Rescue Nigeria supports thoughtful, peaceful protests, but prefers informed citizens who fight for good governance

Throughout history, protests have been the driving force behind some of the most powerful social movements that expose injustice and abuse, promote accountability, and inspire people in their hope for a better future. Protests have played a vital role in ensuring people’s plights are acknowledged by those in power. From the Salt March against British colonial rule in India in 1930, the1960 Sharpeville anti-apartheid protests in South Africa, the protests against the annulment of the June 12 election in Nigeria, to the Black Lives Matter protests in recent years, people power has been making a difference.

The right to protest is derived from universally accepted norms and a constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, the right to life, freedom of association, and the right to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as from torture and other ill-treatment or punishment – when exercised responsibly.

The Initiative for Good and Informed Citizenship, also known as Rescue Nigeria, welcomes the #EndBadGovernance protests as a way for Nigerians, who are crushed by policy decisions on the economy, to raise their voices. It is a healthy reaction that raises the sophistication of our democracy and ensures that public policy is guided by the yearnings of the ruled. It is an invaluable way to speak truth to power. Protests have a role in defending and deepening our democracy. Such protests help to advance much-needed economic and political reforms and hold the government accountable. People have a right to protest peacefully, and states have a duty to respect, facilitate, and protect this right.

The right to protest also comes with responsibilities on the part of the protester, as well as the government. The protester’s right to peaceful assembly does not guarantee the right to loot, steal, cause arson, or engage in other acts that disturb public peace. The right to protest does not grant the ability to disrupt others who choose not to protest. The right is not higher than the right to life and property or the right to go about one’s way without being molested.

The government or its security forces should not aim to stop protests unless there is a legitimate threat to the safety and the rights of others. If law enforcement tries to stop or limit a protest, that intervention must be necessary and proportionate, not aimed at denying the right to protest but rather at maintaining public safety.

It is the responsibility of the government to take steps that will not inflame protests but open proper channels to communicate with protesters and provide them with services that allow them to exercise their civic rights, such as traffic management and access to first-aid services. Working with protesters ensures that law enforcement does not escalate peaceful protests into dangerous and violent scenes.

Unfortunately, some of the #EndBadGovernance protests have gone awry. In Kano, Abuja, Lagos, Kaduna and some other parts of the country, the protesters have chosen violence instead of articulating the reasons for their action peacefully, while some others are even waving Russian flags on our soil! The actions of looters, arsonists and violent protesters are condemnable in the strongest terms.

Violent protesters hurt themselves the most. In the words of the American civil and labour activist, Cesar Chavez: “We are convinced that non-violence is more powerful than violence. We are convinced that non-violence supports you if you have a just and moral cause…If you use violence, you have to sell part of yourself for that violence. Then you are no longer a master of your own struggle.” This truth underscores the need for peaceful conduct when airing our displeasure publicly. And we are sad that those who said it is impossible to have peaceful protests in Nigeria are being proved right.

The Initiative for Good and Informed Citizenship urges all Nigerians to recognize protests as a tool of democracy but also to accept that this right comes with an obligation to respect the rights of others and maintain peaceful co-existence.

Destroying public buildings and other property in the name of exercising rights is barbaric and unacceptable. Protests against the government do not always have to be accompanied by the destruction of state property or degenerate into chaos. It is wrong to view the government as an “enemy” and link state property to the government. Destroying public assets is senseless because it impoverishes us further through restoration spending. Wanton destruction or theft of public or private property during a protest should have no place in our democracy and should be condemned by all well-meaning citizens.

Rescue Nigeria calls on all Nigerians to collectively set a high bar for citizenship. We cannot allow the bad eggs to turn our nation and the democracy that was hard-won from the military through decades of struggle to be resold to mayhem artists who either have no stake or have little imagination about how to solve problems in a complex political system like Nigeria.

The problems that we face cannot be solved through protests alone. It will require a mix of activities, the most important of which will be good and informed citizenship. One Nigerian writer observed that since 1984, Nigeria has had more than 50,000 leaders, including eight presidents, more than 250 governors, 1,000 ministers, 4,000 legislators, 7,000 state lawmakers, 10,000 local government chairmen, 4,000 Directors-General, and 20,000 special advisers and personal assistants. We should ask who has been manufacturing these bad leaders but ourselves.

Leadership is produced, under our constitution, by citizens. When the citizenship is enriched, leadership is vibrant. It will be up to those in the committee of common men to decide the direction the nation should head. Citizens will have to act responsibly, participate more vigorously, and act decisively in the political process. The expectation that a nation where voters collect money openly from politicians will produce good leadership is misplaced. The citizens have to take their own blame, work diligently to vote the right people to represent them, and monitor the elected closely to ensure the job is done as required.

Raising an army of good citizens who work and demand for good leadership has been the raison d’être for Rescue Nigeria. All of us need to become watchers and monitors of government. We must get out of our comfort zones and social media walls and step into the political space, watching our elected officials and their appointees day and night. We must attend local council meetings, energize local communities with activism, and ensure that we monitor how allocation from the national purse is being spent at all levels of government.

Our focus on the Federal Government as the centerpoint of good governance must remain but should be widened to the state and local governments across the nation, which also receive funds from the federation account and even unleash more wastage and corruption than what we see at the federal level, at times. We cannot allow our 36 governors and 774 local government chairmen go free and unmonitored. We must hold all political office holders at every level of government in Nigeria accountable without exception. Bad governance should not be tolerated anywhere. If we reject bad leaders at the community level, we are unlikely to have them grow at higher levels of government.

The time has also come for Nigerians to reject divisive, ethnic, tribal, and sectional sentiments on issues that affect national well-being. If politicians are using these tricks to divide and conquer, should the people continue to act stupidly? Nigerians must be smart. We are one people with a common destiny who need to live together in peace and face the future with a common purpose.

The Nigeria that we want is ours to create. It starts by electing good leaders and continues by monitoring elected leaders constantly, not giving them any opportunity to provide bad leadership – we have had too much of that. This Nigeria we envision is a work that has no end. It requires citizens that are perpetually engaged, participating, watching, monitoring, and creating a great Nigeria that works for all.

There will always be times when protesting is a good option, but if Nigerians do not understand their civic obligations, we will continue an endless and periodic release of emotions and anger through protests while failing to build a strong structure that can lead to political, social, and economic transformation that Nigeria really needs.

Biodun Durojaiye and Tunde Odediran

For: Rescue Nigeria (an organ of the Initiative for Good and Informed Citizenship)