Will 2027 be the terminal date for Nigeria’s democracy? (I)

When rain clouds begin to gather in the sky, we expect that rainfall will follow. The sequential laws of cause and effect hold in all we do. As the late reggae superstar Peter Tosh intoned in one of his hit songs, “You cannot take whiskey and stay sober”.

As graphic images of massive protests in Kenya over the International Monetary Fund (IMF) inspired Finance Bill passed by the Kenyan parliament and was to be signed into law by President William Ruto came to view, many Nigerians could not fail to connect the events in Kenya with our circumstances which bear many similarities.

Unlike in Kenya, the major difference is that it will be unlikely for Nigerians to take to the streets in protest against the government’s harsh economic policies. Street protests against the government’s economic policies may not happen here in Nigeria despite the hardships they bring due to some verifiable reasons.

One is that Nigeria’s economy is elastic. In real terms, the volume of the Nigerian economy is so deep and vast that perhaps no statistic or parameter of judgment can be adequate to measure it. For example, a street vendor selling kolanuts or sweets in the traffic could well be a millionaire and it will not show in him. The volume of transactions that go on in our open markets dotted in their hundreds of thousands across the country can only be counted in billions and in some cases trillions of naira. Go to Dawanau in Kano, Ariaria in Aba, Ochanja in Onitsha or Balogun in Lagos Island and in the thousands of the typical Nigerian markets and attempt to see if you can put a value to the daily transactions (not to talk of weekly, monthly and annual) in those markets in naira or even dollar terms and come back to tell me your story. These are the markets which well-fed men in bespoke suits and ties airily and derisively call the “informal sector” under the klieg lights of television studios.

The “informal economy” is not just an unregulated market; it serves as a vast source of economic and social refuge for all classes of Nigerians to buy and sell largely without restrictions. From foreign currencies to food, clothes, fashion, services etc, this sector absorbs all comers and sells to all who patronise it and provides for all who seek from it. It is for most Nigerians the reliable option for economic transactions and even social organisation and linkages.

So as long as it exists as it is, the informal sector in Nigeria provides an opportunity for Nigerians to make a fast naira to face the challenges of life.

So with the guaranteed convenience of this sector, Nigerians especially of the lower classes have been able to resist and even thrive under any punishing economic policy thrown at us by successive governments in the country. This partly explains why the Tinubu administration as with others before it has subjected Nigerians to the harshest economic policies yet and we have not seen any protests on the streets as happened in Kenya. Unlike the Kenyans, who are protesting over their own Finance Bill containing similar IMF toxic policies, ours has since been passed by the national assembly without so much as a whimper from the legislators or the masses.

Indeed, let us note that also unlike the Kenyan parliamentarians who took to their heels as the angry protesters stormed the parliament to deliver some dose of punishment, our legislators are sitting pretty in the national assembly busy approving more loans with more punishing economic conditions attached. Our legislators are calmly and confidently looking favourably at the administration’s intentions to remove more subsidies and increase tariffs on services. I bet you in the likely event of these happening, Nigerians will only grumble in beer parlours and discussion joints, shrug their shoulders, move on and find ways to adjust and even profit from the situation.

Another reason why Nigerians are not likely to protest the government’s harsh economic policies is that the political elite have learnt to effectively manipulate the consciousness of the people through the use of religion and ethnicity. Over the years these factors have proven an effective shield for our political elite to ascend to power, to commit all manners of political, social and economic havoc and hope to get away with it. The typical Nigerian will more than likely stick with and identify with his kinsman or fellow adherent in religion even if he engages in the most heinous of atrocities against the public good while holding public office.

We saw it during the Buhari administration where many northerners were content to keep mute even when the administration embarked on policies that negatively affected northerners most. We see it happening also presently as the Tinubu administration’s economic policies have put Nigerians under the cosh. Many prominent personalities as well as people generally from the southwest where the president comes from have elected to refrain from publicly condemning the administration.

The fact is from the #EndSARS and other expressions of anger over social and economic policies, protests in Nigeria such as they are almost always do not change things fundamentally. At best, protests merely result in grand superficial acknowledgement of the reasons behind the protests followed by token actions to douse the situation.

However, the fact that street protests in Nigeria hardly result in fundamental changes does not necessarily mean that changes do not often occur. In our historical experience, such changes always come from the vicious inter and intra power struggle among the political elite. It happened in the first republic when the regional power blocs engaged each other in a vicious power struggle for regional and national control of power which eventually led to a truncation of Nigeria’s democratic system and a brutal civil war. It also happened in the second republic following a similar pattern as in the first republic which also led to a military intervention that lasted for a long period.

In the present dispensation, we are seeing similar developments as happened in the past which leads many Nigerians to believe that either before or during the next round of elections the present democratic set-up may go pear-shaped

(To be continued).

Gadu can be reached via [email protected] or 08035355706 (texts only).