Once more in our time, there appears to be an ongoing tussle between online politics and the real politics where online politics tries to curbs the excesses of grassroots politics or motivates it. Ever since the social media and hate speech bills were introduced in the National Assembly, politicians and power brokers in the Nigerian space are finally realizing that they could altogether lose their highly coveted influence in directing the affairs of the nation if online politics is not curbed once and for all.
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Perhaps, there must have even been widespread alarm in the political circles when an individual shared a long thread of contacts – including the emails and phone numbers – of the 109 senators currently serving in the upper chambers of the National Assembly. There were soon testimonies by those who claim to have sent their constituency representatives a piece of their mind on all the controversial bills being currently considered in the Senate.
To cap it all, details of how serving senators can be sacked from the National Assembly also got shared around by persons in the Nigerian online community. The power to recall erring legislators which some citizens do not know they have has been further highlighted.
The long-sought citizen education which the political class seem to have always been hiding away from the people is all now laid bare.
In a separate but related development, President Buhari, after the APC’s National Working Committee (NWC) meeting on Saturday, told the media tactfully that he does not intend to run for a third term in office – as long as the constitution is against such moves.
But the theory by some analysts stipulates that Buhari’s utterance is pregnant with meaning. It is believed that the Hate Speech Bill and the Social Media Bills are designed to choke the media and silence criticism prior to the Senate making moves to gift the president the constitutional right to run for a third term.
Nigerians are seldom angry. They can, however, bounce fast between the extremes of being politically docile or revolutionary. The huge turnout of the famous June 12 elections comes to mind. Even more recently, the OccupyNaija protests in 2012, which shut down the country for two weeks, was one other time Nigerians expressed their anger at a policy/government which they have come to resent.
The citing of Nigerians anger is coming at a wake of some unconfirmed reports of the intention of the president to perpetuate himself in office. If this is true and such plans fall through, the dream by some politicians to contest for the presidency come 2023 would be jeopardised already.
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As events unfolded over the weekend, it became apparent also that a lawyer from Ebonyi state by the name of Charles Enya, who was also the organising secretary of Buhari Campaign Organisation during the 2019 elections, filed a suit questioning the constitutional standing preventing Buhari from running again in 2023.
All the pieces of the puzzle are finally aligning to point at a grand scheme which Nigerians can only suspect but do not fully understand yet.
Be that as it may, out-playing the ulterior schemes of politicians is important for Nigerians to have their way and their say. OccuppyNaija II or not, this season of resisting any unfavourable designs by the political cabal might be the only chance Nigerians could get at stopping ‘feudal lords’ from taking over and controlling our collective future.
Source:
Twitter.com/VillageParrot
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