By: Chuks .Chinyere(jj)
Did I hear you say, “This is an exaggeration, Sowore is nothing close to a Martyr”? Well don’t blame me, blame the Federal Government and the Department of State Services for setting the hyber-ball rolling by raping the Rule of Law that begat the democracy we once enjoyed—a beaten and bruised democracy we can no longer recognise.
If I love Nigerians for anything, it’s our ability to identify the root of our every problem and continually tackle it. Everything wrong in Nigeria, from the price of rice to the increased scorch of the Lagos sun, from the increased slope in autocratic wife-beating to the number of lazy yahoo boys, is the singular fault of the President. One man, many, every fault.
When the top is bad and “impunitious”, when the President displays a flagrant disregard for court orders and the rule of law that made his office worth occupying, decadence trickles down to the bottom from the top, thereby making the apex the root of the problem. But, you know, the bottom had nothing to do with installing the top, the bottom did not sell four years’ worth of governance for two thousand naira, the bottom did not buy lies and sell the truth, the bottom had no hand in their own predicament.
See eh, as bad as the situation is, something no dey bad finish. There’s always a good side to flagrant abuse of power and the almost sexual abuse of the rule of law. Look at it this way; during our endless online squabbles with South African Twitter, our brothers have never at any point in time boasted of having a man like Nelson Mandela, a renowned freedom fighter and human rights activist. We should count ourselves lucky for this. It’s not every day a country is able to boast of a man who is ready to die for his people, a man who has put his life on the line and won freedom for his people. There’s only a handful of countries, from time, that could boast of someone like Nelson Mandela. At the moment, Nigeria does not have a match for him. Sooner or later, South Africans will begin to taunt us for this, and this is why our President and his team of forward-thinkers have gone ahead to make a Mandela of our own. With the help of gangsterism as Femi Falana put it, with the aid of dictatorial muscle flexing and enablement of one institution to abuse another as my father put, our dear Buhari-led administration is making a Martyr out of ‘Yele Sowore, and we should all be happy and great-fool for this. Finally, there will be something to brag about!
Who is Omoyele Sowore?
As of 1989, at age 18, Sowore was amongst the Great Nigerian Students who came out to make sure the number of Nigerian Universities was not chopped down from 28 to 5, all in a bid to meet the ludicrous requirements for a $120 million IMF loan for oil pipeline projects.
It was said that Sowore was unlawfully arrested and tortured on several occasions in connection to the June 12, 1993, elections, his role in the clamour for a democratic government and his undying love and activism for Nigeria.
In 2015, Sowore was instrumental in installing Muhammadu Buhari as President, joining hands with many other Nigerians to remove an incumbent from office for the first time in Nigerian history — a surgery that has proven to be both a blessing and a curse.
2019, Sowore decides to replace the man he helped install and ran for President. He promised to help us make more money from Marijuana than we have ever made from exporting crude oil and boys were excited … but Sowore failed at the polls, only to allow a failure to continue failing. Now? Sowore has taken another route, not necessarily in a ploy to unseat a sitting President but to demand a sitting President stand up to the job of serving the people.
Obviously Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t not appreciate such wanton disrespect and ludicrous demands. As my Dad would say, “It’s your job to understand me and not my job to please you”, typical African Parenting style, and this is the same vibe our “father of the nation” President Muhammadu Buhari is giving us. We have to understand that our President of high impeccable integrity loathes a number of things. We must then learn and understand these things so that we can do away with them.
First on the list is Court Orders and the overall supremacy of the Rule of Law. Let’s put ourselves in President Buhari’s shoes, just one time. How would you feel if you were asked to take orders from someone younger than you and whose monthly salaries come from your pocket… just because they wear a white wig and a black gown, just because they get to strike their table with a hammer that cannot drive an office pin into a shoe sole after making ludicrous assertions and demands. You sef check am, e make sense?
It’s not like the money being used to pay these judges belongs to the President o, but he’s the President and the number one man in the country, so the money should belong to him, yeah? Since he’s the one paying for their feeding and everything, what right do they have to tell him what to do? Especially when it bothers on releasing his enemies, men like Dasuki and Sowore who apparently deserve to rot in jail for.
If the Rule of Law was so supreme, it should protect itself from being Soworaped. Imagine telling a renowned rapist with a very fat sex offender record about how wrong it is to have canal knowledge of an underaged child. “Women have the right to wear what they want, it doesn’t mean you must abuse them.” None of those words makes sense to a rapist. “I have power and they don’t, and so I have the right to have my way anyway I feel like.”
Public protests for political and social change can also get on our President’s nerve, another crime Sowore is guilty of.
In 2015, the APC promised to give Nigeria “change” although they didn’t specify exactly what type of change they were giving, and they presented Muhammadu Buhari as the mascot and bringer of this change. Nigerians accepted. I cannot say Nigerians are pleased with this change Buhari and the APC have brought them, but it doesn’t matter. This relationship is for better and for worse. Things take time before they really get better, after a long period of time undergoing distortion. You cannot have this APC in government and begin clamouring for a new change barely eight years into the change they are offering. You have to finish the plate of food before ordering for more, whether you like the taste or not. Courtesy demands this from us.
We have to wait for at least sixteen years to be sure we don’t like Buhari’s type of change. Yes, sixteen years! We can change the constitution to make sure President Buhari effects the type of change he has in store for Nigeria. We can’t allow mans like ‘Yele begin to clamour for some yeye social and political change so soon, this is why he has to spend some years in DSS’ beer parlour to cool off. What nonsense.
A few others include a free press, freedom of expression, and the collective power of the people. If that social media bill had been passed now, at least this Sowore noise on Twitter wouldn’t have been so loud to overshadow the waves Wizkid’s new EP was making. What a loss to our economy!
“My People perish because of lack of knowledge”. If we learn the important things and abide by the rules and regulations of this Buhari administration, we won’t be having these kinds of problems that warrant Judges to take cover in their courtrooms that have become war zones or situations where Femi Falana and the DSS have to play fast and furious, abi na police and thief we wan call am?
Umu Nigeria, Freedom is not free, the press can’t be allowed to report freely because their owners are either enemies of the government or potential enemies, people like Sowore and co. The people do not deserve a collective power because they don’t know what they want. If you don’t know that N30,000 is more than enough to sustain a family of six for over a month, how then do you know what is good for you? If you don’t know that we have rice in Kano, what right do you have to make a collective demand from the government? If you don’t know that N30 can give you a square meal anywhere in Nigeria, what right do you have to demand that the government who you have voted in serve you or relate to you the demands they have made to the Benin Republic Government that warranted the closure of the Seme Border?
If you disagree with me on how we should live life under this Buhari regime, you have a number of options. You could come out and protest with sticks and stones — at the risk of getting Soworaped of course. You could sit in one corner of your bed, close to that socket, tweeting away on the hashtags that Jack made for you. At least you have power and fuel plus data is not that expensive for you; you have made it in life. Or you could just gba kamu and keep enjoying the endless dividends of a Soworaped Democracy, Udo!
You can follow the author, Chuks, on Twitter @chukschinyere47.
