Following the recent Enbadgovernanceprotest staged across various states of the federation, a Political Thinker and Founding National Secretary of Alliance for Democracy (AD), Professor, Udenta O. Udenta has reacted to the myriad of challenges bedeviling the country.
In a statement tagged; THE END-HUNGER PROTESTS, STATE OF THE NATION AND HON. DOGARA’S DESCENT TO THE INFERNAL REGIONS, issued on Wednesday August 14, the renowned scholar who addressed three significant issues of national concern ranging from the End-Hunger Protests, the overall State of the Nation, and Hon Yakubu Dogara’s inexplicable descent into the Infernal Regions via his hate speech decried that such utterances by the former Speaker, are capable of stirring violence in a section of the country.
While reacting to the hunger protest, the University Don who said hunger stalks the land like the proverbial wounded lion, nasty, unrelenting and unrepentant, emphasized that the End Hunger Protests is a child of compelling historical circumstances, a dialectical response to the excruciating material condition of not just the masses but virtually all societal strata with the exception of the 10%.
The statement reads in parts; “Unless hunger is mitigated, poverty reduced, prices of staple food items crashed significantly, inflationary pressures lowered, Naira depreciation reversed and the prices of petroleum products made within the reach of the people the nation should expect more hunger protests in the nearest future, higher in intensity and range than the just concluded ones.
As Karl Marx so powerfully put it, a time will come when the working people will have nothing to lose but their chains. Such a time is now upon us in Nigeria.
President Bola Tinubu’s national broadest may not have met the expectations of large segments of society but give him credit for admitting that the people are hurting and he hears their cry, loud and clear.
But so long as they continue to cry with no end in sight expect social instability, mass mobilization, regime demonization and national fault lines tearing apart rapidly, no matter the forces that are deployed to contain them. As the saying goes, he or she who is already on the ground indeed fears no fall”.
Professor Udenta stressed that so long as the protesters are peaceful, civil and lawful, such a demonstration is a constitutionally prescribed civic right designed to provide guardrails for the protection of democratic governance, and in furtherance of human liberties.
He maintained that well organized protests enrich the constitutional order by empowering civic spaces and helping to strengthen and consolidate popular democracy under persistent attacks by illiberal – authoritarian statecraft.
“No amount, and I repeat, no amount of pressure, persecution and prosecution by the state and its security, intelligence and defence apparatuses can constrain or eliminate mass protests so long as their purposes are genuine, pro-people and progressive in nature and orientation, and so long as such actions are peaceful and civil.
In the same vein organizers of mass protests must respect the very constitution they seek to honour and disavow violence and the presence of anarchists and anti-democratic elements within their ranks because as lousy as Western liberal democracy has become in Africa with the immensity of its shabby record, it must still be protected from assault by reactionary forces that want to plunge society to moments of unremitting angst with no end in sight.
Speaking on what he described as the ‘well publicized Igbo abstention from the end hunger protests’, Udenta said; Why was this so? Search for answers within the disruptive nuances of Igbo exceptionalism in Nigeria’s political geography; not the exceptionalist mindset incubated by their prodigious entrepreneurial spirit and acumen but a notion of a people set apart as a consequence of the Biafra experience.
Defeated in war, structurally disadvantaged and excluded from the commanding heights of the nation’s institutional designs the Igbo, particularly, the elite have been caught between the rock and a hard place.
Historical romanticization of the dawning of a neo-Biafran eldorado has gripped the imagination of millions of its youth and Diaspora communities, and with Nnamdi Kanu still inexplicably rotting away in detention while bigger threats to the survival of the nation state freely roam the land the regrettable contemporary Igbo attitude is – To hell with all this.
On the State of the station, the prolific Professor averred that the current challenges plaquing the nation including but not limited to the parlous state of the economy, the pervasive hunger and multidimensional poverty stalking millions and the overall state of national anxiety stemming from the inability of the Bola Tinubu-led administration to manage the Political State.
He stated that It’s pretty obvious to any discerning eye that the president is running Nigeria from the edges of the Political State and that the most pronounced political pathology of the moment is the Absent Centre in the Nation’s Political Ontology- the lack of elite consensus and through that the construction of overarching national consensus.
“Bola Tinubu’s power base appears more narrow now than it was over a year ago when a confluence of forces produced a tenuous coalition that was adequate in securing him a controversial and highly contested victory.
The administration thinks that it can by-pass and sidestep the political elite and ground its vision of national progress through the intensification of policy options, strategies and prescriptions. This was clearly demonstrated in President Tinubu’s policy-laden national broadcast on the end hunger protests.
This is nevertheless a demonstrable fatal Political misjudgment given that unless and until he moves to the Political Centre as Obasanjo did in 1999 and Yar’adua and Jonathan did in 2007 and 2011 respectively by reaching amity with the political elite and leveraging on their deep anchorage on dominant civic, cultural and corporate forces his policy formulations and prescriptions will keep behaving like water being poured onto a stone- it is easily washed off.
The regime’s problems are further compounded by a baffling contradiction- how to secure mass support through the application of anti- people neoliberal capitalist economic projects in the specific circumstance in which he is suspicious of the political elite and is intent on keeping them at arm’s length.
If he makes peace with the elite he can at least enlist their support in the apparent war his policies have temporarily declared on the people. But by rejecting them he has unwittingly driven substantial portions of the civic universe into the arms of his bitter political opponents.
Anybody who tells President Tinubu that he can continue to govern as he is presently doing doesn’t mean well to him and the long suffering Nigerian people.
Meanwhile, in what appears to be a stern reaction to comments made by the Former Speaker of the lower chambers at the 9th Assembly, Yakubu Dogara, the Professor said rather than speak in temperate tones some politicians are busy sowing seeds of division, fear and anger with their base and insufferably loutish words
“Let me close this statement with a note of warning to the political class to watch their language even in this unbecoming moment of extreme political tribalism and hyper-partisanship. Words have meaning and they carry immense weight. The nation is fragile and people are hurting.
Rather than speak in temperate tones some politicians are busy sowing seeds of division, fear and anger with their base and insufferably loutish words. I am referring to Hon Dogara who cheapened his humanity and demeaned the high office he once held with his uncouth language directed at Gov Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state and the Chairman of PDP Governors’ Forum.
There are other Dogara’s still lurking in the shadows and intent on unleashing words full of putrescence. Such beings walk the path of perdition, of self ruin, and sooner than later will suffer political self-immolation.
Gov Bala Mohammed is more than capable of rebutting Hon Dogara and already the media is awash with a massive push back on the former Speaker’s descent into the Infernal Regions given that barely a year ago he vehemently pilloried Bola Tinubu for his Muslim-Muslim joint ticket he called unspeakable names but is now a Presidential Cheerleader.” He added.
