In January 1966, a group of men around my age decided to take action to wrestle Nigeria away from the oppressive grip of an adversarial political establishment. When the story is told nowadays, it is often omitted that Adewale Ademoyega, Kaduna Nzeogwu and their co-travellers had genuine reasons to be disgruntled.
The political establishment was dominated by Ahmadu Bello, who was the closest thing that post-independence Nigeria had to Nasir El-Rufai – a blatant, unhidden, unapologetic ethno-religious bigot with a catalogue of outrageous comments and racist sentiments credibly credited to him. Bello was a grandson of Uthman Dan Fodio, and he made no secret of the fact that he was fighting an extension of Dan Fodio’s Jihad using politics as a tool of warfare.
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To the idealistic Young Turks, Bello and all that he represented within Nigeria’s system were to be eradicated if Nigeria were to fulfil its potential. Just kill all the bad guys and Nigeria would be fine. It was so simple!
Once again, a group of youngsters filled with idealism and burning with white hot hubris may be on the cusp of a violent takeover of Nigeria’s public space. If that happens, we should already know how the story will turn out and what to expect
The Lord Of The Flies
Whoever has read the masterful piece of political satire by William Golding published in 1954 will immediately see the parallel between the events described in the book and the story of Nigeria from 1966 to date. They share the same initial feeling of euphoria and absolute possibility mixed with raging idealism and a newly discovered sense of agency.
They also share the same tragic twist as the euphoria turns into a Malthusian hellscape of bullying, abuse, dictatorship and eventually death. In the case of Ademoyega and his contemporaries, this twist took only 6 months to arrive, with the July 1966 counter-coup leading to Nzeogwu’s brutal execution and the horrific pogroms that precipitated the 3-year Nigerian civil war.
The unintended consequence of trying to use youthful actions to dramatically upend a political system overnight was that it replaced said political system with something much worse. In the book, the boys decided that following the instructions of the adults was needless, since there were no adults on the Island. In Nigeria, the boys of ’66 decided to solve their problems using guns since there was no British colonialist to stop them from doing so.
In the book, the boys thus exchanged a system of perceived adult domination for a dictatorship led by one of them – which turned out to be much worse. In Nigeria, the “boys” got rid of Ahmadu Bello, but then ended up with Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha. Both groups of boys solved one problem by creating a much worse one.
This is a constant recurring factor within youth-led movements – the triumph of hubris and idealism over strategy, pragmatism and common sense.
#EndSARS is not quite 1966 but…
For the record, I am not only in full support of the End SARS protests, but I also played a role in setting them off in the first place with my review of the Police Act 2020 which became the fuel that met the spark of the Delta incident viral video. In addition, I also spent my own money to purchase a flight ticket to Abuja where I joined the protests and received an eyeful of teargas and a backside full of angry police horsewhips.
Both the SARS unit and the wider Nigeria Police Force are horrendously dysfunctional and unfit-for-purpose, no arguments there. The problem however, is that once again the unmistakable smells of boyish hubris and hopeless ignorance have made their presence. If the protests have not already eaten themselves by the time you read this, it is almost certain that they will spiral out of control into a hellscape that nobody can control or stop.
What happens at that point? A violent campaign of street justice against errant police officers? A total breakdown of the remaining semblance of rule of law? A military coup? Who knows? The only thing we know for a fact is that uncontrolled and unregulated explosions of testosterone-driven activities always end in floods of tears and blood. However, let it not be said that I hold any sympathy for the system as it currently exists.
In the event that the Young Turks of 2020 end up becoming the latest in Nigeria’s long running Lord Of The Flies reenactment after violently evicting the existing order, one cannot honestly say that the order does not deserve it, from the murderous foot soldiers like James Nwafor right up to President Buhari himself, who has repeatedly been a beneficiary of murderous actions starting from 1966.
Once again, a group of youngsters filled with idealism and burning with white hot hubris may be on the cusp of a violent takeover of Nigeria’s public space. If that happens, we should already know how the story will turn out and what to expect. We should also know that if nothing else is certain, this will definitely happen again.
In Nigeria there is always a next time.
