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The Ten Peaceful Protests Commandments (Nigeria)

by Adeleke Adesanya

Dear Friend,

A season of discontent is upon us again. You have heard of government’s recent decision and you want to join in the protests. We have argued about it all before. You are aware that you and I at least agree on one thing and that is your right to freely protest. These are uncertain times however. And I see in your fervour a certain hope for this country. I want to see you come back in peace, healthy enough to argue with me again. That is why I write this precise manual on best practise procedures to ensure a peaceful protest and your safe return.

Do not bother querying my credentials. I will be frank and admit that I have never taken part in any public protest in Nigeria or elsewhere. I can write protest letters, sign petitions, and even place a phone call or two. But I don’t do Sit-Ins, Million Men March or Occupy Wherever. I value my physical security and have always been cynical of all leadership including that of every opposition body. As a student, I noticed that Student Union President’s do the talking while their followers receive the hard side of police baton during protests. I know that those who died during violent protests of 1993 never got to receive political appointments. I know that many who were apparently ready to die for that cause turned coat and made it into a source of livelihood. I know that many people do not want peaceful protests. Some nouveau leaders want to climb the corpse of martyrs to renown. Thieves want a little rowdiness so they can steal. And then, there are fifth columnists, SSS officers and paid agent provocateurs. You will learn to identify them while reading this piece.

One, you must plan for the protest properly. Revolutions do not happen by accident. Know when it will start and when you will leave. There is nothing called indefinite protests, everything must have a beginning and an end. Know what you will do and what you will not have a part in. There are many ways to make your voice heard. The people who write articles, who protest on twitter, who telephone radio stations do not have two heads. You don’t have to be the foot soldier in the march, that confronts the mobile policeman.

Two, if you must go out, err on the path of caution. Consider writing you local police DPO for approval first. I know you have a right to protest but it is his duty to maintain law and order. If you do not have permission, it is common sense that he will not guarantee your safety. He might refuse but if you receive approval, it is guaranteed that you will have police officers to secure your procession. They will not tear gas you if you received approval. They will even protect you from touts who may want to hijack your protest. You may belittle this point but asking for permission earns you respect. You are advertising that you are really a leader.

Three, in case of public protests, choose the locations carefully. Choose play areas and parks in suburban areas. Do not protest along main roads. Never ever burn tyres. Do not hold sticks, tree branches or anything that may be misconstrued as a weapon. Do not burn explosives aka banger. Do not harass motorists.  You must be unarmed and appear to be harmless. You are a well bred gentleman afterall.

Four, dress like a responsible person. You may be tempted to wear jeans and a tee shirt but I will suggest a suit or blazer. If you wear native attire, don a cap. Dress as you will like to appear before a judge for bail and in all likelihood you will not need to. With your smart dressing, the police will assume you are a lawyer or a representative of some foreign NGO.  You want them to make that kind of mistake. Never ever show your naked chest or wear a bandanna no matter the heat.

Five, before going for a protest, take care to telephone each media organisation in your vicinity and inform them of your protest. Or better still, request to visit them and make your visit to their office your protest. If you can get foreign press too, then fate has favoured you. If you cannot get the media to cover your protest, postpone it. In this day and age, a revolution that is not televised did not happen.

Six, part of your planning is the preparation of handbills and banners. Use your wits to come up with catchy, even funny choice of words. Design your handbills like you are selling a church retreat. Smile when you go out to evangelise. You may not agree with me your attempt to mould public opinion has made you a politician and you must learn to act the role appropriately.

Seven, do not march to the Governor’s office, the Senate or Representatives building unless you have previously secured an appointment. The security men that guard these places are bored and have been looking for action, any action. Your attempts to break protocol may be repelled with the direst deterrents.  If on the other hand, you are able to secure an appointment, try not to smile too happily when you get the customary photo opportunity.

Eight, there will be many who are not of similar persuasion as yourself. They are not necessarily against you, sometimes they just don’t care. If in a democracy you have a right of dissent, accept that they too have the right to be aloof. As for those who do not agree with you, do not get into any argument. Flee from them the way Born Again Christians are told to flee from Jehovah Witnesses. Public arguments too easily turn violent and are not subject to our customarily civil rules of debating.

Nine, it is one thing to have a plan; it is another to actualise it. If you plan to walk a mile and common sense tells you to stop at half, it is not cowardice. He who protests and runs away will live to protest another day. But be wary of those that push you to go a mile and a half. I am speaking metaphorically. Anyone who tells you he is ready to die or throws a missile at a policeman is the enemy. Ditto those who carry concealed weapons or argue with a man with a gun.   Ditto arsonists. Ditto the bearer of fantastic tales about grave casualties in other scenes of protest.  Anyone who calls a civil demonstration a call to revolution. Watch these ones. They are either fools or fifth columnists.

Ten, you must remember the practical issues on the D-day. Take some water with you. Eat a good breakfast; you don’t know for sure where or when the next one will be. Avoid any form of intoxication. Do not rub your eyes with kerosene; rather leave if the police start shooting tear gas. After tear gas, things generally go from bad to worse, I am not even sure the Nigerian Police have any stock of plastic bullets. Carry a small camera and a cell phone and make a call at the first sign of trouble. Have a lawyer on speed dial. Take your doctor’s prescription along if any, as well as your hospital card showing your blood type. Carry a valid national I D card. Be alert and prepared to flee to safety, when necessary.

I have written this because of my awareness of the attendant risks in the society we live in and the fragility of human life. Don’t be a dead hero, martyrdom is generally overrated. Someday, you will read this again and laugh at me for being so worried about you. When that day comes, I will be happy to buy us both a drink, relieved that this epistle has served its purpose.

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The Ten Peaceful Protests Commandments (Nigeria) was published on January 6th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , under the Observations category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

IBB and the Nigerian Story

A guest post by Adeleke Adesanya

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Nigerians hate to love IBB. For those who don’t know who IBB is, it is the nickname for former military ruler, Babangida. When you have learnt to love to hate someone for almost three decades, it kind of gets confusing. You hate to love him. You love to hate him. And in that confusion, you get a classically defined, part sadomasochist, part Stockholm syndrome relationship. But what is this hold that Babangida has on Nigerians? Or perhaps, what is the Nigerian fixation with this former dictator? Permit me to take you on a journey in history.

Nigeria in early 1993 was a very complicated society, not as simple and straight forward as the Press like to think it is, nowadays. On one hand, there was a dictator who had promised several times to hand over power. On the other were pliant and corruptible politicians, willing to do anything for power. If the truth be told, many Nigerians agreed with Babangida’s policy of screening his successors. The political class was such a rotten lot that in exasperation, he (Babangida) declared, ‘I don’t know who will succeed me but I know who will not’.  The political waters were so mucky, having been sullied by the latter day politicians, mostly opportunists who had made a fortune fornicating with the military, that those who know better, like the late Bola Ige , decided to ‘siddon look’ and abstain from partisan politics.

People forget that the military once decreed political parties into existence and these opportunists still jostled to contest, confident that once they entered office, the financial outlay incurred in fixing the elections would be readily recouped. They forget that Babangida commissioned the manifesto for both PDP and NRC, under which elections were held. Those were the heady days of sandwich politics when loafs of bread were stuffed with twenty naira notes at party conventions. After one election, it was said that the rigging was free and fair.  If after their trysts together, the politicians had lost the respect of even their benefactor, Babangida, the ordinary Nigerian didn’t really care.

At a stage, a close associate of IBB and populist philanthropist entered the political equation. After apparently seeking Babangida’s blessing, he deployed the best political campaign money could buy, the kind we had not seen before and ever since. But there were doubts along the way that the military establishment will not change their mind. I recall that some days before the election, Beko Ransome-Kuti was, in a radio interview, expressed his conviction that the military was not ready to handover, that the elections would be cancelled. It then it dawned on me that it was all a nullity. There was no logical reason why the elections should hold. If IBB was a logical person, why should he change his mind then? What was the fundamental difference between Abiola and the others except that he had more money and loved reciting proverbs?

On the Election Day, I did not vote.  I sat in my room and read Campaign for Democracy (CD) literature. I had a bet with a friend that the election would be cancelled. He never paid but I enjoy to this day, the satisfaction that I did not vote that day. It was much later that I learnt that the June 12 elections were also boycotted by MOSOP, triggering events that would lead to the death of the Ogoni 13 and later the Ogoni 9, including Ken Saro Wiwa. In between the many waves of crises that engulfed Nigeria, Babangida was able to engineer a political transition that ensured that for the next seventeen years, he and the military power block has chosen their successors, with little opposition from any section of the Nigerian society. These are the facts. Whatever opposition to the military power group has effectively crumbled over the years and Babangida is right to say there is no viable alternative it.

The sad fact is that, in the experience of ordinary Nigerians, the era of Babangida has become the good old days. Infrastructure has become worse, the standard of living has fallen, and little progress has been made in giving marginalized communities a sense of belonging. The energy sector is nearly comatose. To many, Nigeria today is clearly worse off than in Babangida times. Now, we could do the easy thing and blame it on him but frankly, should there not be a statute of limitations on the blame game? It has been 17 years! In that time, several civilian governors have proven that when it comes to embezzling, they could easily outdo the military.

And just like Nigerians were convinced to recycle Obasanjo, the refrain is now out for Babangida, again. I will be the first to argue that political jobbers are behind this campaign. Babangida is assumed to be mythically rich, in stupendous proportions. Nigerian elections are expensive affairs and a candidate of the caliber of IBB will be able to raise resources and favors that will assure his close disciples of a highly rewarding stewardship.

Then I read that President Jonathan’s posters are now all over Abuja, in spite of loud protestations from his (Jonathan’s) camp. We have heard that before, haven’t we, many times, the reluctant leader syndrome? Babangida taught them this shit, and 17 years later, they still can’t be any more creative. Little incidents like that bring us face to face with our fear that, should Babangida decide to effectively contest, he will meet no opposition. Babangida’s comment is just to send a signal to his constituency within the reigning power block that all is well. If all else fails, he will step back in.

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Pictures from DustBeings

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IBB and the Nigerian Story was published on April 29th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Opinion category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Lost in Birmingham

This is a guest post by one of my “veteran” readers and commenters from Lagos, Nigeria now living in Birmingham, UK. Adeleke Adesanya is a literary spirit in an accountant’s/economist’s bottle, and I am not sure that he has successfully resolved the conflict that those almost opposite preoccupations of money and literature must pose to the stability of his mind. Along with his beautiful wife and daughter, he runs the shoes, bags and clothing outfit in Lagos called Laurensonline and has been a supporter of this blog and blogger for a long time. Now a student in the United Kingdom, he has sent this beautifully written reaction to the weather, environment, language and people of Birmingham. I hope you enjoy this as I did.

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I have often found that when I put pen to paper, it is easier to express my feelings and thoughts than the sight and sounds around me. Perhaps, this is because I am often so lost in thought, and I don’t look around so much, and this is why, I find, I keep my losing my way. Perhaps this also allows me to say a lot about the environment in a way a visual description would not allow. Nothing expresses better the warm welcome I received on arrival in Birmingham than how my mind related to its cold weather.

Getting lost in Lagos was no big deal. I confess my propensity to get lost, in the marketplace of my mind, is an old habit. Many a times I had driven straight ahead to Ojota, on the way to Victoria Island, because at that split second when I should have turned right towards the Third Mainland Bridge, I was lost in thought, pondering perhaps the similarities between Buddhism’s belief in reincarnation and that of Yoruba native beliefs. I would find this ironic and maybe funny, considering I had, un-Buddha-like, been unable to drive “in the moment”.

But getting lost in Lagos is a piece of cake. You might have to drive against traffic, “one way” in local parlance, to get back in track. Or you could hail an Okada, the commercial motorcyclist, to take you through back roads, back to your destination. And then, as a Yoruba proverb hints, you aren’t yet really lost in Lagos if you do ask around for directions.Getting lost in Brume is a different pot of stew. I am not so crazy as to attempt driving myself; they drive on the wrong side of the road, you see. My right to travel is entirely dependent on route schedules determined by local transport companies.

As soon as I find a seat on a bus and look through the pane onto those cold, snow covered streets, my mind retreats into its marketplace, ruminating over morbid thoughts like, if one was to die of exposure and is buried in this cold, frozen land, would the cadaver ever know corruption? It is not entirely strange that over and over again, I miss my bus stop and get driven around the outer circle of the town. Once I made a mistake of coming down from the bus. Picture me, unwisely clad in a suit, fending off snowflakes with bare freezing fingers. I tried to cheer myself up by singing lustily the chorus of Don Mclean’s American Pie with extra emphasis on “this would be the day that I die!”

And then I start asking for directions, which is not as simple as it appears. For one, the aborigines (whether white, Indian or Jamaican), I find, do not speak the English Language. Their accents are so thick; it is virtually another dialect, nay, language. It sometimes makes more sense to acknowledge the verbal challenges and try to communicate via sign language. Now they, I mean the natives, would politely go through detailed explanations of buses I should take and changes I must make, while I put on my best Nigerian smile. But in the end, I am in no wit wiser.

A few times, when the bus driver appeared African, I wrongly assume that linguistic challenges would easily be resolved if not eliminated. Alas, this clan is mostly of taciturn types, more eloquent in communicating by nods and grunts. I once wondered whether they had signed a pact not to speak in complete sentences in order not to betray their Nigerian accent. As if that is a bad thing…

In the end, I learnt to cope by using the internet to research my route and printing detailed maps. I also avoid travelling at night, when visibility may not be as clear. On the bright side, getting lost has its benefits. It is the perfect alibi for lateness. It makes for humorous jokes when with good company. And if you are a stranger and you really want to know the town, you really should get lost sometime. It is wonderful, the things you find and the people you meet, when you get lost, sometimes.

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He used to blog as Kiibaati, Adeleke can now be found on Twitter @adelekeadesanya.

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Lost in Birmingham was published on March 1st, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , under the adventures, Observations, Travelling category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

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