Well Now, Zanga Zanga  

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

This week may either see the biggest anti-government protests in Nigeria since #EndSARS in 2020 or, if the combined efforts of government, security agencies, clerics, party chieftains, elders and traditional rulers succeed, it could be a no show.

You know what it reminds me of? The blurb on the back of James Hadley Chase’s 1967 novel Well Now, My Pretty. It said something like, “Take a casino, with a few million dollars in it, very ripe for robbery. Add Serge Maisky, a man with big ideas for all that money. Stir in four of the roughest, toughest, meanest crooks in the United States. Sprinkle liberally with live ammunition and very dead corpses and you have Well Now, My Pretty.”

Take a country, with immense wealth circulating within a narrow elite circle. Add more than 100 million desperately poor citizens living below the poverty line, including a million bandits, cattle rustlers, armed robbers, pipeline vandals and Yahoo boys with big  ideas for striking it rich. Stir in several million hoodlums spoiling for action to loot richly stocked super markets. Sprinkle liberally with trigger-happy policemen and truckloads of tear gas and you have Well now, Zanga Zanga.

It has been a long time since I heard a phrase uttered so many times in public discourse in Nigeria that I felt like vomiting. Sure there had been several such occasions in the past but in the last three weeks or so, the Hausa phrase Zanga Zanga [which means protest, demonstration or even riot] has dominated discourse all over Northern Nigeria, on the social media, in mosques and churches, in schools, roadside chat forums and in homes. Two, bitterly opposing sides contributed to the elevation of the phrase Zanga Zanga: those who are planning it or support it, and those who are working to thwart it or at least oppose it. The divisions of opinion are part political, partly to do with one’s job, partly generational and partly to do with socio-economic standing, whether one’s head is still above water or whether one is down and out and doesn’t mind seeing things go up in flames.  

It all has to do with the dire socio-economic situation in the country, particularly the phenomenal increase since last year of transport fares, food prices and the cost of almost everything else. Producers of every other good and service almost daily adjust their prices in order to meet their own needs. It has led to the worst inflationary spiral probably since 1974, when General Yakubu Gowon paid the Udoji salary award, backdated it to the day he inaugurated the public service wage review panel chaired by Chief Jerome Udoji, and paid the hefty arrears which even old man Udoji did not recommend.

It is a different ball game this time. After many months of acrimonious negotiations and two rounds of general strikes with a possible third one looming, President Bola Tinubu sent a bill to the National Assembly to increase the national minimum wage from 30,000 to 70,000 naira a month. Workers don’t get to chop the new wage overnight; the president must sign the bill into law, then the Federal Government must issue a circular containing “consequential adjustments” for other grades of civil servants, then the Federal Treasury must “cash back” the vouchers, after which, if IPPIS still works, workers can get the pay.

That is at the Federal level. No one is as yet sure what will happen at the state and local government levels, with state governors huffing and puffing that they will not be able to pay the new wage. If state and local governments can’t pay, imagine what will happen in the Organized Private Sector, not to mention the small and medium scale enterprises, which make up the bulk of the economy. Senate President Godswill Akpabio further fouled the waters last week when he said even housemaids, domestic drivers and other servants must be paid the new wage. With which money? This could lead to the loss of millions of small jobs.

Most Nigerians will attribute this situation to two key policy steps of the Tinubu Administration, namely removal of the costly fuel subsidy regime and Central Bank’s floating of the naira. Truth is that government is still paying backhand petrol subsidy in hundreds of billions of naira under some guises while the naira is not really free floating because CBN still does some underhand intervention. Still, the effect of both policies on the citizenry has been immediate and calamitous. Add to that insecurity, which has impeded farming activities in many parts of the country, impeded travel for commercial activities and sent tens of thousands of otherwise productive citizens to IDP camps where they rely on food aid from state agencies and donors.

Beginning on Wednesday, some mostly anonymous groups have announced plans to hold ten days of protest rallies variously called  “#EndBadGovernance2024, “Days of Rage” and “Tinubu Must Go” all over the country. While a few of the groups have surfaced and even applied to the police for protection, most of the protest “organisers” have remained anonymous. Why should that be so when, as the government itself stated, the constitution guarantees citizens’ right to protest? Government can give with one hand and take away with another. Police Inspector General Kayode Egbetokun’s statement that protest rallies are allowed however contained some veiled threats. He said he had credible information that foreign mercenaries were involved in the plans. Protest organisers, he said, should submit their names and contact details, assembly points, protest routes and “measures to prevent hijacking by criminal elements.” He took away with the left hand what he gave with the right hand.   

Protest organisers, too, made near impossible demands. One of the funniest was the letter to FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, in which the protesters asked to use our iconic Eagles Square, told Wike to ensure that there is enough electricity, water and sanitation at the venue, and that he should remove the wire cage around the square because they intend to march to Presidential Villa a kilometer or two away. In Washington, DC protesters often gather at the iconic National Mall but here, it is unthinkable to cede Eagle Square to protesters. Minister Wike also responded, saying they only applied on the social media and didn’t pay the necessary fees in case of damage to facilities.  

Federal Government’s near-panic response to the planned protests has been a combination of persuasion and threats. Meetings were held with state governors, ministers, party chieftains, clerics and traditional rulers, among others, to thwart the protests. In the North, it was actually the effort of Muslim clerics to discourage the protests that popularised the phrase Zanga Zanga, much more effectively than the protest organisers could ever do. On the same Friday, several hundred Imams mounted the rostrum and spoke against protests; some even said it is Haram [as in, Boko Haram]. Their synchronized timing was bad because many young citizens said on the social media that the clerics were hired. Overnight, prominent clerics became the butt of jokes. Security agencies also held meetings and announced strategies to counter the protests.

Ok, there is this Hausa saying that even though the rat is known to be a thief, the local seasoning called daudawa is also at fault because it has a thick aroma. The government’s response to the protests is understandable to some of us because I have for long known that we Nigerians, and citizens of the Third World generally, do not know how to protest peacefully. Where others hold placards and, if necessary, throw tomatoes and raw eggs at leaders, here we easily resort to throwing sticks, stones, broken bottles and iron rods. Almost every announced “peaceful protest” ends up in violence. Why because, we have millions of hoodlums in our cities and towns who are waiting for an opportunity to invade and loot supermarkets and shops.

I had my personal experience with leading peaceful protests. In 1980 when Zimbabwe was transitioning from minority White settler to majority rule, as President of the Students Union at the then University of Sokoto, I led a rally of thousands of students from four tertiary institutions to protest the handling of the transition by the British colonial governor, Lord Soames. In those days, Nigerian students were not only highly patriotic and pan-Africanist but fervently internationalist as well. I marched at the head of the demonstration to the Government House. Governor Shehu Kangiwa came out, addressed us and collected from me a protest letter to deliver to the British High Commissioner in Lagos. As we began walking back to our campus, policemen suddenly surrounded and arrested me. I was taken to state police headquarters and accused of leading a violent demonstration. It turned out that as we were marching ahead, hoodlums hijacked the back of the demonstration and attacked vehicles and shops. Imagine, it was about Zimbabwe, not any local issue!

 A few months later, there was an altercation at the Bakolori Dam in old Sokoto State where mobile policemen shot dead many protesting farmers. Students immediately gathered to stage a protest. This time I was reluctant to lead it, since the issue was local and very hot. Police warned me to restrict the rally to our campuses, but it still spilled out, cars were attacked and I was again apprehended. In 2020 AD when I overheard some young women hurrying off to join the EndSARS protest and repeating all the while that it was a peaceful protest, I chuckled and said myself, “That was precisely what I told myself 40 years ago.” The way EndSARS protest ended, with accusations and counter-accusations over what happened or did not happen at Lekki toll gate, did not surprise me in the least.

Government officials recently posted a video on WhatsApp, showing the looting and destruction that accompanied the recent protests in Kenya and warned Nigerians that the same could happen here. When I saw it, I thought, “Chei! This piece of propaganda will backfire!” In truth, we have lots of hoodlums in our cities who are eagerly waiting for the protest to begin in order to loot and destroy. Who said they will be dissuaded by what happened in Kenya? They are eager to reenact it here!

If this protest starts on Wednesday and even if the President makes some concessions, who can call it off? Remember, the 2012 Occupy Nigeria protest rode on the back of a general strike launched by labour leaders, with one agenda only, to reverse the removal of fuel subsidy. It ended after President Jonathan brought back petrol subsidy and NLC called off the strike. This time, who is there to call it off?