Tweeting is not Enough”: Opposition Voices Are Failing Nigerians —By Chima Christian

The piece you are reading is a response to an X post by a respected scholar who berated Nigerians for being a “conquered” people. His original post reads; “Like play like play, Nigerians who stood against N140 per litre at Ojota years back are now paying N1000 a litre after hours on the queue under same people that led the protest. Amazing. What a con.quered people.”

To which I replied;

Prof, your post is not a mockery on “imaginary” Nigerians, it is a telling judgement on the character of all of us, especially the opposition figures, opposition platforms and opposition voices (including mine, and undoubtedly yours) Sir.

It feels good when supposed good governance advocates attempt to create a distinction between themselves and “Nigerians.” The sad news is that such distinctions do not apply.

We may like to think ourselves different, but we are all Nigerians (conquered or not).

If we are ever going to tell ourselves the bitter truth, it is not imaginary Nigerians that were “conquered”, it is all of us, especially the opposition that has willfully chosen the path of impotence.

I wonder what we expect ordinary Nigerians to do without providing that badly-needed opposition leadership. The protests in many American Universities today may look spontaneous but there is a very cohesive funding and support strategy behind them. And same is true of many such movements.

We, the opposition voices (myself included) should be ashamed of ourselves. The people who “stood against N140 per litre at Ojota years back” were not all spontaneous protesters. Of course, some of them may not know that their consent was manufactured, and their will was manipulated. We all know that there was a serious organisation and funding behind that protest.

With or without the best of intentions, there were opposition platforms of those days. They did their jobs and imposed their will on the Nigerian state despite not being in government. Let me emphasise “with or without the best of intentions.”

We should ask ourselves; “where are the opposition platforms of today?” “Where are the Obidients?” “Where are Peter Obi’s supporters?” Where is “Peter Obi?”

If anyone pretends that Tinubu’s tentacles were not all over the Ojota protests you referenced, then the person is either not looking deeply or not truthful. The question to ask is; “where are the citizen-led resistance activities that has “our” tentacles over it?”

Or we expect APC to be in government and play the role of opposition at the same time?

By not organising in ways that will substantially impose our will on this admittedly rogue Nigerian state actors, we have become irresponsible and we are failing Nigerians. We might have become “conquered” ourselves.

We all know that the kind of men and women that kidnapped Nigeria will not yield to tweets, occasionally newspaper articles, granting press releases and few TV appearances. We know the real cost of opposing them. We are not prepared to make those sacrifices, so we make ourselves feel good by doing the bare minimum and then turn around to falsely claim moral superiority over the other “Nigerians.”

No, if it is true that Nigerians have been conquered, that will include the Chidi Odinkalus of this world, the Chima Christians, the David Hundeyins, and yes the Peter Obis of this world. We are all the “conquered” Nigerians. That we talk about bad governance doesn’t grant us any admission into the ecclesiastical order of unconquered Nigerians.

What we now have are a bunch of Davids running around tweeting, granting press releases and interviews about how badly Goliath is behaving. No, David hasn’t done his job if the only thing he does is to say how bad Goliath is. I know that there are costs, but there is no alternative. We must get into the battlefield, reach for our stones, aim properly, project it with all our might, and then reach for Goliath’s sword with which we will decapitate him.

Goliaths only stop when their heads are separated from their shoulders. They do not bow to tweets, TV appearances and occasional press releases. We know this from history. We also know this from the events of the last 9 years. Or to put it into the present context, we know this from the events of the past eleven and half months.

Prof, we are all failing. The Davids, sorry the many sensible elites of Nigeria are failing. The opposition elites are failing, and that includes us. No, that is ACTUALLY us. We are failing!

But it’s not too late to get out of our lethargy and reach for our slings.

Africa’s morning is at hand.

*Chima Christian*