The Hard Thing About Hard Things: #1
Thomas Mann — ‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’
This was written over the past two weeks and might read as disjointed, bear with me, I dey battle with P̶O̶S̶T ̶. Current Traumatic Stress Disorder. its a sequel to this.
Tough times never last but tough people do.
In times like this… I like to pay attention and sink my teeth into the cold hard reality that is my life. I am a Nigerian in Nigeria this is my life and I must live in this moment, my moment.
On Wednesday last week, I woke up to the most devastating news I have heard this year. I wasn’t surprised at this news… I was just disoriented. Post-2015 Nigeria has learned this toying with your feelings p. Despite clear and obvious pointers to the reality on the ground, bad news in Nigeria has a way of removing the taste from your mouth. Like a poorly made long island…. You swirl and hold your glass dreading the next bout of force-feeding you must do to remain cool at the party. I, being initiated, took the day like a champ, I wasn’t going to be incompetent after two unproductive workdays. That night on my way back from a run for “spark joy food”. The police stopped my friend and me under a dark bridge on a lonely road, pretending to care about my “documents”. Best believe, I skipped straight to the “how much do you want” conversation. Imagine having to handle the news of The BAT and routine extortion on the same day. …. when it rains it pours.
Its the hope that kills you
For the past two weeks, we have had to bear the antics of the declared winner, while the “apparent” loser has been battling with Nigerian courts and all the shenanigans involved, the whole time … he has been begging his supporters to focus on the courts and pray for justice.
For the record, for those disingenuous enough to be unfortunate, I am questioning the process of the election just conducted. I think if the process of conducting and collating an election is flawed then the results are definitely flawed. I do not care to debate this clear as-day fact with anyone so please, resist the urge to shalaye* in the comments.
Some two years and some months ago, we watched on Instagram live and on social media, what we now know to be the Lekki Toll Gate massacre. Every time I drove past those gates two months ago…. I played the videos of mangled bodies and frantic ill-informed attempts at first aid by protesters who were still being fired upon and witnessed the days of denial and gaslighting by ‘well-meaning” Nigerians. In the following days that passed, I stayed sane by holding a thin and ever-spooling thread of hope springing from rhetorics like “Surely there is a live video and there is no way they can get away with it”, “ the whole world is watching na, they will be brought to justice”. All the while knowing the stark and severe truth. At best there will be some international fallout, at worst there will be some fall guy with a bit of guilt”, … what’s that thing they say about taking success inch by inch. None of this happened for the record, a judicial panel found the sitting Governor of Lagos state responsible for the invitation of the army that began the series of deliberate but unfortunate events. Last week's version was Twitter takes from compatriots and PDP losers screaming “ we told you so”. On the one hand, you have the *selected “winner” screaming for acceptance and endorsement of the results and suing for peace in some faux intertribal war.
The Presidential election was thankfully calm in my polling unit. I got there knowing it will take my whole day and some. I stood under the scorching hot sun (34 degrees) and endured slapping rain. I watched the votes get counted and recorded. I went out knowing there might be violence and probably death, but I went out anyway. I say this because the next paragraph might read as insensitive and dangerous and while I would advocate challenging threats of violence with threats of aggressive self-defense, do not be a hero. If you see guns, cutlasses, or compromised security officials document what you see and run for safety.
After a bit of thinking about the situation and how it makes me feel ….;
Freedom Fighters fight for justice: In the words of the villain of our story, “power isn’t served a la carte”. They know better than we do that the fight for our country and the ideals we want will be long and arduous and are thus prepared. We the more powerful and less motivated do not seem to know this bit of information and are alas unprepared. The fight for good government will indeed be a fight. There will be a winner and some losers and the winner will be the side that wants to see their objective through the most. Gird your loins, We are in for a long asss night.
We are all alone
Nigeria is a going concern and a sovereign nation. It will be unwise to assume that there are people in foreign governments that are paying proper attention to our shenanigans with the will and might to force some form of prosecution. Unfortunately, foreign governments care only care for taxes, and providing barely legal post career retirement homes for corrupt kleptocrats is an industry and there is too much of an upside for the countries with the lever to do anything other than thoughts and prayers.
We are in a marathon, not a sprint: All the well-meaning Nigerians I spoke to about the elections prior seemed aware of the fact that the APC will be engaging in vote buying, open rigging, and voter intimidation, however, we did not anticipate that this version of theft will occur. The referee took a side and ran the most sham elections we have ever seen. We are going to have to embrace lives of stoicism as we endure more of this tomfoolery
The Emperor has no clothes: This election just went on to show that a coordinated and intelligent effort by good-hearted and well-meaning Nigerians can unseat our wicked and evil ruling class. The myth that all power belongs to a tiny set of people and there is nothing that can be done to combat their impunity is clearly false ….because they can see as we can see that fear is common to all men. While the Sanwo’s feverish campaign antics of being everywhere is a precursor to the mother of malpractice we will see tomorrow, its also a pointer to me that they are under some pressure like we are, and this gives me some hope in the fact that we can win if we find out why they are afraid of our numbers and will.
‘If you catch hell Don’t hold it…’
Our opponents are counting on two things, 1. Our perceived belief that nothing can be done once the selected winner gets sworn in and the eventual fatigue we will face in the coming months handling all this information and I believe we can respond in the following ways.
Stay Fervent: Remember the thrill of hope and continue engaging for the truth. We must not let go of the fact that INEC broke all its own laws and facilitated a shoddy election. We must continue speaking loud about it and mentioning it at every chance we get till the truth comes out.
Hold your Choices Accountable: While some form of progress has been made with select legislative seats, we must hold the people we voted to offices under any party to the ideals of their parties, and where their parties are rubbish we must hold them to proper standards.
Use your Influence
This one will be somewhat controversial but I think we can begin to strong-arm the supporters of this evil party by boycotting their work and sources of income. A popular actress came under fire on Twitter, not on the streets with real bullets but on Twitter* for saying XYZ is her choice and I think we can begin to systematically hurt the wallet's, livelihoods and reputations of our enemies of progress. More importantly, our countrymen in power should consider putting pressure on other powerful and foreign bodies to check both wicked politicians and demand policies that work for Nigeria. This can easily be bastardized by the way but what is dead may never die. For example, INEC officials that were late or didn't show up at all in the east showed up after Ngozi Okonjo Iweala tweeted that she was waiting in her village for them.
Hold yourself accountable: We as well-meaning Nigerians must hold ourselves to higher standards if we must sit on our moral high horses to judge the enemies of good in this country. This means we must be good all the time in every way we can. How? By being decent and rejecting the “Nigerian” (more human than Nigerian but let's dunk on Nigeria) way of cutting corners. I was in a Uber sometime ago and after speaking about his electoral choices, he drove oneway*. When it was time to end the trip, I mentioned it to him and said something along the lines of; “Peter Obi will be disappointed in this action” to which he smiled and chuckled nervously. I don't think anyone reserves the right to play moralistic and still do mundane bad things. Its the “little leaven that leavens the whole lump”
Finally, we must trust our principal. Our principal has a track record of following these things till the truth is learned and we must learn to trust his leadership in this too.
“….and if you are going through Hell don’t Stop”
In the midst of all this noise, noise here because the signal we should be focusing on is the unwinding narrative of the belligerents to obtain the true result of the elections. That’s all that truly matters. While you can engage directly with the pockets of data analysts collating and tagging the raw data from polling units across the country and the others collating the uploaded IRev results. What matters is how we can proceed as discreetly as we can to come to our suspected truth. We must remain belligerent as amicably and peacefully as we can to see through the process of unearthing evidence of the truth. The second most important thing to do would be to empower our various parties with righteous and principled people whose moral spine can be located in the upcoming state elections. It’s important that we must chop up the Kraken called APC and isolate the head. If we must make any progress with the institutional ingress we are embarking on, we must continuously weaken the institutions that guarantee the power of the APC. So we must fill state assemblies and Governor’s houses with several political parties.
“You can’t have everything figured out but you can decide who you want to be.”
I was recounting, my thoughts, hopes, and fears to a very dear friend and she said the quote above to me and I find it profound. Regardless of the reality of the difficulty of the situation, we get to choose what we want to make of it. It's quite comforting and a bit exciting to know that we can decide our response albeit a trauma response to the state of affairs.
On this note, I would encourage, beg and cajole you all my fellow Nigerians to lace your ̶f̶i̶g̶h̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ running shoes and come out in droves to vote for credible candidates from the only opposition party, whose name is now synonymous with the number 75. Tell your friends to tell their friends that we are taking back our country and the first step would be by voting for our choice tomorrow. Also, those without PVCs should come out too, to act as support and a buffer for the voting folk. Prepare for the worst but do your duty. Vote, stay, and watch the count and then demand that the results are uploaded.
PS: Agberos and thugs without guns are more likely to run when they see a crowd. The more we are, the safer we will be
- shalaye : pontificate
- not on the streets with real bullets but on Twitter: LP supporters have been attacked by real bullets repeatedly, not insult.
