(Picture L-R:oOmano,Onoja,Jibrin at the the Democracy Day Symposium in Abuja by #BringBackOurGirls)
The Jonathan administration has moved to muzzle the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ (BBOG) movement by purportedly banning the movement in Abuja. That’s not surprising. All crumbling regimes try to do that, partly because, from nowhere, Chibok has completely ridiculed Jonathan’s claims to power by throwing up a global resentment against his unschooled management of the abduction. It has simply undone GEJ’s smartest of planners and schemers in a way they themselves can never understand. Hence, the fury of the government against the forces thrown up by the unraveling of the abduction, culminating in, initially, sponsoring a surrogate group by the government to counter and muzzle the movement on June 28th, 2014. Now, they have gone further with the embarrassing ban which nobody should contemplate obeying because Nigeria, though basically an ungoverned jungle where life is nasty and short, still aspires and struggles to be a law governed society as opposed to rule of men. Certainly, not men like Joseph Mbu and his variant of policing.
From what I witnessed at their alternative Democracy Day Seminar at the ThisDay Dome, Abuja, May 29th, 2014, the BBOG movement is the kind of movement that an otherwise intelligent government would have been very, very grateful to have. One reason for this is that it is the only collective, modernist and progressive voice connecting Nigeria with the global grid on the Chibok girls. In the absence of the movement, which group from Nigeria would have filled that gap? Is it the First Lady or the inarticulate Federal Government of Nigeria itself?
The second reason is the very forward looking conception of citizenship the movement is advancing. Of course, the government as well as the ruling class in Nigeria (people in government are not necessarily members but mostly messengers of the ruling class) would prefer a docile populace too divided by ethnic and religious consciousness to collectively interrogate power. So, both the ruling class in Nigeria and the government of the day would not value the concept of citizenship articulated by the movement. But that is only because of the neo-colonial nature of elite in Nigeria. Otherwise, its idea of national security should, by now, have advanced to that which privileges a healthy and contended masses as the corner stone of national security. Neither has the government nor the ruling class in Nigeria moved in this direction or about to.
And this is the tragedy when, from nowhere, a Commissioner of Police announces a ban on such a movement, invoking security. Whose security? The same mentality of security which pushed militarism in Nigeria to destroy the student movement as a training ground for leadership in Nigeria, creating the room for the takeover of campuses by cultists. Nigeria is still paying for that authoritarian mindlessness because, today across the country, you have ministers, governors, legislators, politicians in short, who are totally strange to the culture of internal debate or the alternative view or even the skill of addressing a rally in any fascinating manner. This reality is a complete contrast to the heritage of brilliant politicians since the First Republic with voices which fired the imagination of the folks until recently.
In this circumstance, if elements from the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ cannot do whatever they want provided it is legitimate and peaceful, then who can? Government cum thugs? Or is the government too scared of Nigeria’s own version of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina in the late 1970s? That would be an even better reason we should be attracted to the BBOG movement, if not to accomplish authoritarian breakdown, then for its beautiful discursive framework of Nigeria in contrast to the unhelpful narratives of Nigeria such as the thesis assuming the incompatibility of the North and the South. Or the ‘either Jonathan in 2015 or nothing’ argument, democracy or no democracy.
The issue of discursive framework is vital because it is time to overcome all misleading frameworks. Patrick Dele Cole has put the North-South dichotomy, for example, in perspective most succinctly when he said that “The Southerner has the perception that something that is his birthright is being taken away from him by some Oligarchic group that sits up there in the North and reaches Lagos (now Abuja) every four years in uniform or agbada and take it away”, (Newswatch, June 6, 1988, p. 30). Northerners, on the other hand, perceive the Southerners as people who want to combine economic power with political power. So, a stalemate there.
In the ‘Jonathan or nothing’ perspective, the obvious logic here is, ‘if you like our oil, you must like our son’. On page 159 of Abiodun Alao’s book, Natural Resources and Conflict in Africa: The Tragedy of Endowment, one finds the starkest version of this analysis by Hope Harriman, an obvious ideologue of Niger Delta resource nationalism that “I come from an area where 25% of oil is produced. I should be like a Kuwaiti or Saudi Arabian Prince, moving round Europe and America in beautiful suits and buying gold watches. But who are those doing that: the many compatriots from the arid zones and we are most deprived”. From here comes the conspiracy theory of perceived ganging up of the Northern oligarchy against the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. For those who subscribe to this, Jonathan can commit no wrongs in office. What matters is Jonathan presidency as an opportunity for Niger Delta elite to equalize their compatriots from the arid zones of the country in moving round Europe and America buying beautiful suits and gold watches, not so much about the masses in the South-South.
In contrast, the BBOG leaders, cadres and other key players, from Jibrin Ibrahim (aka Jibogram) to Oby Ezekwesili, Saudatu Mahdi, Auwalu Yadudu, Chudu Jideonwo, Zainab Usman, Omano Edigheji, Maureen Kabrik, Bukky Shonibaire, Hadiza Bala Usman are saying that: Humanity has no index. We are not here as Yorubas, Igbos, Hausa-Fulanis, PDP, APC, Christians or Muslims. We are here as human beings, as Blacks and as Africans. It is time for the citizens to take the job of re-inventing Nigeria because the elite have no idea of what to do, philosophically and technically. Citizens are the owners, drivers and custodians of democracy. The relationship between us and the government is that we, the people, pay the government and if they mess up the task, we have got to sack them. If they cannot bring back our girls, they have no business being there at all. It cannot be an exaggeration to say this is a completely bolder and new narrative from Nigeria and about Nigeria.
We have no alternative to embracing the BBOG and all similar movements as long as they emphasize the need for not only a more thoughtful, responsible and responsive government but even more so an elevated ruling class that can, individually and collectively, re-assure Nigerians immediately that “Nigeria Will Never Be Humiliated Again”. That is humiliation in the sense that our divisive discourse of democratization has pushed us to a willful disarmament of our own military to the extent that Nigeria is now basically under the receivership of the USA, China, Britain, France, Canada, Israel, etc. This ruling class as well as the government would have lost power by now if Boko Haram were an intelligent insurgency, mobilizing Christian and Muslim masses against the establishment.
The BBOG must have its own paradoxes, not the least the high profile of someone like Oby Ezekwesili, given her World Bank background. But that is how social contradictions work out, throwing up individuals at crucial moments to play roles that otherwise does not fit their past. It is a transition she must be paying dearly for given the unproblematic perception among the Igbos broadly that an Igbo is being prepared by ‘informal Washington’ to take over from Jonathan later. So, they see Oby as playing a spoiler and for which they haul abuses at her on the Worldwide Wonderland or Worldwide Web, if you like.
But it is not about Oby or any individuals. It is about a movement that has potentials in terms of transforming from a movement of rage into a movement for a progressive reconfiguration of state power in Nigeria. Except any individuals or tendency or a core still exists in “Our Great Party” (the PDP) that knows how to wave a sincere banner of hope in terms of re-inventing both this our so-called Great Party and Nigeria itself, there seems no alternative to the BBOG, particularly if the movement widens its agenda beyond the abducted girls at a later date to something much, much wider. The ruling class and its Jonathan government must not only bring back our girls “now and alive”, they must also implement Chapter Two of the Constitution, among others.
People like Joseph Mbu had better bear in mind what elder statesman, Alhaji Balarabe Musa once said about the Nigeria Police. He said the Nigeria Police will, one day, ignite the revolution that will consume the status quo in this country. He might still be proved right. So, help ‘them’, God!
Onoja wrote from the University of Warwick, UK
