“In the deserted harbor there is water that moves endlessly against the stone walls. In the dark and silent forest there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished paneling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools” – Alan Paton.

It is all no longer news. No, not any more is it any news that thousand are dying silently of hunger and malnutrition, of preventable diseases and minor ailments. Everyday, more people are losing their means of livelihood because retrendment is now a daily exercise; it is no longer part of the unusuals that constitute the stuff of news. The word “Poverty” has gone out of fashions; if people are poor, so what? And “so what”, too, for all the immorality that goes on these days. What is it that still shocks you? If departed military governors are accused of stealing the treasuries dry, so what? If N10 Million was spent buying cars for soldiers, what’s your own? What is your concern, dear brother and sister?

Things are bad, very bad! Things are getting drastically worse. Nobody however seems ready to do anything about it.

You know, the worse things get, the more privileges they enjoy – our rulers. That is why you won't willingly give up on privilege and opulence, even if your people are roasting to death.

But what of those at the receiving end, the people who work and walk with hunger, those who are daily insulted, who are politically marginalized, who are socially abused – the people, our people, whose psyche is daily being assaulted? What have they done? What are they doing? What can they, in fact, do?

Some have talked about the legendary complacency and adjustment capability of Nigerians. The Nigerian, the opinion goes, is tough, enduring and resilient; resilient, mind you, not in fighting exploitation, oppression and insults, but in very well adapting to them. The Nigerian of this imagery is very creative, too. Just as one avenue of livelihood closes or one opportunity is taken away from him, he invents another, and so life goes on. If he cannot make it legitimately, countless illegitimate means and methods are ingeniously created. When things get so tough that he can no longer cope, the Nigerian under reference takes it all in his stride, becomes escapist via religion and fatalism.

The foregoing represents the popular imagery of the Nigerian, one with which I refused to be persuaded for a very long time. My standpoint was that the lessons of history teach that people subject to extreme privation and insults by a cabal of people invariably revolted and upstaged their oppressors. The frequency of the reality depicted in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, two classics by George Orwell in which an upstaged class of oppressors was replaced by another class of oppressors  never deterred me in the belief. The idea was that the natural revulsion of exploitation and oppression by people subject to them and the resilient spirit of human beings always ensure that no unjust regime lasts forever.

This belief found a basis in the history of the Russian Workers and Kulags under the czars, of the Cubans under the Baptistas, of the Aba Women in Colonial Nigeria, of the Algerian fellas under French colonial rule, of the Iranian mullahs and Almajiris under the Shar, of the Fillipinos under Marcus, of the Romanians under Ceausescu, of … The list is endless.

Of late, however, the seeming appearance that Nigerians have lost their sense of moral outrage slowly but gradually inched me to the position of those who believe that Nigerians are an acquiescent and passive lot. I observed how well the civil society itself reproduces the immorality of the state and those who run it and how it encourages political leaders to be amoral in their actions. I saw the immorality of the society on its own; the tyranny of the people against each other, the cheating of a poor fellow by his kind and kindred, the brutality of the husband against the wife, of parents against their children, pervasive illegitimate sexual dealings and wheeling; I saw them all.

I saw the civil society itself through and through and I recalled the saying, long ago of Socrates, that those who intended to fight for justice must themselves be just. Which then is the society that would fight the tyranny of the state and its operators that is itself pervaded by tyranny and immorality? Inexorably, I began to question the credentials of the people that are themselves victims of oppression but who think that things should continue as they are. Skepticism first, then cynicism. Faith was being lost in the society itself, and with that, faith in the ability of the country to get out of the doldrums.

Then came the “Water show down” in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State. I witnessed how a people who I believed best typify the Nigeria situation rose up in unison and determinedly to fight the entrenched privileges of shylock water tanker operators who had made sure water did not run for the last 15 years in the town in order for them to continue to reap obscene profits from their trade. The tanker operators started by selling a drum of water for 30k, then 50k, later 70k, N1.00, N1.50, N2.00. The people could afford the gradual price adjustments, and they continued to adjust. When the tanker operator realized that the people had got almost totally reliant on them for water supply, they moved the price to N3.00 and later to N4.00. The people grumbled at each turn, but they continued to buy nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the story was rife that the tanker operators organized to bribe workers in the Ijebu Ode Department of Waterworks so that water would always be in extreme short supply. It was said, in addition, that the operators organized for clandestine destruction of laid water pipes to the same effect that water never ran adequately. In all of these, the people pretended they did not know what was going on.

The patience and tolerance of the people were tasked to the limit when the tanker operators increased a drum to N5.00. No, the people would have none of it. No, the people would have none of it. No more tanker operators  in Ijebu Ode. The people were ready for the hardship until the government repaired the water network in the town. The government had no choice than to back the people. The regime, anyway is civilian – not the military which rules in spite of the people as if the people do not matter.

Such is the determination of the people that even now that the tanker operators are begging to be allowed back in business and sell a drum of water for N2.00, the people are saying an emphatic NO! Not a few of the tankers have been destroyed, not a few of their operators have been stoned in their houses and on the streets. The anger of the people in this instance knows no bounds.

The incident induced a rethink. If that could happen among a people that are famous for their affluence, felicity, hedonism and complacency, then all is not lost for the country. Hope was rekindled, faith was re-awoken. Why should one be cynical about the capability of the people? Why was it not realized that the inadequacies of the people may really be no more than a reaction to the exploitation and oppression of the powers-that-be who are in control of their collective structures and institutions? Must the people even be totally moral and upright, individually and collectively, before they are able to fight the injustice that dogs their existence? If leaders are in positions of power partly because they think they are more capable than the masses in terms of positive human values, would the people not be justified to demand of them more uprightness and responsibility than the people themselves are capable of? Questions, questions – these are questions that lead me back to the Nigerian condition.

I pity those who continue to rule as if the people are the tissue papers they use and flush off in their toilets. I fear for those who are taking our people for granted and making them progressively desperate.

The point is being reached when people have little to show for their rugged existence and when the point comes that people genuinely know that they have little or nothing to lose, their reaction to perceived injustice is most likely going to be explosive. The people will be extremist in their reaction because the privations and insults they suffer are extreme. Oh, by what means is the coming explosion to be prevented?

Published by Sunday Tribune, 29 March, 1992