WHY WE STRUCK

Written under the influence of Falz’s Moral Instruction

Dear You,

This is a rant— incoherent, angry and bitter.

This is a show of pain and solidarity.

This is a memorial.

This is repentance.

This is a Moral instruction

You remember it all, days of staying indoors and waiting out the protest, days of righteous anger and faux intellectual superiority, days of not trending the hashtags. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed already. You are in your twenties, you barely have time to breath let alone do all those wild things they promised you was going to come with your twenties. It’s been one year since Nigeria showed once again, this time leaving no room for any form of doubt that it doesn’t give a hoot about you. One year since people you know, members of your brotherhood of pain and struggle were shot down for singing and waving.

A hundred testimonies later, of mothers who can only be grateful they recovered their children’s bodies, you are not sure any of it was worth it. People becoming handicapped for the rest of their lives, trauma etched into all of us forever some more than the others, pregnant women birthing their babies in the streets, businesses burned down and sacrificed at the altar of brutality, was it worth it? would it be worth it? You can’t decide.

Fuel price tripled, Beans now costs more than gold, government in arms trade with bandits, no matter what happens, you do not want to be tempted. You remind yourself once again that whatever you do, you do not protest against authority in Nigeria. You sit in your father’s house of four rooms, complain with your loved ones, and watch some African Magic and you’d be safe. Or maybe not, you might just be hit by stray bullet while reading Fine Boys and musing about the cultism and gang fights of the nineties and wondering why nothing has really changed for the better. Different generation, different angles, same wahala.

My guy, you look, you die, you speak you die.

Twitter timeline is awash with emotional threads and documentaries to mark the one year anniversary of the Lekki Toll Gate massacre, anxiety is rising high. They are telling you not to forget but how can you sleep if you do not forget, how can you forget if you cannot sleep. You log off for a moment to gather yourself and in that little moment you want to blame someone, curse someone, find someone to ask all the questions you have but there’s no one to blame. And that’s when it hits you, the thing in the song, unknown soldier. It wasn’t marijuana, it was pain. Raw, searing pain. That is when you hear it for the first time, the pain of a man history almost convinced you was mad.

Unknown soldiers, na im do am. Them kill my mama, them kill my mama, them kill my mama…….

The older generation still don’t get it and this surprises you. The Ali-must-go people think this is a fight between yahoo boys and the police. You are sad because they keep questioning why the youths had to be there. They say ‘youths; like something foreign, but ‘youth’ is somebody’s son wey nobody go find again.

Hunger and Anger

Pain and Passion for something intangible

A wanting for something you cannot fully articulate

Corruption

Police Brutality

Inflation

Shitty healthcare

Broken educational system

Everything that doesn’t work that is everything

That’s why they were there. That’s why we struck

There’s a memorial being planned and as usual the oppressors are getting ready, the police is suddenly fully equipped, all of a sudden slaves have clothes to cover their nakedness, you want to be surprised but you honestly and genuinely can’t be because a part of you knows and history has told you that there is no line that can’t be crossed. You’re wondering why anyone would want to leave their house again, you oscillate between a place of nothing has changed to nothing might change to nothing will change or maybe there’s hope.

It’s the middle of that day one year ago, you stay offline for the most part but whenever you reconnect, something is burning, in the street, in you. In the streets, it’s someone, something or someplace. In you, it’s everything you love about this damn shithole burning just as fast as the battery of your deadbeat iphone.

You try to remember once again why we struck. What was it we were so bitter and angry about again? ASUU was on strike, and yet again, ASUU is threatening to go on another strike. You remember the plan was to be a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court at 21. That would have been possible if your civil servant parents had the money for a proper education that doesn’t include aluta and gutter activism. You’d rather an activism that is cute, the kind that looks good on a yellow interfaced website. The activism of branded t-shirts and solid kicks, the activism of Christmas parties and televised charities, nothing too lame, nothing too bloody. But here you are in a school where nothing except dirt cheap tuition and frustration is guaranteed

That’s a why.

Food. Multidimensional poverty. Hyperinflation. Exchange rates. Standard of living. Quality of life. Terms and terminologies. Fancy terms for something far more biting, HUNGER. Hunger that gouges the humanity of the soul. Hunger that creates terrorists out of teenagers, hunger that makes thieves out of fathers. Hunger that is brutal and sad, hunger that defies all economic policies. Hunger that defies reason. Hunger that does not permit any form of reason because the brain actually needs glucose to function. A hungry people is not a thinking people. It is that simple.

Those are the whys.

You hear the CNN found where the weapons Nigerian soldiers used to kill Nigerian citizens came from and you are surprised everyone is surprised. Where else could they have come from? Who gave the kill order is a question we would never find the answer to but a question that has been answered for sure is that it is Nigeria that drinks the blood of the Nigerian.

The facts are clear, there’s no spin to this. Yet, you watch them try and fail.

“Nobody died”

“Okay, we lost two people”

“We didn’t invite the army”

“They invited us”

It is a mess.

Analysts on radio screaming themselves hoarse, commentators calling in and the anger that seeps through the phones line is so raw, so potent, you can almost hold on to it. They’re right about all the issues but no one really has a solution. It all ends with the prayer—may God save us in Nigeria, May God change our leaders for the better. Yet, the problem is not just them. It is us as well, all of us with no exception.

Make you no go anywhere, just wait make I tell you something. Fela you don come again…

Please note, it is not that I blame you for being such a thief, I only say you should spray small perf before you ask who mess.

Why We Struck

Police Brutality you yarn but small traffic they said you should control, you are collecting naira and issuing tags. These are the issues.

Why We Struck

“Rice is now twenty-eight thousand naira, it costs seven thousand naira to bring rice into Nigeria now. Nigerians are always making life difficult for other Nigerians.” Pele o, Stears Business, why don’t you just cross the border and bring it in. You who are into mini importation after all, you must know for sure the act and art of thievery business. You sell luxury don’t you? It all comes in a box. Please remember to divide the rice and put it in a box. Snapchat agrees well with unboxing moments and while we are at it, drop your Instagram handle so that we can tag you. How much is faux D&G slides again? Olosha!

Notice to all G boys and bitcoin scammers out there, faux is not a fancy term for luxury. It simply means fake. Let that sink.

This is Nigeria, everybody be criminal

“Please oooo, some of us really have sense”

Ehen, you do? Student Union election, you were treated to a lunch and you capitulated. Or maybe it wasn’t really about the lunch, you probably had your reasons. Your ‘leader’ told you to vote for them and you did, fool that you are. We understand that some of you are really intellectually disadvantaged through no fault of yours, you inexorably require other people to think for you and decide for you. That we can struggle to understand after all, all fingers are not equal but please don’t go on whatsapp and post, WE DID it. You did nothing but prove your foolishness, Again. Rest Abeg.

“Twitter is not politics, the people that will vote are not here arguing policies.”

So as you have delegated the affairs of your country to old women who can barely tell a broom apart from an umbrella and as you have deferred power to the NURTW so should the rest of us? We know we cannot win against the power of rice and garri and envelopes. We know we cannot win against hastily sunk boreholes and constituency projects but we would like to remind you that we are all losing here. All of us, no exception, You whose “politics is local” and we whose “politics is about non-existent policies”. And please we would just like to put this out there, that the next time resident doctors go on strike and you have to watch helplessly as your loved one waste away, take your grievances to the car park. That long twitter thread you are about to type belongs to the grassroots.

“What are the options?”

2023 is knocking, another probably senile apparently sick old man is in the race and his contender might be the same bastard from 1999. Maybe this time we’d look beyond what is in our noses, maybe we would look beyond these two jokers, three actually, I think that handicapped pastor or is it professor might be in the race too —that one whose hands have been tied for eight years but has refused to write a resignation letter but you really can’t blame him though, how would he sign a letter with his hands tied. These are your options, for now. Do not worry, some charismatic, energetic, motivational speaker or revolutionist would start campaigning in 2022, after the race has been won. That’s another option too, some people are late bloomers.

On Your marks, set, go. The race has started. Well-tailored speeches at convocation ceremonies, fundraisers, strategic disaster management, criticisms and reshuffling of allies and foes. It is almost amusing to watch. We see it, we see right through them yet, we would make the same mistakes all over again. It’s a cycle but at what point does it break? The answer is simple, the cycle breaks when something breaks in us.

(Press next)

After all said and done

I do not have the right to direct the finger of guilt or the look of contempt at my guy

For even I can barely can see through the spec in my eye

I say this to say that we all have a part to play

Nitoto ati shina

Ati gbegbagi

Ati k’olu jamba

Sugbon

Awa yio dide

A o si tesiwaju

Nitoripe

After all said and done we are still the most resilient bunch

If we can redefine love and remember the meaning of humanity

Maybe then we can restore the sanity

If we remember to react

And repeatedly refuse to be content with mediocrity

Only then can we be free!

Whether you wulo and you wubo, anywhere you sit something is going to bite your ass. When my people say you cannot run faster than your destiny, the destiny they were referring to is Nigeria.

Welcome to a worse dispensation.

#twentytentwenty

Amal🍒