Minding the mutating protest

BY TUNDE AKANNI AND AMIRA OBI-OKOYE 

Most credible English Language dictionaries provide at least 10 synonyms for the word protest – object, disagree, oppose, complain, disapprove, declare, insist, affirm, avow, declare, grouse, holler, belly-ache. One Thesaurus, in fact, offers 106 synonyms and antonyms of the word “protest”. Yet writers don’t often consider any of them a good substitute for “protest”, because, over the decades, the word has assumed a much deeper, complex and lethal meaning.

Palpably so, perhaps. In the past decade or thereabouts, protests have become a dominant instrument of people and issue management across the local and international arena. The famous six-letter English noun (which doubles as a verb) has not only assumed new meanings, it has also grown in power and influence. How powerful a word can be!

Nigerians in particular now have an unprecedented appreciation of the phenomenon. When the raging protest was still in the offing with the commencement date announced, there were mixed feelings.

Planners, including their lawyers, assured that it would be peaceful. The agitated government folks repeatedly alerted that hoodlums could take advantage of it.

Eventually, the truth of the fears manifested with several properties vandalised and looted in addition to lives lost. Indeed, such is the magnitude of the losses that some initial promoters of the protest now want it halted. But it is merely easier said.

Yet the protest, in our own reckoning as experts, was avoidable in the first place. What else was left for the media to register on the consciousness of government functionaries?

Not even in this age of buoying media abundance with increasing actualities can anyone accuse the media of under-reportage of visible signals. So much more offered by informed comments and analyses could not have been more timeous either.

Interestingly, one of the promoters of the protest, Omoyele Sowore, barely parroted an old claim of the nation’s socio-economic situation which ironically has even been accentuated over decades. Years back, the foremost leader of Yoruba politics, Obafemi Awolowo, was reported to have said: “We have won the civil war. Yes, indeed. But to win the war for peace, we must recognize the real enemies…As far as I can understand, the aggressors against peace and stability in Nigeria are abject poverty, hunger, disease, squalor and ignorance.” These have combined to now compel some fire-brigade interventions with no feasible sustainability promise. It’s Nigeria’s hard and painful share of the mutating historic phenomenon.

About a decade ago, this famous word took the Arab world by storm. Now famously referred to as the Arab Spring, it was a wave of pro-democracy protest that began in 2010 with Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia, sparking the Jasmine Revolution. Similar movements sprang up in the Middle East and North Africa with significant uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. The protests which were chaotic to say the least, highlighted the people’s desire for political freedom. But it snowballed into a protracted unintended instability and economic hardships.

Just this July 2024, “protest” rode virulently in the manner of a hurricane through Bangladesh and the United Kingdom. In Bangladesh where it finally tragically culminated in a military take-over, demonstrators trooped out against discontent over government job quotas reserved exclusively for families of veterans from the 1971 independence war, and turned into demands for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation.

The government returned with fire, felling no fewer than 250 lives. The military, led by General Waker-Uz-Zaman, announced Hasina’s resignation and set up an Interim Government to address the demands of the protesters.

Though with fewer deaths, the UK protests are not any less unnerving. Since 2011 there have been pockets of protests across the country but last week it became disturbingly violent. The immediate explanation of the mob was the alleged police complicity resulting from the shooting of a Briton, Mark Duggan allegedly by an immigrant. The shooter turned out to be a British with a Rwandan mother but it did not matter. The protests highlighted system issues with British society and strained community-police relations.

Few months earlier, in Kenya, protests were ignited by opposition to the Finance Bill 2024. It was tagged “#RejectFinanceBill2024”. It quickly snowballed into a cross-divisional and multi-dimensional flame of riots against the leadership of President William Ruto. The President was forced to dissolve his cabinet but the crises have not fully abated.

Now, “protest” has landed in Nigeria, after weeks of hovering in the cloud as deadly thunderstorms do, leaving its trademark – devastations, trails of blood, deaths and empty canisters beclouded with police tear gas.

Even the most virulent leader shivers at the threat of a protest because when it starts no one knows what will follow and how it will end. Although protest as an activity or action is as old as humanity, its encroachment into the international political arena deserves a more critical look.

All of the examples of escalated protests that we just referred to except that of Nigeria (Arab Springs, Kenya protests, the “coup” in Bangladesh and Britain) have diplomatic or international undertones. That is the reason the Tinubu Administration in Nigeria should not take the current wave of “#Endbadgovernance” with kid’s gloves, especially with the brazen flaunting of the Russian flag in Kano, Kaduna and some other parts of northern Nigeria.

But public discontent can always be nipped in the bud by listening leaders. They need to make better and more sincere and effective use of the knowledge of the concept of multi-track diplomacy. The concept (or theory if you like) has grown in acceptance among scholars as a conflict resolution tool. Put simply, it says that a menu of nine factors, when properly blended and applied proactively would bring about peace in the international arena. These are government (executive, legislature and judiciary); professional conflict resolution (especially by non-state actors); business (how economic activities could address disparity and poverty); private citizens (individuals and groups); research, training and education; peace activism; religion; funding and the media (and public relations).

Clearly, Abuja did not make up its mind to meet with the leaders of the relevant segments of the society in good time, just that it made huge shows of the meetings. Were the meetings also sufficiently frank, not merely cosmetic? Were there implementable plans to step down the messages duly suffused with sincerity and completely bereft of political arrogance? How mindful were such engagements mindful of the peculiarities of the various regions with varying bents of insecurity? No one, for instance, could have imagined the brazen and wanton destructions of private and public properties carried out in Kano including attacks on facilities that serve the common man daily like traffic lights. What worse level can we further descend into?

The truth: Peace is always negotiable when the right steps are taken at the right time.

Tunde Akanni, PhD, and Amira Obi-Okoye, a doctoral student, are media and conflict scholars based at the faculty of communication and media studies, LASU