Throughout last week, after the full effect of the motorcycle and tricycle ban in Lagos began to tell on the residents, wails of pain and hardship filled all media channels. Workers arrived late to their places of work. Offices and businesses opened later than usual. Cost of transportation had skyrocketed. Yet traffic jam within the city doubled despite the ban.
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As expected, the government blocked its ears to the “muted” complaints because no one was really complaining to them. A couple of people took pain to dig up the phone numbers of some members of the Lagos state executive body and called them up to grill them on the draconian policy. The inquiries and critique by this crop of people were met with hostility and scorn by the state executives.
One brave Lagosian also took it upon herself to call and organize the lone protest protest a result of this ban and scheduled the protest ground for Eko Atlantic City on Saturday, February 8. Interestingly, the Eko Atlantic City ground in Victoria Island was also the terminal point for the sponsored Lagos City Marathon. The protesters would be at least hopeful that the marathon runners, who are mostly Lagosians themselves, will join them on the protest grounds as they marched after their race.
Alas, it was a disappointment. Pictures from the protest showed less than 40 people attended the protest in a city of about 20 million inhabitants.
A quick journey down memory lane shows that Nigerians hardly want to feature in protests nowadays. In the last 25 years, the only mass protest which the majority of a 180 million rich Nigerian population participated in was the #OccupyNaija protest in January 2012. Before then, there were only just pockets of mass protests in Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan and a few other cities to show resistance to Gen. Sani Abacha’s junta and policies in the mid 90s. That was all.
And the question pops: Can Nigerians depend on mass protests as a reliable form of dissent in present day Nigeria? Mass protests still do work mostly miraculously in many Western nations such as the United States, Britain, France and so on. Mass Protests have also helped topple many sit-tight leaders in Africa in the last 10 years. But, why not Nigeria?
A simple answer could be that the ordinary Nigerian is fighting for himself/herself and is not bothered by the pains of the next Nigerian. That, as long as a Nigerian can survive a hardship, s/he seeks alternatives and moves on.
This is why the government keeps chasing Nigerian people into walls everyday and in sufferance; the people keep drilling holes in the walls to make more space for them. This is why the country has seemingly remained stagnant for donkey years.
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Feelers from the so-called Center of Excellence in Lagos State, as early as Monday morning revealed that people were back on their normal grind. It seemed that everyone had moved on and continued on the path of sufferance afterall. One man’s gumption had won over that of a million other Lagos residents.
If all of us in the country are scared of facing armored tanks, canisters of teargas and live bullets fired by the Police to disperse protesters, why can’t we be innovative enough to seek other channels to route our disgruntlement as a people? What happened to social media trends? What happened to people banding together to lobby and bombard executives, public servants and politicians with calls, emails and texts? What happened to unions calling for industrial strike action? What happened to press conferences threatening to recall our legislatures if they don’t make moves to impeach governors or presidents?
Until We The People learn how not to organize protests in Nigeria, and instead deploy the more workable options available, we would keep being satisfied with status quo and the bare minimum while we are still suffering and smiling.
Featured Image Source: Pulse NG
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