By Gimba Kakanda
MKO Abiola has become the symbol of the nation’s quest for a soul. He sacrificed everything to fight governments that took everything but his hope away from him. In losing his life for the cause, he gave Nigeria a soul to remember the capability of a desperate government, and the hope to keep fighting perceived injustice. Unfortunately, most of the characters who fought alongside Abiola then, with some fleeing the country and others ending up in jail, have become the dictators they once fought.
On this anniversary of injustice, some Nigerians are again on the street to protest, and that #BuhariMustGo. Of course, Buhari won’t go. Anywhere. I’m also suspicious of attempts at removing a President in a democracy as uncertain and a state as unstable as ours through a channel other than an election. The masterminds of the ongoing June 12 protests know very well that Buhari will never voluntarily resign nor would the legislature remove him, no matter the storm. It’s not a realistic bid. But it’s their democratic right to protest. Nobody should blackmail or kill them for doing as the constitution allows. Nigeria is neither your father’s nor my father’s property. We all have equal stake in this country.
We inherited a nation that’s quick to shoot the unarmed agitator where sincere dialogue is advised, and yet incapable of demonstrating similar energy in neutralising actual threats like the bandits serially invited to government houses for tea and cash-driven amnesty. Even the most powerful countries on this planet haven’t succeeded in silencing voices of dissents, let alone one that can’t defeat a band of armed civilians lurking around its forests and captured villages.
Seven years ago, the people in power today were in the street protesting President Jonathan’s alleged conspiracy to decimate the North. They wove wild conspiracy theories to appeal to sectional sentiments that Jonathan was the sponsor of Boko Haram and had an agenda to depopulate this vast region and wreck its economy. These views, driven through obvious fake news shared on Facebook and Twitter, were deployed in their “activism” and quests for power. Today, Jonathan, although still not a model President, has been vindicated. The then opposition were vile on social media and deployed it to “threaten the sovereignty of the state,” as they would’ve said if they were in power. Jonathan had more convincing reason to ban social media, if we are being honest.
In less than three years, Nigerians will be in the street again to oppose another breed of politicians. Buhari will be in Daura then, reading about them as Jonathan and Obasanjo do today. Some of the people protesting today may swap places with the politicians they antagonise. But that’s the system of governing we design in our constitution; a perpetual quest for better representation and freedom to demand it.
This is what democracy is, even though our affiliations to the people in power tamper with our sincerity. But the best way to preserve a democracy isn’t by cracking down on dissent; that’s the surest pathway to anarchy. You preserve a democracy by acknowledging every injustice instead of shooting it out of your sight.
Happy Democracy Day, Nigeria!
• Kakanda is a newspaper columnist