alt. mondays 029
It's just been a week since men uniformed in camo overalls of the Nigerian Army, opened fire on peaceful protesters at Lekki Toll Gate, Lagos. In a recent article by Dr. Richard A. Joseph for the Council on Foreign Relations, the professor emeritus at North Western university, and former lecturer at the University of Ibadan, inquires if the Lekki Toll-Gate massacre would change Nigeria forever.
Back in 1996, Dr. Joseph coined the term "prebendalism" as a framework for analysing the nature of Nigerian political leadership. Prebendalism proposes a way to look at Nigerian corruption as a consequence of public office holders "feeling” entitled to state resources and using it for self-enrichment of their families, friends and ethnic kin. As an analytical framework that became popular after many former colonies gained independence, prebendalism, explores ways young nations with weak social institutions can assimilate the tendency for elected officials to be nepotistic with formal institutions that legitimise the leadership of the day.
Following the events of the 2020 #EndSARS protests, Dr. Joseph who has always been a vocal critic of Nigeria's multiparty system, suggests that against the risk of a violent revolution borne of nation-wide dissatisfaction with public officials, Nigeria needs a national non-partisan government. The goal of this government according to Dr. Joseph would be to train and distill "the values and practices in institutions of legitimate and effective governance". He also proposes “A multi-year campaign—similar to the anti-colonial, anti-apartheid, and anti-racism movements—to mobilise organisations across Nigeria, and its diaspora, to identify ways to transform destructive behaviours; and the deliberate nurturing of institutions of capacity and integrity in state and society.”
It sounds a bit like a dictatorship if you ask me, but perhaps within the context of the decentralised organisation and mobilisation of the 2020 #EndSARS protests, an egalitarian political class united towards common national goals is feasible. As new dimensions of the #EndSARS protests start to emerge in the long-road to Nigeria's 2023 elections, we must determine where the deaths of the innocent protesters puts us mentally as individuals, and socio-politically as Nigerians.
In the light of the on-going passing of blame between the Nigerian Army and the Lagos State Government, on the events of Lekki Toll Gate massacre, I must admit, a playlist is not nearly enough to earmark last week's tragedy. But let this selection at least be reassurance for the languid and anxious that we will never forget. And that until real structural changes overhaul Nigeria's political landscape, the deaths at the Lekki Toll Gate massacre will be the stuff of haunts for our oppressors.
Stream alt. mondays 029 via Apple Music and Spotify below:
