 1921. The Eleko rallied behind the Idejo Chiefs, led by Amodu Tijani, the Oluwa of Lagos, who had the support of Herbert Macaulay, grandson of the first African Anglican Bishop, Michael Ajayi Crowther, and a veteran dissenter.

For the hearing before the Privy Council in 1920, Macaulay travelled to London with the Oba’s Staff of Office in support of Tijani and the Chiefs. While in London, Macaulay issued a statement claiming that the Eleko was the King of over 17 million Nigerians and in possession of a territory more than three times that of Great Britain. Despite a healthy revenue of over £4 million, he claimed, the British had reneged on a treaty commitment to compensate the Eleko. Embarrassed at being publicly called duplicitous in this way, the British required the Eleko to disown Macaulay. He issued a public statement clarifying his position on Macaulay’s statement but declined to disown him through the Oba’s Bell Ringers, as required by the colonists.

Unable to secure the support of the popular Eleko, the colonists chose to head off rising tension by deposing him. On 6 August 1925, they issued an ordinance de-stooling him and, two days later, on 8 August they arrested and removed the Eleko into internal banishment in Oyo. In his place, they installed Oba Ibikunle Akitoye.

Akitoye’s rule lasted an uncomfortably brief three years, largely because he lacked the support of the people of Lagos. Indeed, in 1926, he suffered physical assault by his people. Supported by the elite and people of Lagos, the deposed Eleko took his case to the courts, fighting all the way to the Privy Council, which decided on 19 June 1928 in favour of his claim for leave for a writ of habeas corpus. This all but sealed the fate of Oba Akitoye, who is suspected to have facilitated his own earthly demise shortly thereafter.

Just as the Eleko was on his way to being reinstated in Lagos, the Aba Women’s Uprising took off in 1929. Like the “Lagos Water Riots”, it was also anchored on dissent over colonial taxation, in the foreground of what would become an incomplete colonial head count in 1931. The pivotal moments in the uprising of the women of the East actually covered the territories of what would today be known as the states of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, and Rivers States.

On 16 December, 1929, Adiaha Mary Edem, a formidable female trader, led a contingent of women from the Andoni, Ibibio, and Ogoni nations, as well as women from Opobo Town, to a meeting with the colonial officers at the Opobo Divisional Office. The purpose of the meeting was to address the concerns of the women over the new colonial tax proposals. In anticipation of the meeting, meanwhile, the Senior Divisional Officer (SDO) had arranged for the presence of well-armed soldiers from Calabar and Enugu, under the command of Captain J. Hill.

Egbert Udo Udoma – the son of Adiaha Edem – who grew up to become Chief Justice of Uganda and Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, testifies in his memoirs that around midday on the day, while he and his mates were still in school, they heard, “a loud report in the form of volleys being the sound of a discharge of rounds of gunfire by soldiers. It came as a shock to all of us at school when we were told that the soldiers had shot some of the women who held the meeting with the Divisional Officer.” One of the women killed on the day was his mother, Adiaha Edem. The reason for the massacre was that “at the meeting, the women had raised objection to the imposition of poll tax by the government. The SDO apparently did not like that; hence soldiers mowed down the women.”

20 years later, on 18 November 1949, the colonial authorities killed 21 miners and injured 51 others in Iva Valley, near Enugu. The most that came out of the inquiry that followed was the creation of the Ministry of Labour. Following the adoption of McPherson Constitution in 1951, Ladoke Akintola became Nigeria’s first Minister of Labour, as a direct result of the Iva Valley Massacre. In the period since then, organised labour has mostly been the biggest force of dissent and protest in Nigeria. That was at least until the onset of the digital revolution put the organisation of protests to scale within reach of everyone with a digital device.

It is beyond ironic that rights of protest secured with the heroic sacrifices of Nigerians under colonial bondage are now endangered over six decades after Independence at the hands of a government that trumpets its electoral legitimacy supposedly through the votes of the same Nigerians whose rights to protest it, however, chooses not to respect.

The colonists defaulted to violence in response to protest because they lacked legitimacy with the natives. Ninety-five years after the colonial regime massacred Opobo women in Ikot Abasi at the onset of the Aba Women’s Uprising, the response of Independent Nigeria to the idea of dialogue with its people under the government of Bola Tinubu remains largely un-evolved and, if anything, even more lethal. Today, as then, whenever government does that, it is because it suffers a costly crisis of legitimacy.

** Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a professor of law, teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and can be reached through This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

It is always interesting to read the reactions of Nigerian to various national and international issues. You get a full mix of brilliant arguments, morally compelling admonitions, sensationalist illogic, and watery defense of the establishment often couched in flowery language. More often than not, when individuals realise their interventions are morally vacuous and intellectually wanting, they take a recourse to ad hominems and veiled- and not so veiled- threats.

In this short piece, I’d like to invite you join me in examining some of the specious arguments being put forward by apologists of the Nigerian state, in the wake of the protests that engulfed the nation.

The first of these arguments I have come across is the suggestion that those who supported, and supports, the right of Nigerian citizens to peaceful protests, should be held responsible for, or at least made guilty about, the violent outcomes in some sites of protests in Nigeria over the past few days. The argument goes that supporters of protest should know better that, with previous experiences of protests in Nigeria, citizen protests were always, or most likely, to be hijacked by violent elements and should therefore be discouraged- presumably at all times. These apologists conveniently forget Nigeria’s own recent history and legacy of civil action and citizen advocacy, of which protests are a key part. It was the force of citizens protest, led by Nigerian citizens both home and diaspora, that put an end to military rule in 1998/99 and has now given the country 25 years of uninterrupted civil rule. The years of citizen struggle  against Military rule did not pass without challenges and casualties, including some high profile ones. In the wake of the June 12 1993 protests, thugs were unleashed to disrupt citizens protest, and a dedicated death squad was set up by Abacha’s military junta. Still, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone today who would argue, with hindsight, that the citizens campaign against the military was the wrong thing to do. And this is not the end of the matter, because the democratic process does not mature on autopilot. Conscious citizens must keep at it- scrutinising, probing, and always raising the bar of expectation from their elected representatives and governments. Make no mistake, the Office of the Citizen is the most important office in a liberal democracy. It is the citizen who wields the power of democratic renewal, through the choices they exercise in the ballot at elections, and their continuous, active engagement between electoral cycles. Without this committed, continuous efforts of conscious citizens, society falls into atrophy. And so it was, in 2009, Nigerians again rightfully took to the streets when the Yar Adua government was taken over by an opportunistic cabal, in the wake of President Yar Adua’s sickness. Nigerians would subsequently take to the streets, once more, in protest during Jonathan’s government, as well as Buhari’s. We cannot gloss over the horrific spectacles of death unleashed by the Nigerian armed forces during the #EndSARS protest, but it is perverse and immoral to blame peaceful citizen protesters for the destruction unleashed by those officers paid by taxpayers to keep citizens safe. Or, for that matter, to blame the organisers of the #EndSARS protesters for the violence unleashed by hoodlums in various parts of Nigeria.

The argument that citizens who organise peaceful protests inherently invite or incentivises violence is fundamentally flawed. It is also morally perverse, the equivalence of arguing, in effect, that those who seek to do good do so in order to bring about evil. Such an argument is desperate and bizarre, quite frankly. Organisers of the Nigerian protests are not insurrectionists calling for an end to the Nigerian government. They are not armed militants, terrorists, or bandits, of which Nigeria is not in short supply. Citizens should be able to raise their voices in protest when they are unhappy with the performance of their government, and even the most desperate apologists for government must see, at the very least, that all is not well with the country and things can be much better. It is also the case that Nigerians have been venting their grievance on social media and other channels for more than a year now. In the circumstances, it is in the interest of government, and of society, to allow citizens to come out openly to give voice and face to their grievance. The alternative is to suppress their voice and push them underground, and into the shadows. Not much good comes from the shadows, as our history has shown.

In sum, while there will always be a risk of violent hijack, there is no good reason to deny citizens the right to peacefully protest. Let me add, of course, that I believe that organisers of protest should always cooperate with law enforcement so they can protect peaceful protesters and deal with those who unleash violence. Citizens should be able to protest, nonetheless.

Let me now come to the second point raised by some who are comparing the violent protests going on in parts of the UK with the protests in Nigeria. Some have summoned this comparison to take petty digs at Nigerians in the UK who supported the protest in Nigeria, concocting all sorts of spurious narratives in the process. By their perverse logic, those comparing the UK far right protests with Nigerian protests also do not, presumably, see a difference, in substance and form, between a Civil Right march and a Kulx Klux Klan procession. For good measure, they would see no difference between a Jesse Owens black power salute at the Olympics and a Nazi commander giving a Nazi salute to troops. I think it says something about the way their mind works and a sheer level of desperation to make such incongruous comparisons between far right racists who set out to unleash violence, including on law enforcement officers; and long-suffering citizens seeking better performance and outcomes from their elected government on existential issues. In their moral muddle, Nigerian government apologists making this dubious comparison believe that far right violent marchers demanding that migrants be precipitously sent back to their countries are equally reasonable in their demands as Nigerian citizens asking for government interventions to mitigate the impact of hyperinflation, reduce the price of goods, and reduce ostentatious elite living in the midst of hardships for citizens. These apologists conveniently miss the point that there is hardly any one of those far right thugs that is not on government benefits, if they do not have regular employment. If you are to make a comparison with any semblance of moral clarity, you will find that the far right protest is an exercise in vanity, not a comparable desperate cry for help. Still, this is not the main point of difference, which is: far right groups actively advocate morally repugnant views and seek violent means to achieve them. It’s double whammy. To compare them with citizens demanding action from their government on existential issues of physiological survival and basic welfare, is morally vacuous. To inject ridicule into the comparison is beyond the pale.

In the end, what has emerged as a trend in these inauspicious interventions of apologists of the Nigerian government, is a ready recourse to strata man argument and ad hominens, in the hope that they won’t be found out. To achieve this, their interventions are infused with a lot emotional contents to steer their readers from the path of clear-headed, rational scrutiny. Thus,  for example, when they take desperate aims at Nigerians in diaspora for their support of protesters, they sensationally proclaim that those diaspora Nigerias are inciting violence at home while their own family is safely tucked away abroad. Their hope, in this instance, is that they can make their readers forget three things, among others: that the diaspora Nigerians are not the cause of Nigeria woes that instigated the protest; that the protest is being organised by groups of Nigerians at home who will proceed regardless of support they get from overseas; Nigerians in Diaspora do, in fact have families and interests at home and are therefore legitimate stakeholders in the affairs of the Nigerian state. They probably know these themselves, of course, but their object as rabble rousers is to steer unsuspecting readers away from objective truth and cold facts.

A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of aging.

Many Western countries are facing what the World Bank calls a “profound demographic crisis”: The twin perils of an aging population and record-low fertility rates are predicted to send their populations plunging in the coming decades.

The worst consequences of this demographic shift, per the World Bank, are economic. Soon, the shrinking working population in the U.S., Canada, or Germany won’t be able to meet their own constant demands for high-quality goods and services. These rich, elderly countries will have to make a hard choice for economic survival: force people to work more, or allow immigrants to fill in?

Lant Pritchett, one of the world’s top thinkers on developmental economics, has seen this crisis coming for decades over his career at Harvard, the World Bank, and Oxford University, where he currently heads a research lab. He told Fortune his radical plan to stave off economic disaster.

Population decline

In the long run, without intervention, the UN predicts that a decline in population growth could cascade into a full-on population “collapse.” That collapse is not likely to occur until well into the next century – if it comes at all. However, in the short run, population decline presents a real, and relatively simple economic problem: the West soon won’t have enough workers.

The ratio of working-age people to elderly people in rich countries will soon become so diminished that support for elders will be unaffordable. In Japan, a nation already facing the consequences of a graying population, the average cost of nursing care is projected to increase 75% in the next 30 years, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warning that the nation is on “the brink.” In the U.S., think tanks have warned, an older population with more retirees means a shrinking tax base and higher demands on programs like Social Security and Medicare, along with a smaller number of working-age people to pay into those programs.

In short, we have a “ticking time bomb” on our hands, in the words of Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose government introduceda six-day workweek last month to address the nation’s labor shortages. The move prompted fury and protests among workers as they watched their German and Belgian cousins embrace four-day workweeks.

Indeed, even as some European countries and a few American companies flirt with working less, panicked economists and politicians are sounding the alarm: We need to work more. A study conducted by consulting firm Korn Ferry found that by 2030, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people, roughly equivalent to the population of Germany. That talent shortage could slash $8.5 trillion from nations’ expected revenues, affecting highly educated sectors such as financial services and IT as well as manufacturing jobs, which are considered “lower skilled” and require less education.

Now is the time to act, economic veteran Pritchett told Fortune. But doing so involves some radical rethinking of the current immigration debate.

Classical economics offers a number of ways to address a labor shortage, Prichett said. Since most of the unfilled jobs are “unskilled,” or don’t require a degree to complete, one solution for businesses and governments is to invest in automation, essentially having robots fill the gap. But, while automation helps get the jobs done, it depresses human workers’ wages by decreasing the amount of jobs available, “exacerbating” the issue, Pritchett said.

Some have called for increasing wages to induce more people to work. But most of the working-age population in the U.S. is already employed. Despite a well-documented decline in the portion of working-age men with jobsover the past few decades, Prichett said that the vast majority of working-age men are working, meaning raising pay would have small effects at best. There’s room for more women to work, he noted, but that could take away from other important responsibilities that are overwhelmingly shunted to women, such as caring for family or raising children.

That leaves two other options: forcing workers to work more or allowing an influx of legal, controlled immigration.

Why a six-day week won’t work

Mitsotakis’ plan for a six-day-work week is a step in the right direction for the short term, Pritchett said.

But “economics is not just about direction: It’s about magnitude,” he added. In other words, he says, small policy tweaks won’t do it. If we’re trying to address a big, structural problem with the U.S. labor force, the solution needs to be ambitious and comprehensive—precisely the type of legislation American politicians have largely avoided in recent years.

If policymakers simply try to make everyone work an additional day, the math simply won’t work out in the long run, Pritchett said. Even if Greece has “fantastic success” and increases its working hours by 10% over the next 30 years, that growth would represent a “drop in the bucket” in fighting a worsening labor shortage. He calculated a demographic labor force gap of 232 million people globally in his most recent paper, even assuming the highest possible labor force participation rate.

“You can’t solve a problem that’s growing over time with [a labor force] that has an upward bound,” he said. You would have to keep the labor force working more and more, and even then, you would never be able to fill in the gap.

Pritchett has a better idea. He knows that the current immigration debate is fraught, since the West is concerned with the social ramifications of allowing more migrants into its borders. But he maintains the only way to solve rich countries’ labor problem is to let in immigrants to work, particularly from countries where population growth is increasing, such as Nigeria or Tanzania, rather than decreasing.

In his view, the Western debate on immigration has taken on an unnecessarily binary flavor, with the choice depicted as one between a path to citizenship or closed borders. In a recent article titled “The political acceptability of time-limited labor mobility,” Pritchett says the West will soon have to abandon this view. Instead, he advocates for developed nations to embrace a system where immigrants can come to their country to work for a limited time – while also buying goods and services, renting homes, starting companies, and hiring workers — and then go back home, leaving both parties wealthier.

The future of immigration is temporary

The truth, Pritchett said, is that the U.S. needs low-skilled migrants, and many migrants need the economic boost from working in the U.S. Immigration is a symbiotic relationship that the West cannot quit – that’s why it’s so hard for us to actually control our borders.

“The way to secure the border is to create a legitimate way for people and firms to get the labor that the economy really needs in legitimate, legal ways, and until we have that, the whole debate over the wall and stuff is just silly,” Pritchett said.

If anything, the intensifying crackdown on undocumented and legal migration since the late 1980s has led to mass settlement, according to Hein de Haas, a sociologist of immigration. Prior to the 1980s, the U.S. and Mexico enjoyed a relationship similar to the work-visa program Pritchett envisions. Mexicans freely flowed across the border, coming for a short time to work, returning home to enjoy their money, and sometimes repeating this journey over several years, Haas wrote. They never permanently settled because, knowing they could come and go as they pleased, they did not have to.

The U.S. facilitated this temporary migration programs specifically aimed at Mexicans, encouraging contract workers to come to the U.S. after World War I and II. The second of these,the Bracero Program, established a treaty for the temporary employment of Mexican farmworkers in the U.S., and was so popular that it was extended far beyond its initial lifespan, allowing nearly 5 million Mexicans to temporarily work in the U.S. from 1942 to 1964. (The program ended in 1965, when the U.S. sharply limited immigration from Latin America as part of a major overhaul of immigration laws.)

What Pritchett suggests isn’t too dissimilar from simply turning the clock back to a time when migrants could move and work freely. He proposes a fixed-term system: a worker comes to the U.S. with the understanding that they are not on a path to citizenship, works on a 3-year contract, and then returns to their home country. After an “off period” of six months to a year, the migrant could come back for another three years.

“There are a billion people on the planet who would come to the U.S. under those terms,” Pritchett said. “But we don’t have that available.”

He isn’t exaggerating about the billion. In a 2010 survey, Gallup asked people around the world whether they would like to temporarily move to work in another country. Some 1.1 billion responded “yes,” including 41% of the 15-to-24 population and 28% of those aged 25-44, Pritchett sa

“What you could make in America in three years and go back to Senegal with is a fortune compared to anything else you could do to make your way in Senegal,” he added. “You go back to Senegal, you build a house, you buy your own business, and you’ve transformed your life by working temporarily.”

To avoid potential labor shortages in sending nations, Pritchett’s system would depend on bilateral agreements between the host and sending countries, and nations “could choose to put limits on their participation” to address their own labor needs, Pritchett said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. would receive fresh batches of workers for service industries, elderly care, or manufacturing—essentially, all the jobs that would be otherwise unfilled.

Policies like these are not yet being discussed on the national stage, but Pritchett believes that will soon change. With the upcoming labor shortage and the unpopularity of forcing workers to toil for longer, politicians will have to expand their understanding of immigration to allow for policies like his. For now, he’s planting the seed.

In partnership with economist Rebekah Smith, Pritchett has started an organization called Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) that aims to build political support for a temporary rotational migration system. The way he sees it, nothing will change by pitching the idea to politicians (“who tend to be followers, not leaders”) so instead, he is working with countries that are currently already expanding their immigration channels, like Spain.

He is also courting business leaders in sectors that will be the hardest hit by labor shortages, such as elderly care, who could “be potentially a powerful force” in explaining to politicians why policies like his are necessary.

“Ideas at times are like dams: huge, unmoving, impregnable, able to hold the water back forever,” Pritchett writes in the conclusion of his paper. “But a small, strategically placed crack can cause a dam to be washed away overnight.”

Fortune

President Bola Tinubu has urged an immediate end to the nationwide protests that have been ongoing since Thursday. In his address, he emphasized the government's willingness to listen and address the concerns of the protesters, calling for a suspension of further demonstrations to make room for dialogue. He acknowledged the grievances of the protesters, particularly regarding the rising cost of living, and assured them that their voices have been heard.

Condolences and Condemnation of Violence

The President expressed his condolences to the families of those who lost their lives during the protests and to those who suffered property losses due to looting. He condemned the violence, destruction of property, and loss of lives, stressing that these actions set the nation back. Tinubu highlighted the incidents in Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna, and other states, where public facilities were destroyed and supermarkets looted, contrary to the peaceful intent promised by protest organizers.

Rejection of Ethnic Bigotry

Tinubu warned against using the protests to incite ethnic division. He responded to threats against Igbos in Lagos and South-Westerners in the South-East, stating that the law would deal with those perpetuating such threats. He emphasized that Nigeria's democracy progresses when the constitutional rights of every citizen are respected and protected.

Achievements and Economic Policies

Defending his administration's economic policies, Tinubu highlighted the necessity of removing petrol subsidies to reverse decades of economic mismanagement. He noted that the government is working hard to deliver good governance and assured that the results of these efforts would soon be evident. Tinubu pointed to significant improvements in government revenue, which has more than doubled, and the increased productivity in the non-oil sector.

Call for Patience

The President called for patience, asserting that the economy is recovering and urging Nigerians not to stifle this progress. He reiterated his commitment to delivering good governance and addressing the nation’s economic challenges. Tinubu promised that the era of "Renewed Hope" would soon bring visible and concrete benefits for all citizens.

Conclusion

President Tinubu's address was a plea for peace, unity, and constructive dialogue. He acknowledged the pain and frustration driving the protests but insisted that violence and destruction are not the solutions. He assured the protesters that their concerns are being taken seriously and called on all Nigerians to work together for a better future.

The third day of nationwide protests in Nigeria, part of the #EndBadGovernance demonstration, has been marked by escalating tensions between protesters and security forces. The protests, which began on Thursday, are focused on demands for better governance, economic relief, and policy reversals. Key developments on Day 3 include:

1. Violent Dispersal of Protesters in Abuja:

- State Security Services (SSS) and police officers used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters at the MKO Abiola Stadium in Abuja.

- Journalists covering the event were also targeted, with reports of bullets damaging vehicles.

- The Deputy Commissioner of Police, FCT, initially stated they were there to monitor the protests, but the situation quickly escalated.

2. Protests in Kano with Russian Flags:

- Some protesters in Kano were seen waving Russian flags and calling for intervention from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

- Demonstrators expressed desperation for change, citing hunger and economic hardship.

- The protest in Kano defied a 24-hour curfew imposed by the state government.

3. Incidents in Delta State:

- Police reported that protesters attacked commercial buses on the Asaba-Benin Expressway in Agbor.

- Law enforcement used tear gas to disperse the crowd and clear the road.

4. NLC Condemns Security Forces' Actions:

- The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) called on police and security agencies to stop shooting and killing protesters.

- NLC President Joe Ajaero questioned the professionalism of security agencies in handling the protests.

5. Disputed Casualty Figures:

- Amnesty International reported at least 13 deaths during the protests.

- The Nigeria Police Force claimed seven deaths, stating none were caused by security operatives.

- The police reported 681 arrests related to various criminal offenses during the protests.

6. Ongoing Demands:

- Protesters are calling for the reinstatement of petrol subsidies, reduction in public officials' salaries, and measures to address the cost-of-living crisis.

Analysis:

The protests reflect growing public discontent with recent government policies, particularly the removal of fuel subsidies and currency devaluation, which have led to significant economic hardship. The use of force by security agencies has escalated tensions and drawn criticism from human rights organizations and labor unions.

The appearance of Russian flags in Kano suggests a complex geopolitical dimension to the protests, potentially reflecting dissatisfaction with Western-aligned policies and a desire for alternative international support.

The conflicting reports on casualties and the nature of the protests between authorities and demonstrators highlight the contentious atmosphere surrounding the demonstrations.

Conclusion:

As the protests enter their third day, the situation remains volatile. The government's response to the demonstrations and its ability to address the underlying economic concerns will be crucial in determining the trajectory of this civil unrest. The international community is likely to closely monitor developments, particularly given the geopolitical implications suggested by the Russian flag incident in Kano.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Israeli strikes kill 15 Palestinians in Gaza school, nine West Bank militants

An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced persons in Gaza City killed at least 15 Palestinians on Saturday, hours after two strikes in the occupied West Bank killed nine militants including a local Hamas commander, Hamas said.

The Israeli military said the first of two West Bank airstrikes hit a vehicle in a town near the city of Tulkarm, targeting a militant cell it said was on its way to carry out an attack.

A Hamas statement said one of those killed was a commander of its Tulkarm brigades, while its ally Islamic Jihad claimed the other four men who died in the strike as its fighters.

Hours later, a second airstrike in the area targeted another group of militants who had fired on troops, Israel's military said, during what it described as a counterterrorism operation in Tulkarm.

Palestinian news agency WAFA said four people had died in that strike, and Hamas said all nine of those killed in the two Israeli attacks in the West Bank were fighters.

Violence in the West Bank was on the rise before the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and has risen since, with frequent Israeli raids in the territory, which is among those that the Palestinians seek for a state.

There has also been an increase in anti-Israeli street attacks by Palestinians.

The latest strikes in the Palestinian territories came amid Israel's growing tensions with Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah group that have fanned fears of a widened conflict in the Middle East.

The U.S. and international partners including France, Britain, Italy and Egypt, continued diplomatic contacts on Saturday seeking to prevent further regional escalation.

Hamas said it had begun a "broad consultation process" to choose a new leader three days after the assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, who was the face of the group's international diplomacy. Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel and vowed to retaliate. Israel has not claimed or denied responsibility.

GAZA STRIKES

In the Gaza Strip, at least 15 people were killed in the Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced persons in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, the Hamas run-government media office said.

The Israeli military said the school was being used as a command centre for Hamas, to hide militants and manufacture weapons. Hamas has denied Israeli accusations that it operates from civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals.

Earlier on Saturday, Israeli strikes in the enclave killed six people in a house in the southern area of Rafah and two others in Gaza City, Gaza health officials said.

The Israeli military said its forces had struck militants and destroyed Hamas infrastructure in Rafah and elsewhere in the enclave.

At least 39,550 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials. The offensive was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted, according to Israeli tallies.

A high-level Israeli delegation made a brief visit to Cairo on Saturday in an attempt to resume Gaza ceasefire negotiations, Egyptian airport authority sources said. The Israeli officials returned to Israel hours later, Israeli media said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office accused Hamas of trying to add changes to the "outline" of a potential agreement, referring to a proposal U.S. President Joe Biden laid out in May. Hamas has blamed Netanyahu, saying he does not want to stop the war.

Chances of a breakthrough appear low as regional tension has soared following the assassination of Haniyeh, Hamas's top leader, on Wednesday, a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a senior military commander from Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran.

Haniyeh's death was one in a series of killings of senior Hamas figures as the Gaza war nears its 11th month, and it fuelled concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.

Israel has not said whether or not it was behind Haniyeh's assassination. But Netanyahu said earlier this week that Israel had delivered crushing blows to Iran's proxies of late, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke separately to French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Saturday on the need to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza and to prevent the conflict from spreading, the State Department said.

Egypt's foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, stressed in a phone call with Iran's acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, that recent developments in the region were "unprecedented, very dangerous" and threatening to stability, Egypt's government said.

In addition, the Italian Foreign Ministry said: "Italy makes an appeal to Iran, calling on it for restraint and to contribute to a phase of de-escalation throughout the Mediterranean region and the Middle East." It added that the message had been delivered to the Iranian ambassador in Rome.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine says it sank Russian submarine, hit airfield, oil depots

Ukraine's military said on Saturday it had sunk a submarine in Russian-controlled Sevastopol, attacked a southern Russian airfield and hit oil depots and fuel and lubricant storage facilities in Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions.

"A Russian submarine went to the bottom of the Black Sea," the defence ministry said in a post on X, naming the vessel as the B-237 Rostov-on-Don attack submarine.

The military's general staff said the attack on Sevastopol port also significantly damaged four launchers of the S-400 anti-aircraft "Triumf" defence system.

There was no immediate comment by Russia on the Sevastopol attack.

In other, overnight attacks, the military said it hit an ammunition depot at Morozovsk airfield where Russian forces stored guided aerial bombs among other equipment and a number of oil depots and fuel storage facilities.

"Russian combat aviation must be destroyed wherever it is, by all effective means. It is also quite fair to strike at Russian airfields. And we need this joint solution with our partners - a security solution," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The Ukrainian president has repeatedly calledon his Western allies for permission to use their weapons for long-range attacks on Russia, in addition to striking military targets close to the border.

He said on Saturday that Russian forces had used over 600 guided aerial bombs to attack Ukraine in the past week.

The attack on oil depots and fuel and lubricant storage facilities in Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions set fire to at least two oil tanks, according to the Ukrainian military report.

In Russia, local officials reported that tanks at a fuel storage depot in the Kamensky district of Rostov region caught fire as a result of a drone attack.

The regional governor of Belgorod also said Ukraine-launched drones caused a fire at an oil storage depot there, adding that the fire was extinguished and no one was injured.

Ukraine has dramatically stepped up its use of long-range drones this year to attack Russian oil facilities, attempting to damage sites fueling Russian forces and the country's economy in Moscow's 29-month-old invasion.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russian forces hit two S-125 missile launchers and a temporary base of foreign mercenaries in the past day, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

"Russian tactical aircraft, drone teams, missile forces and artillery units hit two launchers of the S-125 missile system, a P-18 search and track radar, Ukrainian fuel depots and a temporary base of foreign mercenaries, as well as enemy troops and equipment in 138 areas," the statement reads.

Reuters/Tass

The nationwide #EndBadGovernance protests that are convulsing the neoliberal fundament of the Bola Tinubu administration are redefining and redrawing the contours of protests in Nigeria in many significant ways. Although I’ve been on the road since Thursday, here are lessons I’ve learned from the protests.

One, there is now a profoundly consequential decentering of the locus of protest culture in Nigeria. In the past, protests against unpopular government policies used to be conceived, constructed, and carried out by a self-selected class of professional protesters based mostly in Lagos who earned activist bona fides from their anti-military, pro-democracy, human rights advocacy in the 1980s and 1990s.

These careerist agitators are now either in government, in bed with the government, or have suffered significant contraction of their symbolic and cultural capital. Most Gen Z Nigerians whose vim and vigor power the ongoing protests either don’t know them or know them but have no use for their guidance.

So, the conception, planning, and execution of the protests have neither a recognisable locale nor any identifiable dramatis personae. A lot of the known names identified with the protests merely joined and amplified it. They didn’t start the revolt and can’t stop it. It’s effectively a leaderless rebellion.

It started life as anguished, discordant murmurs on social media in response to the increasingly unendurable but relentlessly unabating neoliberal, IMF/World Bank-sanctioned economic and social terror of the Tinubu administration. Many of the young people who can’t feed now and whose future is being perpetually deferred have enough education to know that the delayed gratification the government promises them from removing subsidies and from devaluing the naira has never materialised anywhere in the world.

Everywhere in the world—from South America to the Pacific and from Asia to Africa—from the 1980s (when the IMF first forced Structural Adjustment Programmes on developing countries) until now, there is not a single example of a country that has escaped irreversible devastation and decline as a result of subsidy removal, currency devaluation, destruction of social safety nets for the poor, abandonment of the welfare of citizens—all IMF policies that countries are forced to implement as conditions to secure World Bank loans.

The only countries that have developed outside the West are precisely the countries that have repulsed the IMF, that have strategically deployed subsidies to buoy their economies and uplift their people, and that have guarded their national currencies. Many young Nigerians now realise that the idea that the pains they are suffering are mere temporary birth pangs that will deliver a bouncing baby is a damned, soulless, conscienceless, self-centered lie. They’ve had enough.

So, they resolved to band together and fight peacefully. They chose to demand the restoration of petrol subsidies, among other demands, because they see that the people who took away petrol subsidies from them are themselves luxuriating in unimaginable opulent elite subsidies. Their cries quickly gained traction.

For the first time in a long time, northern and southern youth found common ground. Northern agitations for “zangazanga” and southern push for #EndBadGovernance protests, though gestated independent of each other, somehow converged. It’s a unity forged in diversity and adversity.

The second lesson is a derivative of the first, and that is the unexampled collapse of the cultural, political, and social power of the Northern Nigerian Muslim clerical establishment. Northern Nigerian clerical elites, known as the ulama, had been constituted in the region’s moral imagination as the apotheosis of probity and the unquestioned source of moral and political guidance.

They have used this power, this priceless symbolic capital, to keep the masses perpetually in a state of suspended animation. They have programmed northern Nigerian masses to not resist, protest, rebel, much less revolt, against bad governance. They socialised them into accepting their economic suffering with equanimity. The only thing the clerical elites have conditioned the masses to be implacably roused and animated over is real or perceived slight against religion.

For example, amid the inexorably intensifying breakdown of security in the region during the Muhammadu Buhari administration, the clerical establishment also intensified fraudulent theological rationalisations for the rise of kidnappings and exculpated Buhari of responsibility for this. That was why Buhari got away with murder for eight years.

However, although there was a groundswell of anti-zangazanga sermonising among the region’s notable clerics in the aftermath of their meeting with officials of the Tinubu administration, northern Nigeria is erupting in communal convulsions. It is also instructive that protesters in Daura took their anger to Muhammadu Buhari’s doorsteps. No one is immune now. The genie has been let out of the bottle.

The #OccupyNigeria protests in 2012, which the North also actively participated in largely, some would say precisely, because of the religious and regional identity of Goodluck Jonathan, had the moral imprimatur of the clerical establishment.

This is the first major example in recent memory I am aware of in the North where the masses of the people not only bucked the impassioned counsel of their ulama but have openly labelled them as unreliable and mercenary charlatans not worthy of respect. This is a culturally seismic shift.

The third lesson is that the Federal Government is in more trouble than it realises. It invited civil society leaders, traditional rulers, religious clerics, and certain audible voices in the protest movement in an effort to thwart the protest. It was inspired by the mistaken belief that these hitherto esteemed opinion molders had the capacity to use their conversational, symbolic, political, and cultural currencies to influence people to back out of the protest.

It didn’t work because the habitual order of things has shifted, and the government hasn’t come to terms with this reality. We call it decentering in humanities and social science scholarship. “Decentering” involves challenging and moving away from traditional centres of authority, meaning, or truth. It means a shift of focus from dominant cultures, narratives, or perspectives and the amplification of marginalised, peripheral, or alternative voices.

The government’s cluelessness about this social media-enabled decentering of traditional ways of seeing and knowing manifested in its mutually contradictory claims about who was sponsoring the protest—and in its counter-intuitive displays of persecution complex.

The State Security Service (SSS) said it knew the “sponsors” of the protest, but the police asked the “sponsors” to identify themselves as a precondition for protection. High-profile government officials fingered foreign mercenaries as the organisers and funders of the protest. They all can’t wrap their heads around the possibility that distraught, depressed, and disgruntled young people, without prodding from anybody, can organise protests to ventilate their frustrations at foreign-inspired policies that kill their present and deny their future.

Unfortunately, the government’s response follows the same miserably familiar template: whine like over-indulged crybabies about fictive “sponsors,” induce or intimidate people thought to be behind the protests, deploy strong-arm tactics against protesters, and do nothing about the conditions that instigated the protest in the first place—until it happens again another time.

The fourth lesson is that there is a relationship between how security forces respond to protests and how they turn out. In such states as Edo, Osun, Oyo, and Ogun, the police were admirably polite and even-tempered. I saw a video of the Edo State police commissioner addressing protesters in the kindest, most empathetic way I’ve ever seen any senior law enforcement officer addressing aggrieved people. The protesters reciprocated the police commissioner’s mild-mannered and conciliatory speech with chants of his praises. That warmed my heart. Tinubu can learn from that.

But in places where law enforcement officers treat protesters as enemies of the state and visit unprovoked violence on them, things easily escalate into violence and bloodshed. We saw that in Kaduna, Kano, Abuja, and many parts of the North.

It should be admitted, of course, that there are many criminal elements who cash in on protests to loot the properties of innocent people or destroy government properties. I saw heartrending videos of criminals stealing or destroying private and government properties in Kano and Abuja. Such outlaws deserve no mercy. It’s elements like that who justify the government’s apprehensions about protests always devolving into chaos and destruction.

Finally, although many people from the Southeast supported the protest, the region was the only place, as of the time of writing this column, where almost no protest took place. Was it the culmination of the ethnic baiting of the honchos of the Tinubu administration who said the protests were planned by the people of the region as a payback for their electoral loss in 2023? Whatever it is, it does not give a good account of our efforts at nation-building.

Well, Tinubu has just one option left for him if he doesn’t want to govern in disabling tumult: address the nation in a solemn national broadcast, acknowledge the unprecedented hurt people are nursing, announce the restoration of petrol and electricity subsidies, and reverse the disastrous “floating” of the naira.

Tinubu’s loyalty should be to Nigeria, not the racist economic hitmen at the IMF and the World Bank.

There is this anecdote in Igboland of M̀gbekē and her cutlass. By the way, M̀gbekē is a synonym for an unrefined and unsophisticated girl. Each time M̀gbekē’s farmer colleagues visited her in the farm, they saw haphazardly tilled land and a female farmer lazily fondling her farm implement. Whenever Mgbeke was asked the reason for her snailish work, she complained of an old and ineffectual cutlass. Knowing M̀gbekē as the female version of Nnoka, Okonkwo’s lazy father in Things Fall Apart, it was difficult to believe the implement was the culprit. The villagers thereafter concluded that it was either M̀gbekē’s cutlass was defective, M̀gbekēherself was lazy or the problem was with both of them.

The #EndBadGovernance protest which commenced last Thursday revealed several cracks in our Nigerianness. One major crack it revealed is our propensity for betrayal of a general struggle; the betrayal of Nigerians by Nigerians. Such betrayal is however not new in Nigeria or to Nigerians. It is not even native to us. That theme was dealt with by East African leading novelist and Kenyan author, academic, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in his 1976 play. In The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Ngugi narrates the trials faced by Kimathi, regarded as Kenya’s foremost anti-colonialist national hero. Kimathi’s resistance to colonialism led to his capture by British police officer, Ian Henderson. Kimathi was sold out by disgruntled fellow Kenyan Mau Mau fighters who revealed where he holed up. Once captured, his abductors put pressure on him to disclose his allies in the struggle. While awaiting trial, the colonial authorities sent three persons to persuade Kimathi to abandon the struggle. One was Shaw Henderson, the judge in his trial.

Like the biblical Satan who took Jesus to the pinnacle of a mountain and persuaded him to renounce his messianism, Henderson told Kimathi he would be released if he pleaded for his life. Kimathi refused the offer. Then a delegation of bankers came. Why was he disrupting the Kenyan economy which flourished under colonial rule? The third delegation comprised a priest, businessman and a politician. They each asked for Kimathi’s surrender. Momentarily, Kimathi was swayed but later obstinately refused. Henderson meets him again but this time, tortured him to disclose the identities of his co-revolutionists. Kimathi refused. Outside of the Ngugi play, in reality, this famed leader of the Mau Mau war of October 1956 was eventually sentenced to death by the colonial authorities. He was hanged on February 18, 1957 at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. Britain rewarded Henderson with a George Medal, while Henderson in turn documented his experience in a book he entitled Man Hunt in Kenya.

In the June 12 1993 struggle, our own Dedan Kimathi was betrayed severally. MKO Abiola suffered serial betrayals from the people he trusted. Fellow politicians, his Yoruba kinsmen, labour union activists and leading democracy activists betrayed Abiola for a mess of pottage. Leading politicians paid nocturnal visits to Ibrahim Babangida in his Aso Rock fortress, pretending they were taking a nap when their vehicle was to be identified at the Villa gate. Labour leaders allegedly collected money from the military regime to kill protests against the June 12 election annulment. Till date, the role played by those who inherited Abiola’s presidency in the betrayal is still being studied. If you read Segun Osoba’s autobiography, Battlelines – Adventures In Journalism And Politics, you will learn how NUPENG’s Frank Ovie Kokori was lured into detention by a trusted ally in the struggle. He was finally betrayed in death by those who are today’s inheritors of his struggle to liberate Nigeria from autocracy. The Abdulsalami Abubakar government eventually adopted the Kimathi model. It allowed an American government delegation to visit Abiola in the prison, ostensibly to persuade him to relinquish the struggle. The rest, as they say, is history.

In Alex La Guma's In the fog of the Seasons’ end novel, like the sabotages received by the #EndBadGovernance protest, its protagonists, Beukes and Elias Tekwane, undercover protestors of apartheid, distributed handbills to announce a forthcoming strike action aimed at upsetting Apartheid South Africa. An intensely well-crafted plot, La Guma weaves the plot to unravel what went into underground anti-apartheid movements and how protesters were confronted by sabotage from fellow workers who worked as agents of government. If they were found out, Beukes and Elias faced threat of imprisonment and torture hanging over their heads. Every leaflet they distributed, every phone call they made, every outspoken word they uttered to someone about the strike got them closer to being captured. They were eventually captured by the South African police who tortured them to death in their cells.

The Nigerian #EndBadGovernance protest mirrors similar trope, though in a different manner. It synchronizes with Kenya and Uganda, becoming poster children of the need to reset the brains of misgoverning African leaders. The arrogance of William Ruto who initially labeled the anti-tax agitation in Kenya treason was confronted by Gen Z protesters whose existential misery fired their zeal. The protest not only reportedly claimed over 50 casualties, it reset the politics of Kenya. That country may never be the same again. Ruto was forced to fire most of his cabinet members amid thousands of youths marching on the streets of Nairobi since mid-June. Police deployed teargas canisters, water cannons and live bullets to chase away the protesters, yet they remained adamant. The youth eventually forced Ruto to take sweeping decisions like sacking his entire cabinet. So, when a similar protest, the #EndBadGovernance, erupted in Nigeria last Thursday, President Bola Tinubu must have known what was in the offing.

One of the first groups to dissociate itself from the protest was the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Lagos State chapter. It was followed by a group which claimed it was representing the national leadership of the National Association of University Students, (NAUS) the National Associations of Polytechnic Students (NAPS) and the National Association of Nigerian Colleges of Education Students (NANCES). It also distanced self from the planned protest. Some members of the organized labour also pulled back. On the D-Day, government’s old tactics of mercantile purchase of the consciences of protest organizers surfaced. Protesters against the protest confessed that they were given miserable N5000 by proteges of government figures. 

Tinubu apparently dusted up the ancient, military-bestowed tactic of setting up monarchical and religious elites against protesters. During the June 12 crisis, apparently scared Generals Babangida and Sani Abacha ferried monarchs into Aso Rock. The aim of the two despots was to use the monarchs to subvert the people’s will. Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, came out of one of such Villa meetings to appeal to Nigerians to forget June 12. When asked by reporters what Babangida said on the annulment of the election, his “I think he was making sense” caused huge furore. It was interpreted to mean that Kabiyesi had sold out. Olubuse never recovered from this tar-brush.  

Tinubu apparently didn’t realize that the IBB, Abacha model of nipping protests in the bud before they begin is an outdated and glacier-frozen style. The social media has redrawn the space, graph, contour and mode of protest agitations. Today, unlike in the past when, once you had the Paschal Bafyaus of NLC or NUPENG leaders in your pocket as locus of betrayer of a just cause, protests were doomed, today, protest is amorphous, occurs with the speed of lightning and is spontaneous. It is leader-less. You can no longer consign news to NTA, Daily Times or paid newspapermen as it was done in the past. Information travels at the speed of light on social media. In any case, who respects voices of traditional rulers any longer? Isn’t it the same voices of weed smokers; the known notorious land-grabbers and fraudsters now merely garbed in flowing apparels?

In all these push-backs, whether now or before, allegations of the presidency purchasing interventions of hitherto respected voices loomed large. So, following that ancient mould, apparently informed by security reports that the anger of Gen Z youths was boiling over, Tinubu also ferried monarchs and clergy elites on an emergency pilgrimage to Aso Rock. Emir of Zazzau, Ahmed Bamalli, Ooni of Ife, Enitan Ogunwusi, Dein of Agbor, Benjamin Keagborekuzi and other natural rulers, as well as notable clerics, spoke thereafter with the press. They appealed to the organizers of the protest to give the president more time to fix Nigeria. What time? A cleric in a viral video even alleged that Tinubu thumped his chest and told clerics he bought his presidency. To these pleas, the Gen Z seemed to have invoked Sango’s wrath to descend on the Bata drum and its noisy accoutrements (Sàngó pa bàtá, pa jonwon jonwon etí è). The youths then marched on the streets of Nigeria in blazing anger.

The appeal to fear by Tinubu’s security apparatchik also failed woefully. “A “bomb” was “detonated” somewhere in Lagos.” “Foreign mercenaries were on their way into Nigeria.” To this old, frozen scaremongering tactics, the Gen Z howled, may Sango descend on Tinubu’s Bata and its useless accoutrements! If Tinubu’s inner cabinet members had been mis-informing him that the cries of hunger were politically motivated, the president must have seen for himself live videos of Nigerians expressing blistering views on his excruciating and punishing economic policies and the calamities these IMF-driven policies have brought to the people. Some even claim that Tinubu’s slavish licking of the western world’s spittle is borne out of the fact that the West has the balls of his uncomely past in its hands.

What summarizes Nigerians’ wails at protest grounds last week is Bob Marley’s iconic song, Dem belly full but we hungry. Tinubu and his cabinet members live in stupendous wealth and go on saturnalia with our wealth while Nigerians are dying in droves. The most tragic part of it is that the people in government don’t even pretend to care. Did you hear the voluble Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, say the people could keep on protesting but he and the Senate members would continue eating? It may be a Freudian slip or a flippancy for which Akpabio has earned an infamous notoriety but it seems to be the philosophy of the Tinubu government. Hungry Nigerians may go jump inside the Bunga River for all the government cares. The man who dons the moustache of Chancellor of Third Reich Nazi Germany, the despot Adolf Hitler, Nyesom Wike, also attempted to spin the weather-beaten old ad-hominem narrative of “protest sponsorship” last week. A senator was sponsoring the protest, he drooled in his usual scary guttural. The apt response he got from Nigerians was that hunger, hopelessness and death of Nigerians since Tinubu took over government were the sponsors of the protest.

And the protest held. Sadly, while official figure said 17 people were killed, suspicious police report claimed three died. From our experience during the #EndSARS protest, we know who to believe. The protest also drew a graph not native to protests in time past. A hitherto supine north tipped over in its anger, crudely burning and looting. It was the same north which always hit the street in murderous baying for blood only when it feels God had been defamed. Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State, explaining this mindless pillaging of the north by Almajiris, said: “What actually caused it? Today if you look at Nigeria, 70% of those in the North are in poverty. If you look at 65% of our people in the North, they don’t even have bank accounts. In 18 million out of school children, over 14 million are in the North.” In Sokoto, protesters at the Sultan’s palace even went extremely idiotic, calling for soldiers’ return. Same north went into slumber throughout the eight years of Muhammadu Buhari’s zero governance. The southwest, on the other hand, was calm even though pummeled by hunger. South-south wailed in anger despite the annoying woto-woto from Asari Dokubo threatening would-be protesters. Dokubo had earlier confirmed that he had collected money from the presidency. Uncharacteristically, the southeast went into an unusual somnolence.

In the midst of all these, even with the loss of souls, Aso Rock has feigned deafness and dumbness. When his claim that Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar sponsored the protest was perforated, Bayo Onanuga immediately relapsed into a baffling aphasia. Nigerians told Onanuga, borrowing from Marley’s lyrics, that “a hungry mob is an angry mob.” Since August 1, Tinubu, too has maintained a concerning taciturnity, apparently, like Emperor Nero, fiddling while Nigeria got enveloped in conflagration. Some have interpreted this self-imposed deafness of Aso Rock as arrogance of power. To some others, it was a hallmark of presidential conceit for the people. Even William Ruto peeled his initial lapel of arrogance and spoke to the people of Kenya.

But our own Asiwaju – one who mounts the saddle from the front – is now a rare-admirer, an Aseyin. Long live King Nero. The litany of problems which the protesters complained about that led to the #EndBadGovernance protest is the case of the proverbial M̀gbekē and her cutlass. Is it that the current government lacks the mental wherewithal to pull Nigeria out of the doldrums or it is too enmeshed in the problems to make a difference? As I was putting finishing touches to this piece, I learnt the president would be addressing Nigerians today. This is coming days after lives had been lost and property destroyed. There was apparently no stitch in time and no nine was saved.

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness…and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” - 2 Timothy 4:7-8.

Introduction

The Apostle Paul, a man widely (and rightly) regarded as a Christian leader for all time, was a true exemplar of the Christian way of life. As we learn from his writings and accounts of others, in all that he did, he was truly an ambassador of the Gospel to the Gentiles, a father to many, and certainly not one to back down from a fight. From the cusp of adulthood until he was saved by the Lord Jesus on his way to Damascus, Paul had spent his entire life devoted to fighting, and thereafter, he continued fighting, but in the service of the good and righteous One.

Before we turn to the focus of this piece, the good fight, it may perhaps be worth considering briefly the other side of the coin, that is, the ‘bad fight’. This consists of ‘zealous religious pursuits’ to which we are sometimes, like Saul of Tarsus, devoted – and the ‘righteousness’ of which we are quite convinced of – but which, in God’s books, do not count for much and may take us down the slippery slope of hate, jealousy and unholy anger.

The Good Fight

What, then, is the ‘good fight’? In 2 Timothy 4:1-8, Paul articulated and commended certain things to Timothy, his beloved son in the faith (things Paul himself had done, and which qualified him for a crown of righteousness).

For the avoidance of doubt, the good fight, which is the centerpiece of our calling as believers – is as set forth in this missive from Paul to Timothy: “preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine…but watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry” (2 Timothy 4:2-5).

I posit that these above present to us a very vivid, true and an acceptable kingdom lifestyle, failing which will doubtless result in undesirable consequences in form of stronghold of unbelief, creating distractions from our major goals in life. However, the consequences also show up in the forms of sicknesses of the mind or body, stagnation, setback, marital problems, and all forms of addiction, depression and lusts. And, unfortunately, all of these become complicated, especially when such individuals refuse to give attention to godly, Biblical counsel from wise and elderly people who have accomplished what they are just wishing to attain.

Now, one of the most useful dynamics of living is in being able to overcome challenges and win through the battles of life as they come up. However, this cannot come to be until we learn to fight aright. Thus, the important question arises: how do we fight to win through and finish strong?

It is important to note from the onset that most of the serious battles man constantly faces are not carnal (2 Corinthians 10:4). Hence, it would require the fights of faith to win and overcome them. Strong holds can still lose their grip if we learn to fight aright, or else we miss it.

To fight aright, we must recognize that it is faith’s fight that wins the battle, not carnal fights. This is done by fighting the enemies with the Word of God, speaking boldly in prayer to issues and situations that contend with our joy, and fighting from our stands of righteousness in Christ Jesus.

We must also keep in mind the fact that all of life’s major battles start and are controlled in the spiritual realm, well before they manifest in the physical. In this regard, the Bible instructs us not to be complacent or carnally-disposed, but to fight from our privileged position of victory in Christ Jesus, using the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:12).

Finishing Strong

In closing, I must stress that it does not suffice to simply fight, as a strong start that is not sustained only ends in whimpering shame and makes the fighter the subject of ridicule. Ask Samson, a warrior divinely bestowed with supernatural strength, but who failed to finish strong. Ask Demas, who fought alongside Paul but ultimately forsook the faith, “having loved this present world” more than prize of the high calling of Christ.

Indeed, what qualifies a believer for the crown of righteousness is the ability to sustain the vigor and fervor of the fight to the very end. As the Master Himself said in Luke 9:62, “no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Please, make no mistake about it: Satan will always fashion his weapons, but God foretold us that the devil’s arsenal against us shall not prosper. And most certainly, with the armor of God, you’re skewed to win, always!

Beloved, I pray that the Almighty God, the wellspring of life and strength, the One who has bestowed us with all things pertaining to life and godliness, including the armor to do battle, will grant you the grace to fight the good fight of faith, and the stamina to last the long haul for His glory here on earth, that a glorious crown of righteousness may be yours for eternity. Amen. Happy Sunday!

____________________

Bishop Taiwo Akinola,

Rhema Christian Church,

Otta, Ogun State, Nigeria.

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