In recent weeks, mass protests have broken out in countries from Lebanon to Spain to Chile. All are different - with distinct causes, methods and goals - but there are some common themes that connect them.

While thousands of miles apart, protests have begun for similar reasons in several countries, and some have taken inspiration from each other on how to organise and advance their goals.

Here's a look at the issues at stake - and what binds many of those taking to the streets.

Inequality

Many of those protesting are people who have long felt shut out of the wealth of their country. In several cases, a rise in prices for key services has proved the final straw.

Demonstrations began in Ecuador this month when the government announced that it was scrapping decades-old fuel subsidies as part of public spending cuts agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The change led to a sharp rise in petrol prices, which many said they could not afford. Indigenous groups feared that the measure would result in increased costs for public transport and food, and that their rural communities would be hardest hit.

Protesters blocked highways, stormed parliament and clashed with security forces as they demanded an end to austerity and the return of fuel subsidies. The government backed down after days of mass protests and the action came to an end.

A hike in transport prices has also sparked protests in Chile. The government blamed higher energy costs and a weaker currency for its decision to increase bus and metro fares, but protesters said it was just the latest measure to squeeze the poor.

As demonstrators clashed with security forces on Friday evening, President Sebastián Piñera was pictured dining in an upmarket Italian restaurant - a sign, some said, of the chasm between Chile's political elite and the people on the streets.

Chile is one of Latin America's wealthiest countries but also one of its most unequal - it has the worst levels of income equality among the 36 member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Like in Ecuador, the government backtracked and suspended its fare hike in an effort to quell the protests. But the protests continued, growing to take in wider grievances.

"This is not a simple protest over the rise of metro fares, this is an outpouring for years of oppression that have hit mainly the poorest," one student taking part in the action told the Reuters news agency.

Lebanon has seen similar unrest, with plans to tax WhatsApp calls prompting wider protests about economic problems, inequality and corruption

With debt levels soaring, the government has been trying to implement economic reforms to secure a major aid package from international donors. But many ordinary people say they are suffering under the country's economic policies and that government mismanagement is to blame for their troubles.

"We are not here over the WhatsApp, we are here over everything: over fuel, food, bread, over everything," said Abdullah, a protester in Beirut.

Corruption

Claims of government corruption are at the heart of several of the protests, and are closely linked to the issue of inequality.

In Lebanon, protesters argue that while they are suffering under an economic crisis, the country's leaders have been using their positions of power to enrich themselves, through kickbacks and favourable deals.

"I've seen a lot of things here but I have never seen such a corrupt government in Lebanon," said 50-year-old protester Rabab.

The government on Monday approved a package of reforms, including slashing politicians' salaries, in an effort to quell the unrest.

People in Iraq have also been calling for the end of a political system that they say has failed them. One of the main points of contention there is the way government appointments are made on the basis of sectarian or ethnic quotas, instead of on merit.

Demonstrators argue that this has allowed leaders to abuse public funds to reward themselves and their followers, with very little benefit to most citizens.

Protests against alleged government corruption have also taken place in Egypt. The rare demonstrations in September were prompted by a call from Mohamed Ali, an Egyptian businessman living in self-imposed exile in Spain, who accused President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the military of corruption.

His allegations that Mr Sisi and his government have been mishandling funds resonated with many Egyptians who have grown increasingly disaffected by austerity measures.

Political freedom

In some countries, protesters are angered by political systems in which they feel trapped.

Demonstrations in Hong Kong began this summer over a bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China in certain circumstances. Hong Kong is part of China but its people enjoy special freedoms and there is a deep sense of fear that Beijing wants to exert greater control.

Like fellow protesters in Chile and Lebanon, the mass action in Hong Kong led to the withdrawal of the controversial legislation, but the protests themselves continued. Among their demands, protesters now want complete universal suffrage, an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality and amnesty for demonstrators who have been arrested.

Their tactics have inspired political activists halfway across the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied in Barcelona to express anger over the jailing of Catalan separatist leaders. The separatists were convicted on 14 October of sedition over their role in a 2017 referendum outlawed by the Spanish courts and a subsequent declaration of independence.

Shortly after the sentence was given, people in Barcelona received a message on a popular encrypted messaging service telling them to go to Barcelona's El Prat airport, mimicking a tactic used by Hong Kong protesters.

As they made their way to the airport, a group of youths shouted: "We're going to do a Hong Kong", according to local media reports.

Catalan protesters have also been distributing infographics made in Hong Kong that detail how demonstrators can protect themselves from police water cannon and tear gas. "Now people must be in the streets, all revolts start there, look at Hong Kong," one protester in Barcelona told AFP news agency.

Climate change

Of course, many of the protests that you hear about will have been linked to the environment and climate change. Activists from the Extinction Rebellion movement have been protesting in cities around the world, as they demand urgent action from governments.

The protests have taken place in countries including the US, UK, Germany, Spain, Austria, France and New Zealand. Participants have glued and chained themselves to roads and vehicles, and tried to disrupt busy city centres.

"We have no choice but to rebel until our government declares a climate and ecological emergency and takes the action that is required to save us," said Australian activist Jane Morton.

Young people around the world have also been joining weekly school strikes, inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Millions last month joined a global climate strike led by schoolchildren, from handfuls of demonstrators on Pacific islands to mass rallies in cities like Melbourne, Mumbai, Berlin and New York.

"We are skipping our lessons to teach you one," one sign read.

BBC

President Muhammadu Buhari built his brand on three myths: self-discipline, fiscal discipline, and military discipline. These myths became the national millstone when fate dealt Nigeria a diseased hand during the night of December 31, 1983 and ushered in Buhari into the presidency until August 1985. His quicksand morality has been an ever-present conundrum.

From his first coming till the present time, Buhari has variously talked down on Nigerians about their indiscipline. When it comes to understanding Nigeria’s issues, Buhari’s mind can neither accept nuances nor complexities beyond the nostrum of discipline. He believes if he could intravenously inject us with a dose of discipline, the country will magically straighten itself out. From his War Against Indiscipline days to the present day when Nigerians are serially blamed for their troubles, his mindset has not changed.

The only purpose his unwavering belief in the gospel of discipline has served is the legitimation of abuse of Nigerians.

But ruses have a way of outing themselves. The recent public exchange by his family members shows that Buhari, the chief disciplinarian, leads a household that lacks discipline. So far, it is 2019’s biggest paradox. When Aso Rock’s events of the past two weeks are summed, they tally into a spectacular wonder: the man who has spent the better part of his life barracking Nigerians over discipline somehow overlooked his own nuclear and extended family!

First was the mischief of his social media-created marriage to another wife. Second, the sitting first lady, Aisha Buhari, seemingly responding to the threat of displacement, hastily returned to Nigeria from a trip she did not announce she was taking. Third, the twist in the Aso Rock meltdown – Fatima, the daughter of Buhari’s nephew, Mr Mamman Daura, crowned herself the public conscience. In quick order, the charade fell apart and Aso Rock under Nigeria’s Caesar was revealed to be an unruly seat of indiscipline. The family that rivals the resident jesters of Aso Rock is the Fuji House of Commotion.

Aisha Buhari’s interviews to respond to the dust that unsettled while she was away, again, became a means of corralling public sentiment in her favour. The way the woman talks about her family issues in public makes you wonder if she and her husband even have a relationship at all. This time, her salvos were so baffling you wonder if Buhari is in charge of his household. Or, he just sits somewhere, picks his teeth while his women beat each other and make video recordings of themselves while at it? Then, Fatima. From the entitled way that one talked, you would think Aso Rock is her father’s agboole (compound) and she deserves a space there at all costs.

After listening to all the sides, you ask if there are elders in the President’s family who can enjoin the warring parties to stop disgracing themselves and Nigeria. If Buhari is too old, too weak, or too laid-back to discipline his family, there should at least be some respected people in his family who should have enough perspicacity to see that all of the nonsense soils the President’s reputation.

If such elders exist in Aso Rock or Daura, they should step in and intervene on Buhari’s behalf – if he is too busy with national affairs. They should save him from the shame of his family and save all of us from the distraction of a first family acting out a season of Big Brother Naija. They should be encouraged to classiness. They are the President’s family, not the Kardashians. They should stop acting out in public like a savage troupe.

After your disgust with the family squabbles settles, then other things dawn on you. Wait, you say, did Aisha Buhari just say in that interview that the President’s grandchild was born in Spain? Did she just talk about crisscrossing the world from the UK to Saudi Arabia for medical and religious pilgrimages? Oh, wait again, did Mrs Buhari just thank her husband for appointing six aides to her “office” to manage her affairs while she was away? You listen to all this, and you question how it came to be that the President who asks the country to sacrifice their tastes for foreign goods had his grandchild born in Europe.

Was this not the President who once shrugged and said “tough luck” to those who could not get forex to school abroad? How come he is not living by what he preaches? Whatever happened to the National Hospital in Abuja that could not accommodate his grandchild? To force Nigerians to consume locally made products, Buhari’s government has shut down land borders. Expectedly, the prices of essential goods have gone up while there is no concomitant increase in their income level. Consequently, things are tough for people more than ever before but of course, such hardship is the vision of a “disciplined” citizenry Buhari imagines will propel Nigeria to a greater height. Yet, in his private life, he and his family live lavishly.

Amidst all of the disciplining of people going on, the President and his immediate family are junketing the world on our dime while his extended family mooches off on the Villa’s resources? So, is Buhari’s policies actually about disciplining people into better behaviour or just an expression of sadism? If it were truly about discipline, it would, and should, start within his household. Think about it, the same government that says they will have to sack workers before they can pay the proposed minimum wage appointed six aides for the President’s unelected wife? What was even more baffling is how these revelations flew out of their mouths without a sense of self-awareness. Fatima Daura’s moan about Mrs. Buhari makes you wonder if she is not the quintessence of the lazy Nigerian youth that wants everything free; the type Buhari himself bemoaned the other time. Before Buhari became President, was she sleeping on the streets?

Finally, I know Nigerians joked a lot about the President’s impending wedding to his Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Ms Saddiya Farouk, but the punchline seems to have flown over our heads. The rumour circulated partly because of Aisha Buhari’s absence from public view. When she returned and was asked about it, her answer gave away a lot. Although the wedding itself never happened, but as the Yoruba say, it is in the moments of frivolity that we come to a realisation of the truth. Here is an angle to the purported wedding we should all consider: suppose Buhari intended to marry that woman, what stops him? This is not about religious or cultural propriety of his taking another wife, but democratic ethics.

Within the short period that the President set up a new ministry and appointed a woman as the head, rumours sprang that he would also marry her. If he had gone ahead and done it, he would have set up horrible precedent on the use and abuse of power for personal ends. But then, when you ponder it, you see that this is a President who has already carried nepotism to a level most of us could not have imagined a mere five years ago. If he decides to go further and repurpose part of his kitchen cabinet into use for “Za oza room,” what could have stopped him? Which agency of government today has the autonomy or the administrative boldness to confront him on such impropriety? They will all quiver under his majesty and find excuses for him like they are wont to do. The only place the noise will come from will be social media, and even that will eventually fizzle out after some news cycles. So, yes, Buhari could have done it and got away with it.

Rwanda does not hide the fact that she is a coquette. From the moment you land at the Rwanda International Airport, Kigali, the irresistible mermaid which Rwanda lets loose on you, begins to openly seduce you, making salacious passes and daring you to resist her bewitching beauty. She does not pretend that she is seeking to take away your innocence. Without forewarning you, Kigali caresses your skin like an adulterous woman seeking a liaison, as if telling you to your face that her tender touch on your skin is a favour from her. In her eyes, you could see a voluptuous little lady, sure of her beauty and asking you, even without a word, to come have a bite of her irresistible beauty. Ah, Kigali is beautiful!

Her hilly and serpentine topography is one of your points of silent wonderment. Kigali and indeed the whole of Rwanda, is a city/country of hills, mountains, forests and lakes. She masterfully turned her disadvantaged valleys and hills into an aesthetic advantage. Peopled by about eight million inhabitants, this is the herd Rwanda squeezes into her meager 26,338 square kilometers geography. On its face value, with its fertile and rich land and climate that makes you think you are in Europe, Kigali appears like a contented bride just waiting for the groom to take her home and together, begin a journey into an enduring matrimony.  

I am in Kigali as I write this and I am a lawful captive of the Angel. In my soliloquy on the enchanting wonderment of Kigali, I muttered that her mother should have named Kigali, Temptation. Her neatness is what at first arrests you. How could a woman be without blemish like Kigali? Her lawns are well paved; her automobiles queue in an orderly file and devoid of miasma of smoke that trails her colleagues in Lagos. On Kigali people’s faces is a happiness that makes you wonder if there was an aviation conspiracy to land you on a continent outside of the Africa that you proposed to travel. There are no potholes on Kigali roads, no intermittent encroachments of vulcanizers, booli sellers sitting by their smoky iron gauzes by the roadsides, nor makeshift kiosks flirting road sidewalks without a care in the world.

The Kigali greenery is something else. Trees are planted on the median and the roads are swept religiously, with sidewalks built into every road. My cabby puts an icing on the enchanting Kigali cake thus, “You drink and drive here and you are caught by the police, you pay 300,000 Rwandan Francs; you drive without license, you pay 25,000 Francs. If you are caught offering bribe, you go to jail,” he said in his barely communicating drawl. Later drives through Amahoro National Stadium, Kandt House Museum, Rwanda Parliament and the Nyarutama elite District confirmed the ravishing beauty of Kigali. Even inside the market, you couldn’t find the ubiquitous pure water sachets that are the synonyms of such markets in Nigeria and you are forced to ask whether the dirt of Kigali are on recess like Baal, the god of the Sidonians?

Kigali seems to be saying that she is little United States. Apart from giant companies that litter her bosom like Deloitte, Radison Blu and many others, Kigali also has what it calls Twin Towers and a magnificent dome-shaped Convention Centre. She does not, however, take her security for granted. As you enter any of her public places, you are frisked and searched for weapons, drugs or bombs. Kigali Airport’s security consciousness is about the most intense I have seen. It is almost a rule that you should be at the airport almost two hours to your flight. Right from the entrance, a rigorous sniff of your totality is engaged in by Kigali. Your car, up to its bonnet, is searched and you are made to deposit your luggage which is sniffed by dogs.

It however didn’t take long to discover that Kigali was the quintessence of what the Yoruba call f’aworaja. I cast a deep gaze at her, looking beyond her enchanting beauty and found a hidden pall of shadow cast over her adroit face. The pall of sorrow tears her life apart, constituting a bitter nightmare that frightens her whenever she relives the dreadful moment. Kigali was faking joy and happiness; she was a desirable woman whose beauty was a façade that covers her pains and groans. She advertises comfort without but inwardly, Kigali weeps and wails daily. It doesn’t take long for a liaison she had seduced by her beauty like me to find out that the woman I had fallen for her gazelle-like beauty was indeed an unhappy woman who had been serially raped, brutally assaulted and thrown by the roadside by a band of anarchists who were the suitors she gave her love and heart.

A visit to the Gisozi District of Kigali, to the Museum of Genocide, also called the Memorial Centre, which recently celebrated 25 years of pain, reveals all these. The Rwandan genocide, known to the rest of the world as the Genocide Against the Tutsi, you will recall, was a masterminded mass slaughter of the Tutsi, Twa as well as moderate Hutu tribes in Rwanda. Historians however said that similar genocide was carried out in 1959, shortly after the death of King Rudahigwa where thousands of Tutsi were killed. Between 1959 and 1972, over 700,000 Tutsi were said to have been exiled from Rwanda.

This latest genocide seared the carapace-bony conscience of the world between April 7 and July 15, 1994. It was equally known as the Rwandan Civil War. It was started by a campaign of hate where one Hassan Ngeze, in January, 1994 was quoted as saying, “We… say to the Inyenzi (cockroaches) that if they lift up their heads again, it will no longer be necessary to go fight the enemy in the bush. We will… start by eliminating the internal enemy… They will disappear.” The core Hutu political elite, who were occupiers of top governmental positions, openly called for the slaughter. One Ferdinand Nahimana, Director of a Radio Television called Libre des Mille Colines, was alleged to have used the radio, in connivance with members of government, to propagate hate against the Tutsi while Hassan Ngeze, editor of Kangura, was accused of using his newspaper for same purpose. My cabby confirmed historical narratives which claim that the genocide had been on the drawing board for at least a year before its final implementation. The assassination of Rwandan president, Mr Juvenal Habyarimana, a Major General, on April 6, 1994 is held to be the tinder that eventually set Rwanda ablaze.

Habyarimana was Rwanda’s second President and till date, the longest-serving in her history. From his taking over the reins of office in 1973, Habyarimana, nicknamed Kinyarwanda, meaning the Invincible One, was only dethroned by death in 1994. He was a renowned dictator who impoverished the Central African country and foisted a totalitarian regime on the country, reputedly scoring 99.97% and 99.98% of votes cast in the December 19, 1983, and December 19, 1988 elections respectively. Habyarimana was returning to Rwanda on April 6, 1994, in the company of President of neighbouring Burundi, Mr Cyprien Ntaryamira, when his plane was shot at near Kigali and, paradoxically, crashed into his own compound on its descent into the airport. He was alleged to have trained 1,700 Interahamwe, militias. The following day of his assassination, soldiers and police took over the streets and dreaded Hutu militias began to execute Tutsi military and political leaders. Victims of the massacre were machetted to death and pointedly gunned down in villages across Rwanda, mostly by their Hutu neighbours and fellow villagers. The horrendous killings reverberated round the nooks and crannies of the globe. Bodies littered the streets and dogs ate the flesh of their owners, with many families totally wiped out. At the end of the day, it was estimated that there were at least 300,000 orphans and over 85,000 children who instantly became heads of their households.

“An estimated 1,000,000 people were massacred within the period of 100 days,” the young lady at the Museum tells me last Friday evening, hoisting her remarkable beauty as mask on a national pain. The killings translated into 10,000 each day, 400 each hour and seven each minute. “About 250 bones were eventually exhumed from all over Rwanda, moved to this museum and given mass burial.” After this eerie prologue at the Reception of the museum, I was shown a short video of the massacre containing tear-jerking recounts by children and relatives of the victims.

“When I think about it, it is like a bad dream… I go after visiting them and leave them there,” another young man who helplessly battled recalcitrant rheum and tears amid a shaky voice, began. “I was ten (years of age) then when it happened and after it, I can (could) no longer be a child.”

Another young man who had a pair of glasses on initially began confidently like a matador who had conquered the singeing agony of the memory. “I was 16 (years of age) and lived with my parents. My younger sister was eight and used to play with our neighbours…” he said. He couldn’t finish the sentence. A rain of tears burst out from the orifice of his eyes. He was forced to remove the glasses and dab the broken cistern of raindrops that welled uncontrollably down the ridges of his nostrils. When he eventually recommenced the unfinished sentences of his narratives, he told the story of how he was the lone survivor, all of his siblings and parents killed by their Hutu neighbours, persons they had known to be friends of decades.

The unprecedented scale of the genocide and the untrammeled brutality that laced the massacre caused shock waves worldwide. Horrendous footages that polluted the taste-buds of world leaders who saw bloated bodies in their hundreds on their television screens probably pushed them to act, but it was rather late. My cabby, still in his passable English, delivered in a drawly Tutsi accent, said that Western nations like Belgium, France, who had earlier colonized Rwanda, as well as the United States, initially ignored the alarm that the genocide provoked in its wake. By the time the world was woken from its slumber and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) came on board to salvage the human ruins, about 70% of the Tutsi population was recorded to have been savagely sent to their Maker. Between 250,000 and half a million women were reportedly raped in a sexual violence unprecedented in history visited on Tutsi women, many of them being inflicted the sexual violence as a dessert to their eventual horrendous massacre. An estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women were said to have been raped during the genocide.

The Museum is an architectural masterpiece, buried deep down the valley of a mountainous cliff that the whole country, Rwanda is. Looking at the museum, it epitomizes burial. The light inside the museum is very dim, evoking a solemn ambience. You would suppose that the dead were right by your side. Inside the bowel of this valley are buried these 250,000 bones. The architects of the museum must have used the dark colour painting and even rug as an indication of the mourning of Rwanda. As you move from one section of the museum to the other, even if you are as unfeeling as to be capable of crushingly masticate the ugly head of a tortoise – as the Yoruba say – you would shed tears. A dark, Ethiopian-looking lady who pensively stared at one of the photographs containing decomposing hundreds of bodies hung on a wall who I met in the museum, could not restrict tears welling down her nostrils. For all you care, she might have her parents buried deep down inside the mausoleum.

According to one of the photographs which had heaps of bloated bodies stacked over one another, these particular victims had been massacred at a Gismba Orphanage. Another picture, according to the wordings beside it, contained the remains of an estimated 10,000 people murdered in a stadium where they had hidden for refuge. Bloodthirsty militias were said to have descended down the hills, killed them in their hundreds and later engaged in an orgy of baptizing one another with the blood of their victims. In an Nyanbuye, Kibungo church, convent and school, about 20,000 were said to have been massacred there, while at Ntarama, Bugesera, the elderly who fled into the church were killed by grenades were estimated to be in thousands. Many mass graves are said to remain undiscovered till today. At Amadini Church, heaps of decomposing bodies of those who hid in the church, hoping to get refuge, also assail the eyes. At St. Famille, Kigali, hundreds of fearful people crowded the church. Fr. Wenheslas pretended as if he was going to offer them protection. However, he openly collaborated with Hutu who massacred them. On the reverse was the case of Fr. Celestin Hakizimana who attempted to save many. At the end of the day, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was established which at the end of the day convicted 81 and acquitted one of them.

But, why did man reveal this bestial nature in him? The Hutu had a ten commandment, patterned – in the strictness of its observance – to the Ten Commandment of Moses. Published in 1990, it was full of hate, blood and death. One of the commandments is that, all Hutu must know that the Tutsi woman, wherever she may be, is serving the Tutsi. Any Hutu who “acquires a Tutsi wife, mistress, secretary or as a dependent” is a traitor who must be killed.

Inside one of the sections of the Museum are coffin-like encasements wherein bones of the victims were preserved. They were bones of children and apparently male and female of several sizes. At the skull section, you would see that many of the skulls bore cracks, indicative of their having been machetted to death. Skulls, femurs and other bones of the body were arranged in compartments. Clothes of the victims were also hung on walls as memorabilia. You had female wrappers, trousers, different pairs of shoes, belts, pants and track suits hung as painful reminders of how death stalked the land. Mothers watched their children killed, fathers did and children watched their parents massacred in their very before.

At the children section, a 10-year old Nteziryago, said “I ran like some sort of animal. I had to eat the twigs from the trees. I saw the corpses of my relatives on the hills. Sometimes, I would stumble upon someone who had been hit by a machete but who was still breathing.” Uwayijenga, a seven-year old has this as testimony: “A militiaman came up to kill me. I was astonished because he was a friend. He used to come to our house every day. He farmed my father’s fields and he received salary. My mother gave him food. We used to play with him and he was like a bother to us, even though we were not from the same family. I asked him why he wanted to kill me when I had done nothing to hurt him. I begged him to take pity on me. He said nothing but just hit me on the head with a machete. He had bits of woods in his hand which he stuck into my face. When he thought I was dead, I left.” Another, Rose, also ten-year old, said “Whenever I am in the market, in the midst of a large crowd, I always think I may find my brothers.” Beside the murdered children’s photographs was affixed: “Wasted Lives,” translated to read Abantu, Ibavukijwe and Ubuzima. A lady whose parents and brothers were killed, on whether he would forgive the killers, said: “I cannot forgive; forgiveness comes from God, I am not God. My children and grandchildren will at least have a better life (than) me whose life has been destroyed.”

As I walked out of the museum, head bowed and crestfallen at man’s inhumanity to man, my cabby came out of the car and pointed at the gravesides, “My mummy, five uncles and cousins are there.” I saw bloodshot eyes. I bowed my head as the cabby navigated the hilly city. I was aghast. No one can visit the Genocide Museum without being touched by the unprecedented bestiality. I instantly remembered home and how, ostensibly unwittingly, President Muhammadu Buhari’s hyper-promotion of his Fulani stock at the expense of other tribes in Nigeria, bears similitude to President Habyarimana’s; how Nasir el-Rufai’s glorification of the Fulani “pure blood” can only lead to a Kigali and how, many of us, in our underscore of the ascendancy of our tribes and the relegation of others’, are only clearing the bushy path to Kigali for Nigeria. We should all come to Kigali and see the outcome of hate preachments and projection of the ascendancy of a tribe over another.

The White world openly advertised its disdain for the Blackman at these gory killings in Rwanda, submitting that blacks were animals in human skins. How could the blacks be so animalistic? However, barely a year after Rwanda, Bosnia erupted in an internecine. The war crimes perpetrated in Rwanda later paled into insignificance compared to the bitter fighting, indiscriminate killings, ethnic cleansing and mass rape perpetrated by the Serb.  It was then that it occurred to the White racists that animalism, the type portrayed by William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, is colour and race-blind.

What strikes me most is the swift way the Paul Kigame government that came on board later not only succeeded in wiping away the people’s tears but in reintegrating Tutsi and Hutu again, up to the point that hatred has almost disappeared from the land. His memorialization of the dead is also commendable. At the Memorial Park’s library where I went to purchase books on the genocide, an elderly friend off-handedly asked the attendant if she were Hutu or Tutsi. Offended but papering over it with a genial smile, she had said, “I won’t tell you that; it is even a crime for you to ask me.” Same reply came from my cabby and virtually everyone I spoke with in Kigali. Indeed, Rwanda today has two public holidays for the mourning of the genocide victims. It also went a step forward to codify it into an Act that revisionism of the genocide is a criminal offence.

I was curious to know how Kigali, the outwardly beautiful woman, tries to dud her pains. Car Wash, a Night Club in the heart of Kigali, someone said, is where the 25-year agony is drowned. Off to Car Wash, I went. Paradoxically, Kigali, here, embarks on a fanciful flight after the pleasure of the same flesh that hate massacred on her laps in multiple of thousands. Here, abetted by dim light and local alcohol brands of different surnames like Primus, Skol, Mutzig and Virunga, which are momentarily made Siamese to grilled lamb, steak fish and assorted objects of delectable chew, young girls wriggle their rumps to titillate men who lace their backsides with crisp Rwandan Francs. Car Wash is Rwanda’s creative cloning of Sodom and Gomorrah where you could pick girls for a few thousands of Francs as if you were picking rams from their tether

As I picked my bag, heading out of Kigali on a flight to Kamembe, Rwandan border town, en-route Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), my own hatred for Kigali suddenly came back. On Friday last week, I had suddenly found out that my envelope containing $803, my all on the trip, had vamoosed. I was hysterical. I searched everywhere in the hotel, to no avail. I rushed to the Kigali Sports Club where I had attempted a game of squash but which couldn’t materialize due to my inability to communicate either in French or the local language with the female attendant. Did she see the envelope? No hope. Donations by some senior friends rescued me from being stranded. I remembered my cabby and his words reverberated in my mind. Where was the clean society Kagame was trying to carve out of the old hate-filled Rwanda? Was my money pilfered or it fell off and someone picked it? How could Kigali treat me like this, her most recent lover, who had fallen in love with her unblemished, sultry figure and sweetness?  

A professor of political economy, entrepreneur, and former presidential candidate, Mr Pat Utomi, who also contested the governorship primary of his party in the last election, shares his thoughts about the state of the nation in this interview with TUNDE AJAJA

Nigeria will be 59 in two days and many Nigerians are grossly disappointed with the country’s level of development. How would you assess the country’s progress so far?

Part of my personal burden is that I have been around for all of those 59 years and so I have seen those 59 years from the eyes of a young person, a teenager, a middle-aged person and someone now entering into the twilight of his time of being. I think one sentence sums it up; excruciating and painful witness to a country’s failure to live its dream. Most of my adult life has been focused on two things; social justice and economic development. In both areas, Nigeria has been a remarkable failure. I still remember as a young academic interested in development issues the days people used to say to Indonesia that ‘if you organise yourselves well, maybe you can be like Nigeria.’ And now I’m living through a time people are saying to Nigeria; maybe you can be like Indonesia. Isn’t that a great irony? In fact, a friend of mine, an American professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins, Peter Lewis, reflected that in a book, titled ‘Growing Apart’, which was a comparison of Nigeria and Indonesia. As Nigeria went south, Indonesia moved up the ladder. If Indonesia is painful to compare Nigeria with, you just try to compare it with Singapore. If I compare what has happened over the years in Singapore and Nigeria, sometimes, I literally break down in the night and begin to sob. I just love Singapore.

What’s the attraction?

Well, it’s the story of a country that was literally nothing. I saw it grow from a fishing village to what it is now. Its Prime Minister once broke down and wept because they thought they could not survive without Malaysia when the Malaya Federation got rid of them. But it became the hub of development. Everything happened before my eyes. Something happened when I went to Singapore this summer, and the story is very real. I was in my hotel room; reflecting and I found myself literally going into private conversations with Chinua Achebe and Nelson Mandela. In many ways, some of their expressions reminded me very deeply, painfully and sorrowfully the failure of Nigeria as a country. I was just lost in conversation with these men and I actually plan to put down a book of those conversations of which I got no reply from these men. Somebody interviewed me in 1990 and I was shocked when the person said there is a topic you would turn to that would animate me any day, which is Nigeria. I have always been pan-Nigeria in all my views, but Nigeria has been a depressing ride; its youths are leaving and they are unsure about the future.

Where do you think the country is getting it wrong?

One of the things that the Nigerian elite have never gotten around is understanding what it means to govern. So we have one generation after the other of very bad politicians. Government has gone from bad to worse; you think it’s going to get better and the next one is just worse than the one before it. It’s depressing when you think they would learn from the mistakes of others but it never happens. Associated with this is the fact that governing Nigeria is expensive; politicians are on ego trips, which must be manifested in motorcades and how they steal the commonwealth in the name of taking care of themselves because they are government officials. In many countries, public officials are some of the least paid persons. Here, they are probably not as well paid but we know how much of our resources they have plunged. The budget of the country comes to less than six per cent of our Gross Domestic Product and what it takes to run the government is extracted mainly from revenues from crude oil and taxation, and about all of it going into the budget. And this budget maintains less than two million of us who are either civil servants or politicians and they don’t even feel accountable enough to ensure that the rest of us have a decent life. They actually think who are we to be talking to them and asking to be governed well. So, between the civil servants and the politicians, we have a new colonisation of the Nigerian people. Femi Falana said the other day that Nigeria is governed like we are a conquered people and I disagreed with him. I told him we are not governed like we are a conquered people; we are a conquered people. Only a conquered people can be governed the way we are governed. We are in captivity and that is why a lot of people are trying to escape as if they are trying to break out of captivity. It’s a run for freedom. We cannot continue that way; it’s not possible.

Would you have an idea of how the country got to this level if Indonesia once admired us?

Yes, it wasn’t this way from the beginning. I remember the late Emmanuel Elebute saying that when he was appointed a professor of medicine in the 60’s, his pay was higher than that of the Prime Minister of Nigeria. Can you imagine anybody in the National Assembly allowing a professor of medicine to earn more than them? That’s impossible in today’s system. We know how long it took him (Elebute) to get there, but we don’t know how long it took to get to the National Assembly. In some cases, all it takes is to steal a few ballot boxes, even if you are coming from the gutter. A collapse of culture happened somewhere along the way. When there is a collapse of culture, nothing dear exists anymore. Value shapes human progress and it determines what any society becomes, but there has been a collapse of culture in Nigeria and there are no values guiding anything anymore. Anything goes and you can get away with murder, literally. You can steal the maze today and the next day you would be the custodian of the maze. That’s a society that has lost everything.

If Nigeria continues on this route, where do you think the country is headed?

For three decades, I have been trying to get the Nigerian middle class to realise that they are the problem. I recently wrote a book, titled ‘Why Not’, where I talked about the complicit middle. I think I played some role in waking up that middle in 1993 after the annulment of the election. I wrote an article, ‘We must say never again.’ Professionals got up and said truly we couldn’t continue, but everybody went back to sleep and the conquest continued. Fully conquered by the political class, the Nigerian people are wondering who they are and what would happen to them next. But, you see the thing about situations like this is that they are not sustainable; it’s just for a period of time. About 25 years ago, I began using a phrase that Nigeria would witness the revenge of the poor. My friend, Rev Fr George Ehusani, seems to have popularised the phase. It’s happening as we speak. Let the rich travel from Abuja to Kaduna in their flashy cars and see what happens. And it’s just starting. Unfortunately, the poor and middle class are also caught up by it. We could have avoided all of these and build a prosperous and just society for all. When there is no justice, peace is hard to find. Nigeria built an unjust society and today it is searching for peace. It was all avoidable. I can go back to look at all my writings for the last 40 years and I can show where I predicted where we are today. I am tired this time and it’s time to retire.

There are people who believe that the discovery of oil is part of our problem, do you agree with that?

Nigeria has suffered a major problem that led to the collapse of culture, and it’s what I like to call the dangerous alchemy of the convergence of soldiers and oil. Military rule, which brought an authoritarian structure, met with oil, which brought free money. The people in power, who were soldiers, did not need the people because they had enough money coming from oil exploration to do as they pleased. So, people were very happy that they (military) left them alone. Then, they also stopped paying taxes and they stopped asking what they (leaders) were doing with our (oil) money. That drove the emergence of state capture. The people who had power and money basically captured the Nigerian state. I often talked about those who own Nigeria as their property. For nearly 60 years, we have had a group of people who have captured the country and owned it. In many ways, groups negotiate with them entry into sharing some of what they own. I have a very remarkable relationship with former President Olusegun Obasanjo and I love him. There are two sides of him. There is a side of him that is with that rapacious group of captors and a side of him that represents a certain social will for good of all. He’s a very complex man caught in the middle of this and people don’t understand him. There are things about him that you may not like but there are things about him that you can’t but respect. But, there are others in that group that are not given to his pang of conscience. It’s a rapacious parasitic group.

There is also the belief that the Nigerian citizenry went to bed after the return to democracy in 1999, was that truly the case?

While the state capture lasted, they woke up in 1999 and we all fought the system until they (military) decided to let go. After that, we – and I charge myself as the first accused – decided we had done our bit, which was the ultimate mistake, in my view. It opened the doors to a bunch of charlatans and once those traditional politicians moved in, that was it. People who came with the late Obafemi Awolowo, Michael Opara and Ahmadu Bello, who grew up in the understanding of social conscience, thought the military was not serious about going. Then a bunch of bandits stepped in and Nigeria has not recovered since then.

Do you think it is possible to recover?

It is possible to recover. You see, why I think any nation caught in this kind of mess can recover is Brazil. If Brazil can come back, why not (Nigeria)? But my fear is that if we are not careful, instead of taking the Brazil option, we might do Argentina or worst still, we may do our natural ally and soulmate, Venezuela. Do we learn from our mistakes? Nigerian civil war was the worst genocide of the 20th century outside Hitler’s attempt at exterminating the Jews, even though we tried to cover up that history. Rwanda went through genocide and recovered brilliantly in the way President Paul Kagame has tried to rebuild the country. Nigeria has not had a good fortune of learning from the error of the Nigerian genocide in the way Kagame had. So, where do we find hope? I think there is still a group of people committed to the dignity of the human race, who are middle class persons and are still driven by a bigger good. I remember that one of the things I had written while reflecting on my thoughts about Achebe and Mandela was what I titled 1,100 years of servitude. My fear is for Nigeria as a nation not to plunge its people into 1,000 years of servitude. When I talk to many Nigerians, people are so short-termed and instant gratification-driven and it increases my pain. To have elite that are not sensitive to the pains of Nigerians is one of the reasons my time of being has been a depressing one.

Your party, All Progressives Congress, on assuming power in 2015 lamented what it called PDP’s 16 years of misrule and people felt APC would do things differently. Do you think anything has changed since your party took over?

Let me tell you my own history with that adventure. I think about seven or eight years ago, I was asked to give the annual lecture of the Leadership newspaper and the subject was ‘political parties’. I remember vividly and I remember that in that room were almost all the people who became the bigwigs of the opposition, sitting on the high table. I took the pain to analyse what political parties are; what their role is in building up ideas for social transformation and progress. But there was something interesting after I finished speaking in that hall. Paul Unongo (former Chairman of the Northern Elders Forum) running to the podium saying to me that he felt like locking the doors and preventing all of us from leaving the place so we could sit down and discuss how Nigeria would move forward. That lecture was to get the opposition to realise that the redemption of Nigeria was all these people getting together, crafting ideas about how Nigeria should travel and using the platform of a political party, based on ideals of social democracy, with the people’s capitalism embedded in it, to organise a better society. The first thing I would say about the trouble with Nigeria and my party, as you called it, is that we didn’t form a political party.

How do you mean?

We created something called APC, but it’s not a political party. Political parties in Nigeria unfortunately remains essentially machines for winning elections; a classic example of machine for elections. Machine politics does not save a nation, rather it produces political actors, whereas Nigeria needs to be saved. Once we did not manage to form a political party out of APC, the game was lost. The first game that was lost was that APC had no machine for internal conversation. So, once the machine produced officers, it was the end of the game; we could not even talk internally about what we should be doing as a party. People who can testify are still alive. I kept going back to talk to John Odigie-Oyegun, who was the chairman of the party, about the need for us to sit down, develop ideas and coach all the people elected on the party’s platform about what we stand for and where our country should be. He said we truly needed such but that there was no money, and I told him we didn’t need money. I said he should invite them and leave the rest to me. I told him I would bring my friends free of charge to orient them. So, I went through that with him, but when you can’t find a platform to speak inside your own party, what do you do? Maybe once in a while journalists would harass you (laughs) and you would say one or two things and that is the end. I’m not surprised that we are where we are now. But, it’s a tragedy for our country. And there is this big misconception that we are a rich country; but we are not. We are a bankrupt country. If we are a company, we would have gone like Thomas Cook (a British global travel group that folded up a few days ago).

Have you tried having that conversation with the new leadership of the party?

Remember I said I’m retired (laughs). Since I have no pension, maybe I would first go to an American campus and speak English for two years, perhaps I would earn enough that could sustain me in my village (laughs). It’s a big pity, because this country has so much potential. A professor at Harvard years ago said the central conservative truth is that it is not politics but culture and its values that are responsible for the progress of the society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change the culture and save it from itself. In effect, what he was saying was interpreted very nicely by Samuel P. Huntington (jnr) who gave an example of that. Lee Kuan Yew in many ways represents that central liberal truth. He was a man who used politics to change the culture of his people and in doing that effectively, he took that country from the third world to the first. Unless there is a change in culture and values in Nigeria, the result would be the same. For example, our youth bulge should be producing demographic dividends for us, but, right now our youth bulge is producing the road to Somalia. Robert Kaplan told us 20 years ago that we would likely descend into anarchy, with ethnic, religious and economic cleavages. Instead of us to work assiduously at preventing that from happening, we just kept on behaving every day to get to the destination we were warned against. If lives were not involved, Nigeria would be a serious comedy, but the lives of millions of people are involved.

You participated in the presidential campaigns of your party prior to the 2015 election, and as an economist, some people expected that you would be in the President’s team to bring your experience to bear. Would you know why you didn’t get an appointment or were you offered and you declined?

One thing I know about God is that He loves me and He doesn’t let me go to where it’s not in my best interest. So, whatever happened was absolutely what God loved to happen, and it has been for my own good.

You took part in the primary election of your party for the governorship election in Delta State in the last election. Even when you wrote to your party to postpone the primary because the list of delegates was not available, you said you got no response. How did you feel about it?

I believe in process. The rule said if you would use the indirect primary you must provide all the aspirants with the list of delegates so they could pitch their ideas to those people, but the list never came. To be on the record, one week to the exercise the list didn’t come, so I wrote to the state and national offices. Even on the day of the exercise, we didn’t see the list. What is tragic about our situation is that we have used social media to confuse many things. I have seen on the social media on how some people said I didn’t know where the primary was taking place and that I went to another place. It was all nonsense. But they planted it in the media to suggest that I was somehow confused. But there was no such thing. 70 per cent of the things I see in the social media with my name don’t emanate from me, but what do you do.

What happened on the day of the primary?

You see, based on what I just said, there was no reason for me to show up; when I didn’t get the list and there was no response to my letters. On the day of the election, which was supposed to start at 9pm, they called for a meeting at noon and the delegation from Abuja was there. The then Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Ibe Kachikuwu), who is also from the state was there, including the other aspirants. Every single person, except one, said it didn’t make sense and that we should postpone it. The chairman of the panel said, ‘Prof, you know the way things are in Nigeria’ and I asked if I could see the list but he still didn’t bring it out. He said he saw it yesterday in Abuja and I said okay, can we see it? He said ‘Prof, you know we are brothers, let’s just go to the field.’ I was looking at the man and I asked myself how this country came down so low. He even said, ‘Prof this is not classroom’ (laughs). At that point I didn’t know whether to be amused or not. I knew it was clear what they came to do, so there was no point. The problem is that people who violate laws don’t go to prison, so it would be done again in the next election. In a normal country, all those involved in that process should be in prison by now. I am watching for the third time in my life, grand treason against the Nigerian people. What has happened in Nigeria unfortunately is that it has become a way of life. It has become a racket. So, rights are denied Nigerians normally. Several times I have told Nigerian Bar Association that they have a duty to be activists for the rule of law.

At the point that the process didn’t go as planned, did you make any attempt to reach out to the authorities at the national level?

Which authorities, when they were the ones doing it? Whatever it was, there was deliberate collusion from the upper echelons of the party. They (electoral committee) can’t just do that kind of a thing among themselves.

The man who won the primary lost the election, were you surprised?

I expected that to happen. That was why the whole thing was like a no-brainer and I wonder why they didn’t understand that was how it would play out. The general politics of the place was such that anything other than someone like me emerging was baptising the incumbent.

Do you think you would have won if you had emerged as the winner?

Clearly, I would have. People were looking for something new and different. I didn’t wake up to say I wanted to run for any office, but they harassed me in my house. Those concerned persons disrupted my peace. Nobody around me, family and friends, wanted me to contest, but the people who came to me were not even my kinsmen. They were mainly from the central part of the state, which was what impressed me.

What was the position of your wife?

My wife, more than anybody else, was the one going quietly behind me to beg my friends to tell me not to go ahead. But, I also ask myself how history would remember me if there was a chance to mount the stage and effect a change and I walked away. One thing I can never be accused of in this country is not having made the effort to change anything I have ever criticised. I criticised how we treat widows and then I created a centre to support widows and it has been on for nearly 30 years. I observed that we didn’t have a public conversation, so I created Patito’s gang to aid public conversations. I know what it has cost me, beyond what it costs to air and produce the television show for 20 years. But I have been happy to live with all those things as part of my own sacrifice for nation building.

Are you still a proud member of APC?

Political parties are an aggregation of groups in a direction, if it was really a party. The Conservative Party have the back-benchers, so consider me a very serious back-bencher in APC.

You once contested to be President and then you later contested to be governor, some people would see that as a descent. Did you see it like that initially?

No, I don’t even think of those things like that. Many people thought that way but I don’t think in those terms. That is where pride really is, and the example I gave in my book, ‘’Why Not’ on that subject was that when I was a graduate student in the United States in the 70s, the Governor of California, a gentleman called Jerry Brown did something similar. After he left being the governor, he went to be a local government councillor. Over 30 years after, he ran for governor again. I had a good fortune of becoming friendly with a one-time Prime Minister of France. Just before he died, he was the Mayor of Lyon, after being the Prime Minister. So, I don’t think like that. In fact, if you tell me that what would change Nigeria is if I become a local government councillor, not even chairman, I will. My interest is not in the title but the impact.

After those attempts, do you still have plans to contest any office?

I told you that I’m making the moves to go to my village, you’re talking about an election (laughs). In fact, if not that I’m not buoyant enough to retire, because I don’t have a pension, I won’t be here (laughs). I also believe that impact is not a function of title. I wish people didn’t have to have a title to make a difference. I’m not looking for a job and I’m not looking for a title. What title did Mahatma Gandhi hold in India? You mention India and the first name anybody thinks of is Gandhi. I ran into Mrs Tokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu sometime and she looked at me and shook her head. She said ‘you know I have been watching and following you; I see these people trying to stop you to block you out the way they blocked my father.’ I was struck. As she walked away, I turned to the person next to me and I said I wish they would succeed. If I could go to my grave in the stature of her father, I would rather that than any title in Nigeria.

Now that you want to retire, what do you do at your leisure?

I talk to people like you (laughs). Of course, I read a lot, and that one is a habit. If I have 10 minutes to myself and I didn’t read, something would be wrong because I would always have a book in my hand.

Punch

• Millions of people have descended on Hong Kong for over 16 weeks of pro-democracy protests that have turned violent at times and show little signs of slowing.
• Some of the protesters — many of whom are students below the age of 29 —  have expressed a readiness and willingness to die in the demonstrations, which have seen at least 1,400 of their peers arrested.
• At least four protesters have died by apparent suicide since protests began. Experts told Business Insider that an unstable environment can contribute to thoughts of self-harm.
• Two protesters who Business Insider spoke to for this article expressed similar feelings of despair and fear for their futures.
• Two others, one teacher and one youth psychologist who both work closely with protesters, told Business Insider that they have encountered students who expressed distress over the current state of affairs in the city.
• "We believe this is the last stand for our future and freedom," a 22-year-old protester told Business Insider. "We'd rather die in the fight than slowly suffocate to death after we lose the fight.

They're dressed in an all-black uniform, faces distorted behind gas masks, using umbrellas as shields, and following a sophisticated set of hand motions which act as their form of communication. 

For more than three months, millions of civilians have been protesting the Hong Kong government.

What began as a rally against a proposed bill that would have allowed for the extradition of Hong Kong residents to China to face trial has ballooned into a much more symbolic battle to fight Chinese encroachment in the semi-autonomous region.

About 60% of protesters are younger than 29, while nearly 75% of protesters have some form of higher education. And for many young protesters, weekly demonstrations have become an increasingly more desperate, sometimes violent fight against what they see as a shrinking view of their future. 

Unlike the city's high concentration of super-wealthy, the youth of Hong Kong are struggling to afford to live in one of the world's most expensive cities. A recent economic shift hit "educated, white-collar professionals" particularly hard, The New York Times reported. "Wages stalled or declined. What they made bought far less. Many became less well-off than their parents had been."

The average price of a home in Hong Kong in 2019 is $1.2 million. Graffiti near a protest site calls out the average rent for a small room in a shared apartment: "7K for a house like a cell and you really think we out here scared of jail," referring to HK$7,000, or $893. 

Additionally many feel uncertain about their future in the Chinese territory once the "one country, two systems" agreement ends in 2047.

To the protesters who spoke to Business Insider, the continued demonstrations are a matter of life and death.

"We believe this is the last stand for our future and freedom," Chan, 22, a recent college graduate and protester who requested we use only his last name, told Business Insider over the messaging app Telegram in early August. "We'd rather die in the fight than slowly suffocate to death after we lose the fight."

Protesters have 5 key demands 

Protest groups have put forward five key demands, which continue to fuel demonstrations and have become a rallying cry for many protesters: 

• A full withdrawal of the extradition bill;
• Retraction of the characterization of protests as riots;
• The release of protesters arrested by police unlawfully;
• Establishing an independent inquiry into allegations of police brutality and excessive use of force against protesters; 
• Carrie Lam's resignation and the introduction of fair and free elections in the city.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam scrapped the incendiary extradition bill on September 4 in a long-awaited concession, promising to formally withdraw the legislation without debate or voting in the next council, which is set to resume in October. 

Still, some pro-democracy activists have called the move "too little and too late," and protests, particularly among students, have continued with no signs of slowing. Large-scale protests are also expected ahead of two anniversaries: the five year marker of the Umbrella Movement this weekend and the 70th anniversary of the formation of the People's Republic of China on Tuesday.

Violence on the 'front lines'

Chan considers himself a "frontline protester," someone stationed at the forefront of demonstrations directly facing off against riot police who are armed with tear gas, batons, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, and even live ammunition. 

"I believe almost all frontline protesters, including myself, are ready to be arrested or die in protests," Chan told Business Insider last month.

Though a portion of protests over the last 16 weeks have been peaceful and largely without incident, offshoot groups of protesters — growing more and more infuriated with government inaction and allegations of police brutality — have frequentlyclashed with police, throwing bricks, umbrellas, and other objects at law enforcement.

Hardline activists have been criticized by police for their violent tactics. In recent months, groups of protesters have stormed and ransacked the city's Legislative Building, surrounded the city's police headquarters, and occupied the city's airportfor days, disrupting flights and causing tourism to plummet.

Police have ramped up their responses to protests in tandem, firing tear gas and rubber bullets at crowds, infiltrating protest groups using disguises and arresting people en masse. Protesters have also suggested that police have employed the use of organized gangs in order to carry out attacks on commuters.

On September 19, Amnesty International released results from a field investigationwhich revealed instances of severe beatings, arbitrary arrests, and threats of violence towards protesters at the hands of police. 

While peaceful activism has helped the movement spread their message to the mainstream, many protesters are wary that demonstrations alone will actually achieve results without disrupting the status quo.

The 2014 Umbrella Movement, also known as Occupy Central, saw similar scenes of peaceful protests interlaced with violent clashes. After 79 days, the protests ended, but the movement's core goal — establishing true, universal suffrage — was never actualized. Nine pro-democracy campaigners were convicted for their leadership roles in the protests, with four handed jail sentences this past April.

"It's proven that violence, to some degree, will be useful," a 30-year-old protester told Reuters last month. 

On September 22, hundreds of pro-democracy protesters turned out across the city, vandalizing shops and metro stations and setting fires to police barricades. 

Police launched tear gas and pepper spray at demonstrators. Two 13-year olds were arrested and accused of burning a Chinese flag. 

More than 100 days have passed since protests began. In that time, over 1,400 people have been arrested, according to Bloomberg, and at least 70 people have been charged with rioting, the South China Morning Post estimates, a criminal offense that carries a jail sentence of up to 10 years.

Protesters are willing to die for freedom

A protester actively working on the frontlines who requested anonymity due to fears for her safety told Business Insider that protesters, including herself, see the current fight against Chinese influence as an "end game," and she said she has engaged with protesters who have expressed a readiness to die in continued clashes.

"They say that if Hong Kong has no future, I have no future either," she told Business Insider. "So I may as well fight or die for it."

She said that she has spoken to several protesters under the age of 20⁠ — some as young as 12 ⁠— who turn up to protests anticipating violence. Some carry suicide notes or a last will and testament in their bags.

"They fight, they're very ready to die," she said.

Chan said he, too, always has a note addressing his family inside of his bag in case confrontations turn violent.

In July, masked assailants linked to organized crime gangs stormed the Yuen Long Metro Station in the city's north and attacked commuters returning from protests.

A few weeks ago, a young female medic was hit in the eye by a bean bag round shot by police. Police denied the claims and said there was no evidence that officers had caused her injury.

"It's just a matter of time before they eventually kill someone," Chan said. "There have been multiple times that riot police claimed that they will hit us to death. We Hong Kong citizens are frightened, every frontline protester is frightened."

For Chan, the current climate is a win or lose scenario.

"This time is our last effort to fight for our democracy," he added. "We have been shot, beaten, overwhelmed with tear gas. We are risking our life and future. We just wanted to enjoy democracy. We are prepared to die. Because Hong Kong is our home, our beloved home."

Experts say protests have left people feeling hopeless and helpless

Protests have not only consumed Hong Kong's physical space, but according to experts, they are taking a mental toll on protesters.

At least four protesters have died by apparent suicide in the last few months. Several suicide-prevention groups previously shared that they had received more calls since protests began, the South China Morning Post reported.

"This is a public mental health situation," Clarence Tsang, the executive director of suicide-prevention group Samaritan Befrienders, told the Post.

Protesting appears to dominate the daily discourse for Hong Kong's youth. A teacher and a youth psychologist who both work closely with protesters told Business Insider last month that they have encountered students who expressed distress over the current state of affairs in the city. 

Henry Ng, a lecturer at Hong Kong University and expert in social psychology, told Business Insider that there has been a "general sense of hopelessness and helplessness" among protesters, many of whom are students or young adults. "The two feelings may cause people to become numb to the situation," Ng said.

He added that in terms of cognitive development, young protesters, particularly teenagers, may be more susceptible to group influences and may be less developed in terms of inhibitory control. Ng says this may explain why the city's youth have been drawn to more violent means of protest.

Another lecturer at Hong Kong University, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution at work, told Business Insider in August that the general sentiment among protesters was that violence is "inevitable" because of lack of response by the government to more peaceful methods of protest.

She added that in her experience, many young protesters felt like they had "nothing to lose" and that "blood is ready to be shed because there is no future ahead."

A youth psychologist who requested to be identified only by his last name, Ching, told Business Insider in August that a combination of feelings — fury over police use of force, confusion about the government's lack of response, distrust towards the Hong Kong legal system, and worry over Hong Kong's future — dominated the mindset of protesters that he had spoken to.

Ching recalled an incident in July during a memorial service for one of the protesters who died by suicide, in which he was on hand to give "psychological first aid" to those in attendance. He said as the evening wore on, he tended to a 14-year-old protester who expressed concern over retribution towards his family for his activity in protests, which progressed into suicidal ideation.

"Overwhelmed and feeling helpless, Hong Kongers are inexperienced in facing such large scale protests and desperation," he said. "They are using different methods and ways to express their anger and frustration." 

Ng said steps were being taken to address the mental well-being of young protesters, including the creation of task forces in local universities in order to address the psychological needs of their students.

Ching said those within his organization are conducting psychological first aid training and have set up public outreach services, like counseling, for teachers and students, as the city's youth have been most affected by protests.

"We as health professionals can help repair the injury and the psychological impact [of protests]," he said. "At the end of the day, only the government is in the position and has power to prevent the movement from further escalation, and stop tragedy from going on and on."

In an attempt to better understand protesters, Lam in July offered to hold closed-door meetings with university students from across the city to address their concerns. Earlier this week she held an "open dialogue" town hall, where 150 people in the movement shared their feelings about her leadership. Protesters then blockaded the stadium where the meeting was held. 

Though the extradition bill has been withdrawn, protesters are preparing for the long haul

Ching told Business Insider on September 11 that protesters will continue to turn out until their five demands are met "and not one less."

"The withdrawal has only made a small difference on the movement from the protester's point of view," he said.

A protester actively working on the frontlines told Business Insider earlier this month that while protesters have begun to shift their focus onto the other key demands outlined, her mindset on protesting remains the same.

"I think our methods have changed a lot since August," she said. "But I think one thing that really has shown itself to be more clear is that we do not separate from each other."

"Whether we are peaceful or whether we are on the frontlines, [our methods] are inseparable."

She said that although uncertainty lies ahead, the situation in the city for her remains a matter of life and death.

"The fight is definitely not over yet."

Business Insider

A new film tells the story of the "fastest-growing church" in the world, an underground, persecuted Christian 

movement in a country known for exporting radical Islamic terrorism — Iran.

People in Iran, a Muslim-majority nation, are fleeing Islam in droves as believers bow their knee to Jesus and become aggressively pro-Israel, according to the documentary "Sheep Among Wolves Volume II."

“What if I told you Islam is dead?” one unidentified Iranian church leader says in the film, which was directed by Dalton Thomas and produced by Frontier Alliance International Studios.

“What if I told you the mosques are empty inside Iran?" he continues. "What if I told you no one follows Islam inside of Iran? Would you believe me? This is exactly what is happening inside of Iran. God is moving powerfully inside of Iran.”

The pastor adds: “What if I told you the best evangelist for Jesus was the Ayatollah Khomeini? The ayatollahs brought the true face of Islam to light and people discovered it was a lie...After 40 years under Islamic law — a utopia according to them — they’ve had the worst devastation in the 5,000-year history of Iran.”

Thomas calls the movement "the Iranian awakening."

"It owns no property, no buildings, no central leadership, and is predominantly led by women," he said in a statement.

Named after the Bible verse Matthew 10:16 which says, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” the documentary claims "Muslim-background Iranians are leading a quiet but mass exodus out of Islam and bowing their knees to the Jewish Messiah -- with kindled affection toward the Jewish people."

But the new believers in the Islamic Republic face great risks.

"We know that if they get us, the first thing they will do to us as a woman is rape us and then they will beat us and ultimately they will kill us," one believer said. "This is the decision we have made that we want to offer our bodies as sacrifices. Because I have this thought when I wake up, that when I leave, that door I might not come back."

A leader of the Iranian underground church explains their goal is not planting churches but rather making disciples, the majority of whom are women.

"Disciples forsake the world and cling to Jesus 'till he comes. Converts don't," the leader said. "Disciples aren't engaged in a culture war. Converts are. Disciples cherish, obey, and share the word of God. Converts don't. Disciples choose Jesus over anything and everything else. Converts don't. Converts run when the fire comes. Disciples don't."

And a pastor explains everything they do underground is built on prayer.

"We find people of peace through prayer. We even find locations through prayer,” he says. "[Jesus] has come in their dreams or he’s come miraculously in their lives. When we hear this, we know that Jesus has gone ahead of us.”

Fox News

Kanye West may have come to Jesus — but some Christians aren’t buying the born-again “Yeezus.”

On the eve of West’s new gospel album “Jesus Is King,” which is expected to dropin one form or another this weekend following his latest “Sunday Service” performance, the online Christian community has revived its sermon against the 42-year-old rapper’s co-opting of their culture.

Hundreds of hellfire-haters are firing up the Twitterverse — but the controversy about West’s invocation of religious imagery in his work has been around since the early 2000s, critic and self-proclaimed Christian Charlene Kaleina, of Connecticut, tells The Post.

Kaleina, 68, says her faith is constantly mocked “because of the strange and weird behavior of people like this man.”

“He may be trying to understand Jesus in his own limited way and we cannot judge another’s soul,” the commercial real estate professional tells The Post. “People who follow Christ sense something is not right with this scene.”

The Post has reached out to a West spokesperson for a response to critiques such as Kaleina’s.

Online, hundreds of the faithful felt the album title alone was blasphemous.

” ‘Jesus Is King’ is trending on Twitter,” writes another critic who identifies as an Adventist. “They’re talking about the self-proclaimed god Kanye West, who is a mere man.”

Others argue that West — whose famous friends describe as a born-again Christian — has made past statements that show his heart cannot possibly be in the right place.

“The way he talks about women in his other/recent albums, I’m skeptical he knows the gospel,” writes one Twitter critic. “I am much more willing to believe Chance [The Rapper] is born again than Kanye.”

There is also the problem of inclusion. Kanye’s “Sunday Service” is invite-only, which is a big problem, according to Premier Christianity magazine columnist Tobi Oredein.

“My major issue with Kanye’s Sunday Services is that they appear to be exclusive clubs for the rich and famous,” Oredein writes. “The average person can’t visit — instead, we’re kept at arm’s length merely watching on screens. A church — or any gathering led in Christ’s name — should be open to everyone.”

Kanye’s church also seems to be more of an ad campaign for his music and fashion brand, Oredein says: “He’s employing a choir of people who are not only singing his songs, but are all dressed in his apparel.

“Is Christ really at the center of this gathering? I’m not sure he is.”

Compiled by Olalekan Adeleye

New York Post

I admit that it’s always ill-advised to use the word “never” when you prognosticate the outcome of a future event. The vagaries of life can throw a wrench to the works of the most auspicious auguries. I know that. Nevertheless, I am prepared to go out on a limb and proclaim that in spite of his feverishly desperate, frenzied, backstabbing machinations, Mr Bola Tinubu can never be Nigeria’s president. Here’s why.

Tinubu isn’t electable in any region of Nigeria outside the Southwest, his natal region. Even in Southwest, his political capital has suffered incalculable diminution over the years, particularly because of the growing perception in the region that he is now a mindless minion of a morally maggoty, Machiavellian, and no-good northern cabal.

His callous, injudicious, not to mention misguided and evidence-free, exculpation of the alleged murderers of the daughter of Afenifere leader Reuben Fasoranti rankled many people in the region and helped seal the notion that he is now no more than a fawning, unthinking automaton for hostile political forces outside his region.

It is entirely possible that Fasoranti’s daughter wasn’t murdered by Fulani herders, but saying so without firm, foolproof evidence - and when raw passions were still inflamed - betrayed his lack of scruples and independence of thought. That is why an increasing number of people in Southwest now see Tinubu as an unreliable, out-of-touch, self-absorbed, power-hungry, and treacherous narcissist.

Among the electorate in Southeast and the South-south, he is seen as one of the principal architects in the emergence of the unrelieved disaster that is Buhari whose regime has taken the humiliation and alienation of the two regions as an article of statecraft. Tinubu also infamously sanctioned the systematic, state-sponsored, and thugs-executed disenfranchisement of Igbo voters in Lagos in 2019. His wife, Remi Tinubu, was, in fact, caught on camera lamenting that the Igbo are untrustworthy (Her exact words were, “Igbo, we no dey trust una again!”) Most Igbos and Southern ethnic minorities would rather be dead than vote for Tinubu.

Christian ethnic minorities in the North, for whom religious identity is an important instrument of political mobilization, deeply distrust, even resent, Tinubu and his politics. Although Northern Nigerian Christians tend to be largely indifferent to Southern (that is, Yoruba and Edo) Muslims, they nonetheless nurse deep-seated animus toward Tinubu because of the roles he is perceived to have played in propping up the fiendish monster of depravity that the Buhari regime has become.

You would think the Muslim North, particularly the Hausaphone Muslim North, would requite Tinubu’s support for Buhari in 2015 and 2019 by supporting his presidential aspiration in 2023. That is precisely what Tinubu himself, in his blissful naivety, expects. Well, as I pointed out many times before the 2019 election, this is where Tinubu will get the biggest shock of his life.

If Tinubu were lucky to clinch the nomination of APC (as unlikely as this is), he would need to nominate a Christian, preferably a Northern Christian, politician to “balance” his ticket since he is a Muslim—or self-identifies as a Muslim—from the South. And that’s where the problem would start for him. In the North, there is an enduring distrust of the authenticity of the Islam of Yoruba Muslims.

There is even a Hausa phrase that encapsulates this distrust: adinin Yarbawa. It literally translates as the religion, i.e., Islam of the Yoruba. But it means more than that. It is often uttered to suggest that the Islam of Yoruba people is fickle, inauthentic, meretricious, syncretic, and untrustworthy. So, as far as most Northern Muslims are concerned, a Yoruba Muslim/Northern Christian ticket is as good as a Christian/Christian ticket.

Well, some Yoruba Muslims have been able to overcome this visceral Northern Muslim perceptual bias against their Islam. A good example is the late MKO Abiola. And it was because he did more for the cause of Islam than any Nigerian of his time. You can’t say that of Tinubu who, apart from the rampant northern Muslim perception that he isn’t a practicing Muslim, always looks drugged and drunk in TV interviews. Even Abiola had to choose a Northern Muslim running mate to earn the trust of the Northern Muslim political elite.

Nonetheless, if Tinubu chooses a running mate from the Muslim North to compensate for his lack of sufficient Muslim bona fides, he would alienate Igbo, Southern ethnic minority, and Northern Christian voters, the very people who distrust and resent him in the first place. Contemporary Nigeria is way more sensitive to the politics of religious representation than 1990s Nigeria was when Abiola ran for president.

The rise of politically tinged Pentecostalism in the South has made even the religiously liberal Southwest a hotbed for religious particularism, even though ethnic solidarity is still a more potent instrument for mobilization in the region than religion.

But I wager that Northern Muslim voters would rather vote for a party that fields a Northern Muslim candidate—even if that party is the PDP—than vote for Tinubu even if he chooses a Northern Muslim running mate. So, heads or tails, Tinubu will lose.

Nevertheless, the most important reason Tinubu can never be present is that the people who currently wield political power, to whom he is a witlessly obsequious bootlicker, won’t hand over power to him—or to anybody—in 2023.   

Members of the cold, calculating, and conniving Buhari cabal have chosen Babagana Kingibe as Buhari's successor. As I pointed out in previous columns and social media updates, in the privacy of their conclaves, members of the cabal snigger at Tinubu for naively imagining that Buhari will hand over power to him. In the service of this self-delusion, he is bending over backwards, including throwing his loyal lieutenants under the bus, for the cabal in the presidency. But all this will come to naught.

Before the 2019 election, a friend of mine who is close to Abba Kyari confided in me that after the election they would “deal with Tinubu and his people.” He bragged that by the time they are done with him and his underlings, he would be so damaged that he won’t even be an option for the 2023 presidency. It’s already starting.

Of course, the cabal isn't banking on any legitimate election to get Kingibe into power; INEC, which is now in their begrimed pockets, will just pluck imaginary figures from the air, ignore actual votes, and declare him "winner"—like it did Buhari this year. And the Presidential Election and Petitions Tribunal and the Supreme Court will uphold the travesty.

However, I predict that should Buhari survive until 2023, he won't hand over power to anyone, including Kingibe. Apart from his hopeless love of power for the hell of it, Buhari needs power to stay alive—literally. The obscene amount of money Nigeria habitually fritters away in medical bills to keep him alive can only be sustained if he is in power. He won't get that sort of money outside power.

Only sustained, nationwide, pan-Nigerian civic insurrection can save Nigeria from the current fatal grip on it by Buhari and his cabal of ruthless power mongers. Tinubu has contributed to killing the culture of civil disobedience because of his inordinate, unrealizable political ambition. When the cabal finally comes for his neck, there will be no pan-Nigerian coalition to save him.

Whether or not she becomes the Democratic nominee, Elizabeth Warren has brought something new to American politics; call it the charisma of wonkery. “Warren has a plan for that” has become a rallying cry for her supporters — and she has also impressed many serious policy experts with the sophistication of her proposals.

But can she pay for her plans? Leave aside Medicare for All, on which she has been cagily unspecific (and is very unlikely to happen even if a Democrat wins.) Many of the other Warren plans, for things like universal child care and enhanced Social Security, depend on raising money by taxing the wealthy.

The model for that kind of policy is Obamacare, which dramatically expanded health insurance without either increasing the deficit or raising taxes on the middle class, relying instead on a surcharge that only affected a small number of high-income taxpayers. But Warren is proposing the equivalent of several Obamacares. Could proposals like her wealth tax actually collect enough to pay for all of that?

Even some Democratic-leaning economists have been skeptical. A few months ago Larry Summers and Natasha Sarin argued that the rich would manage to avoid or evade much of the Warren wealth tax, so that it would raise much less money than promised. (Tax avoidance means using legal loopholes to skirt taxes; tax evasion means breaking the law to hide income from the tax man. Both happen, a lot, in real life.)

But last week two of my go-to tax experts, NYU’s Lily Batchelder and David Kamin, released a detailed paper titled “Taxing the Rich: Issues and Options” that, to my mind, answers many of these objections.

Let’s be clear: Nobody serious claims that higher taxes on the rich would cripple the economy. That’s a zombie idea that has been refuted by evidence time and time again, kept alive only by the fact that billionaires lavishly reward people who push it. As Batchelder and Kamin say, there’s extensive evidence that higher taxes don’t even do much to deter either work or saving among the wealthy, in part because much of the .01 percent’s income comes from things like monopoly rents that aren’t determined by effort.

On the other hand, the wealthy are quite successful at avoiding taxes. The estate tax raises much less money than you might expect given how big modern fortunes are. Capital gains tax receipts are quite sensitive to the tax rate, suggesting that raising that rate wouldn’t generate a lot more revenue.

What Batchelder and Kamin argue, however, is that effectively taxing large fortunes isn’t impossible, or even that difficult. It only looks that way because our current tax system is riddled with loopholes. In particular, we tax income and wealth from different sources at very different rates, creating many opportunities for smart lawyers and accountants to make wealth disappear from high-tax categories and reappear elsewhere. Taxes without these loopholes, like Warren’s proposed 2 percent tax on large fortunes, would eliminate most of these tricks.

And here’s the thing: There’s a lot of money at the top. Batchelder and Kamin suggest that various taxes on the wealthy could yield several trillion dollars in revenue over the next decade, perhaps on the order of 2 percent of GDP. That’s not remotely enough to pay for Medicare for All, but it’s enough to pay for some substantial new programs, and it would have the additional benefit of gradually reducing the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a small elite.

So can we soak the rich? Yes, we can.

One Sunday in mid-May 2011, I got a call from an elder of my hometown, Ota. He needed to see me urgently, he said, and asked where I was. As it turned out, I had actually just gotten to Ota that afternoon. I was billed to speak at a training programme being organised for State House of Assembly officials from across the country the next day at the Africa Leadership Forum. The old man said he would soon see me and in no time he had arrived. Without any preambles, he told me his mission. "Ilu lo ran mi si e", he said. (It's the town that sent me to you.) I had no cause to doubt him given his high position in the Ota traditional council. Plus, the then Kabiyesi had been my French teacher in high school and a friend of my late dad's to whose burial two years earlier he had sent a high powered delegation and his staff of office. Anyway, the old man said and I will try to paraphrase in English:

"We know you resigned from Gbenga Daniel's government due to some differences but we are sure you have no quarrel with Ogun State. A new Governor has been elected and Kabiyesi has been asked to present strong candidates to fill positions so that Ota is not left behind." I asked him what position exactly I was being proposed for and he said, "Everyone thinks you performed well as Chief of Staff. We want you to return to that post and it will be a great honour to the Awori to have their son in such a powerful position". I felt quite honoured, as indeed anyone would with such recognition from their kindred. But I still asked him what level of clearance he had to make such an offer. He then placed a call. On the other end of the line was an egbon from Ota who had played a key role in the emergence of the new Governor. The old man told him I was raising an issue about the level of clearance for the offer he was making and he obviously asked to speak with me. The egbon then told me that whatever I was hearing from "Baba" was based on a conversation between the Governor-elect and the Ota elders. After ending the call, it was now left for me to respond to the offer being conveyed by the old man. I told him that it was not going to be possible for me to take up the offer for three reasons:

1. Anyone who has run a campaign to be State Governor must already have an idea of who his Chief of Staff was going to be from amongst his entourage. That position was too sensitive to be filled by third party recommendation;

2. I was not a part of the campaign structure and there must be people who had served so well in that structure and who would, justifiably, expect to be the beneficiaries of preferment to such high office. Introducing a "stranger" into their midst at such a high level will only bring crisis to the new government and anyone so appointed will spend his time putting out fires and may never be able to settle down to do the job; and

3. My understanding of the role of the Chief of Staff is that its occupant must have a deep familiarity with his principal almost to a very personal level. He should be able to second- guess his principal's likes and dislikes as well as his preferences. I gave the old man an example of walking into the Governor's waiting room and finding a paramount ruler and a lowly alfa waiting to see the Governor. A Chief of Staff must know why the Governor may wish to see the alfa first and also have the skills to ensure that the paramount ruler did not feel offended. Such must be the level of familiarity - which I did not enjoy with the man I was being asked to work with.

After listening to me, the old said "mo gbo ni o, mi o tii gba". (I have heard you but I have not agreed.) He then promised to brief Kabiyesi on our meeting and get back to me. I was quite relieved that he didn't ask that I go with him to see Kabiyesi. And since I knew I was going to be away from the country from the following Wednesday, my mind was somehow at rest. By the time I returned from my trip, the new Governor had been sworn in and governance had gotten well on the way. The matter, quite naturally, died a natural death.

I recount this experience in the light of the ongoing hullabaloo over the appointment of critics into government positions. Even though I would not count myself as a critic of the new government that I was being asked to serve then, the fact that I served in the administration that it was replacing already put me in some kind of opposition - regardless of my early exit. My private view is that today's Nigeria may not yet be ready for the kind of elevated politics that service across party lines may imply. The self respecting critic is therefore better advised to keep to his lane. And if there is any service that the regime feels he or she is able to offer, they must find a way other than appointment to get that service. Too many feathers are ruffled when you pluck a stranger from the ranks of critics and place them at the head of a long line of loyalists who had queued for so long for the appointments.