By Sunny Awhefeada
Part of the staple that formed and conditioned the consciousness of my generation was the monstrosity of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Before apartheid got dismantled in 1994, young people of my generation were active psychological participants in the events that led to the defeat of that inhumanly racist phenomenon. Our history books, literary texts, newspapers, films and other media brought apartheid and anti-apartheid engagements to us so regularly to the extent that the events, the names of persons involved and the places where such things took place were at our finger tips and we could recall and recount with embellishments what happened to whom, where, how and when? Many gory incidents transpired while apartheid lasted. May be, the most dastardly were the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the Soweto killings of 1976. While the story of Nelson Mandela’s ordeal and triumph stands in a class of its own, the incidents at Sharpeville and Soweto point to the propensity of acute inhumanity that characterized apartheid. While Sharpeville happened before my generation trod mother earth, Soweto happened in our childhood and its echoes haunted the world and provoked our imagination as well as our solidarity with the blacks in South Africa. That consciousness strengthened our resolve in those heady days when we, as students, took to the trenches to rout military dictatorship in Nigeria which we configured to be an aberration and variant of the apartheid regime.
The Soweto riots climaxed with the killing of one hundred and seventy-six school children who were protesting against the imposition of what they considered the language of the oppressor as a medium of instruction in schools. The rabid apartheid police armed with bayonets and guns rolled out tanks and shot at innocent and defenceless school children. An iconic photo taken by Sam Nzima portrayed the tragedy of that inhuman act. It is the photo of Hector Pieterson one of the children shot by the South African police being carried to the hospital by Mbuyisa Makhubo with the victim’s sister, Antoinette Sithole walking behind. Hector was declared dead on arrival at the hospital. Many Nigerians still hear echoes of Sonny Okosun’s “Fire in Soweto” which became a solidarity song. The Soweto shootings inspired it. Stories, poems, plays and films provided ventilation for that tragedy as the human mind sought to come to terms with the ugly bestiality of apartheid. The musical drama Sarafina starring Mariam Makeba, Leleti Khumalo, Mbogeni Ngema, John Kani and Whoopi Goldberg reenacted the savagery of how the South African state became the assailants of its citizens. While all of apartheid’s bestiality was playing out in South Africa we thumped our chests that such can never happen in Nigeria. Even when military dictators like Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha trudged the landscape with riffles in hand and nearly worsted the citizenry we did boast that apartheid of the Soweto manifestation will forever be alien to Nigeria.
The events of the past four years in Nigeria seem to contradict our long held thinking that Soweto could not happen here. Soweto seems to be here with us on all fours. In October 2020 when we were coming to terms with the ravages of COVID-19 and our young people could no longer bear thievery, extortion and brutality by the Nigeria Police, they protested in what has come to be known as ENDSARS protests. The Nigerian state turned its guns on youths who held the Nigerian flag, our symbol of nationhood, and mowed them down. That was Soweto! In August this year, driven to their limits by unbearable hunger and crushing poverty young Nigerians saw their country drifting as a result of bad governance and thought they could stop the drift. A series of demonstration intended to last for ten days took place and instead of government looking at the root cause of the upheavals, the patriotic demonstrators were repelled with force strengthened by state violence. The incidents leading to the protests aptly called ENDBADGOVERNANCE protests are traceable to the acute poverty crisis occasioned by fuel subsidy removal. While many Nigerians felt that subsidy should go, the government has so far demonstrated monumental incompetence in its handling of the post-subsidy removal economy. The many factors that should have cushioned the crushing effects of subsidy removal have not been addressed more than one year after. Electricity is at its lowest with the national grid collapsing, in some instances, every other week. Our roads have virtually packed up nationwide. Agriculture is imperiled as insecurity has sent farmers scampering. The exchange rate is atrocious and inflation has exceeded galloping speed! The simple explanation for the present ordeal lies in inept leadership.
In the course of the hunger protests in August the security agents embarked on a show of force that resulted in casualties among whom were school children that were arrested and locked up for three months. It was a crying shame that these children were last week arraigned in the court of law and charged with treason and terrorism. And what was the evidence against the minors? The inebriated lawyer and comprador security goons told a bemused nation that the children held Russian flags and called for a military coup. Images of gaunt and hungry looking children confronted our conscienceless nation. Four of them fainted as a result of hunger and while citizens got enraged, one slave of a lawyer enthused that the accused were adults, graduates and had wives. His colleagues laughed behind him in derision and pity that he could be so conscienceless. A judge who apparently was not a Daniel sent the minors back to prison with stringent bail conditions. Thankfully, but no thanks, President Bola Tinubu ordered the release of the children with immediate effect. A senior government official who announced the president’s order referred to the accused as children. Where then is that unscrupulous “eye-service” lawyer who insisted that the minors were adults? What happened to the protesters of August culminating in the dehumanization and arraignment of children was Soweto.
The Nigerian scenario is frightening. There is despondency across the land. Bleakness pervades everywhere one turns. The level of poverty is alarming and we need a new categorization beyond being the poverty capital of the world. We must have also crashed beyond the sphere of multi-dimensional poverty. Nigeria is fast becoming homeland to “the wretched of the earth”. Nigerians are long suffering and can adapt to the harshest of conditions. But for how long can that be? The government seems not to be getting anything right. As we are buffeted by insecurity, acute hunger and deprivation, we are being told that the years of the locust will last for fifteen years. Yet, despite the lean times, the field of the rich and politically powerful remains lush with bounteous harvest. The rich and politically powerful spend American dollars in Nigeria, but they are averse at children playing with Russian flags. The rich and powerful have everything and they get whatever they want. Only the people are locked down in lack and want. The state has unleashed hardship on the people. The Soweto phenomenon is here! But we must confront it and evolve a new era founded on equity in socio-economic and political terms. The Soweto phenomenon must be confronted and dismantled.
