I was reading in my study this morning when I heard gunshots from Jos city centre. Before I could inquire my phone rang. The good fellow at the other end is my student calling to alert me that the protesters of #ENDSARS were engage in violent combat with other hoodlums on the streets and a combined team of the army and the police were shooting to disperse them. In other words, the protests have become violent. Then I began to examine my thoughts. Have the protesters of ENDSARS resulted to violence as a means to smash the old state machinery? Are the protesters truly a new class seeking fundamental changes in all aspects of Nigerian life? Are the protesters calling for change or mere reforms? Are the protesters hired by the opposition party or some unscrupulous politicians for purposes of vendetta? A thousand questions flowed through my mind to which I had no answers. But the more worrisome to me is the word ‘violence’. The word violence is a cousin to revolution because a revolution entails destroying completely the old structures of a society and building new ones in its place. Of course, this cannot be done without violence. So, Mao Tse Tung was right when he intoned that ‘ politics flows through the barrel of a gun’. Africa’s literary General, Ngugi wa Thiong’O, validates Mao Tse Tung’s claim when he writes that ‘violence, in order to change an intolerable and unjust social order, is not savagery, it purifies man; violence, in order to perpetuate an unjust social system, is evil, it diminishes man’.But again  I asked the question: can we have a revolution in Nigeria? For an answer, we turn again to the words of the father of written African literature, China Achebe. ‘ Nothing in Nigeria’s political history captures her problem of national integration more graphically than the chequered fortune of the word “tribe” in her vocabulary. Tribe has been accepted at one time as a friend, rejected as an enemy at another, and finally smuggled in through the back door as an accomplice. In Nigeria…. there is plenty of work for tribe’. In simple terms it means tribal and ethnic sentiments will not allow the seed of unity to grow in Nigeria. In other words, a revolution is still a mirage in Nigeria. And that is the reason why the oppressor is happy. The moment we are United the oppressor is afraid and begins to shit in his pants as evidenced in the present protests. But when we are divided the oppressor is happy because he knows he can easily control a divided people.Besides, what are the characteristics of a revolution? They include the following: (1) widespread loss of legitimacy by the old political system (2) emergence of a new army or young men (3) fundamental reorganization of the society. Any casual observer would agree that all these three elements are present in the on-going protests across the streets of major cities in the country. Perhaps, the speaker of the House of Representatives heard the wind of a revolution blowing across the country when he addressed the House this morning in the following words:’ we owe this much to the young people who have such high hopes and lofty aspirations for this nation that they are willing to risk their lives, brave the sun and rain, through night and day, to demand that all of us, one nation under God, live up to be better angels of our nature, and be better than what we are now’. Apart from the salute of honor for the protesters the speaker said  he would not sign off  the 2021 budget if it does not include adequate provisions to compensate those who have suffered brutality in the land…. I will not sign off a budget that does not meet the reasonable demands of the ASUU, to which government has already acceded…… The speaker went on and on and on.The obvious implication of all these is that the time has come for the youth of this country to take the initiative, the time has come for us to control state power by determining how we want to be ruled, the time has come for us to choose those who will lead us. We cannot sit back, fold our arms, and watch a clique of old men and women fritter away our God-given resources meant for us and other generations yet to be born. Nigeria has come of age.

count | 21

Doki’s pen: Nigeria has come of age…