Don't Just Keep Quiet, Do Something: A Brief Write-Up on what Nigeria and Nigerians need.

You don’t need to be on Twitter to have heard about the #EndSARS hash tag that has been circulating throughout the internet and has been making very serious waves across the country since about four days ago. If you’re not clear on the whole thing, I’ll give you an insight. SARS means Special Anti Robbery Squad, and it is a branch or subdivision of the Nigerian Police which was supposedly created to combat armed robbery. Unfortunately, members of the SARS division have done a terrible job since its creation, and have barely helped solve the social issue it was brought to solve. Worst of all, these men, who are armed, and usually wear no uniforms or any form of identity seem to constitute much more nuisance in our society than even the armed robbers. Every day, the youths in Nigeria get physically abused by members of the SARS who usually fabricate crazy stories about what occupation they ‘assume’ the young person engages in. They can see a well dressed young man with an iPhone and a laptop, and an automatic assumption and conclusion is that such person is fraudulent and partakes in advanced fee fraud, or they see a well dressed lady and she becomes a prostitute. This is usually followed by great brutality, slapping, kicking, threats to kill, and in a lot of cases, killing of an innocent young person. You see, you don’t need to be on Twitter to have heard about #EndSARS, or to know the story of the evil these people commit, or to know that our country as a whole has a very big problem – I mean very big problems- that need to be solved. The hash tag is meant to be a reaction by the angered youths on social media calling for the government to dissolve the SARS section of the police.
Our president, in my opinion, is doing just as well as a deformed vegetable would do in office. He hasn’t given any response to the Nigerian plea for people to scrap SARS, and there has been no official word from the presidency. OK, we may say it’s because Twitter is a social network, and a government being led by an uneducated man, and led by other uneducated, or simply people that couldn’t care any less about the country they lead. The sensible ones on Twitter then decided to call on an actual rally, a protest on the streets against SARS, and funny enough, that same day, the auditions for Big Brother Nigeria held. There were over 200,000 tweets concerning #EndSARS, but the number of people who came out to protest was disappointing. Mind you, it was a Saturday. The BBN auditions got a massive turnout anyway, because, well, an average youth would rather get a very slim chance of winning 200,000 USD than fixing a huge societal problem.
Nigerians have many problems, and each one seems to cause a bigger one, and the bigger one causes another very big one. It’s like one big chain, honestly. The issues seep very deep into all our systems that almost absolutely nothing works. However, the one problem that we have that has made others continue is the problem which Fela Anikulapo Kuti refers to as ‘Suffering and Smiling’. We are way too docile, and that is why the other problems such as corruption, bad leadership, and even foreign exploitation continue to mess our country up. We easily forget. And, we easily forgive. You see, this country has seen so many phases that would (in a developing, or developed country) throw the youths into a serious protest. In this country, the youths do nothing, and it is because they don’t know, and haven’t reasoned the negative impact every decision made by these leaders can cost us, and our children. We see a problem, we sit in our bedrooms, or under the bridge, and grumble, and do more grumbling, and give up. We believe our governments are untouchable, and that in the end, they have all the power.
No. It shouldn’t be that way. 200,000 tweets are just mere words to the government. They mean absolutely nothing. There was an episode of AJStream on Aljazeera after the tweets gained attention. Sadly, the AJ Stream featured one Abayomi Shogunle, the Assistant Commisioner of Police, and the man himself isn’t a very bright individual, and in my opinion doesn’t have the good of the nation at heart. Many good speakers such as @segalink and @Chydee also spoke. All good, but will that get the attention of the government? Not everybody is on Twitter, and if the youths realize this, it will go a long way.
We should understand that countries that have experienced change and development didn’t only have it because they had very good leaders (sadly, Nigeria has barely had that since the British left), it is because the citizens of these countries know when and how to protest in order to get the attention of the people. Here in our country, one man spear heads a protest against a law, or leads a cause against the government, and a threat is issued, and he dies down, or worse, they call him and the leaders of the protest, offer them millions of taxpayers’ money, and the whole thing goes away while the government’s bad law continues and everyone else suffers.
It may seem funny to use this example, but if you have watched Angry Birds: The Movie, you’d see that Nigerians are in a situation akin to that of the birds who were previously always happy, no matter what happened. When the Pigs stole their eggs, they remained happy, until Red (the protagonist) urged them that being happy wouldn’t solve their issues, and that they needed to be angry to get back their eggs. The bad leaders keep stealing our eggs, and keep messing up our future. Sitting at home will not solve it, tweeting may not solve it. When people come out en masse to protest, it shows the government that something needs to be done quick. We need to be angry, yet tactical.
In this country, nothing is working. It’s ridiculous (though not funny) how terrible things have gotten, and how satisfied we are with them. We worship these politicians who should be changing the country for good but are totally care free towards the people’s plea. This means that the time has come to act. When a government knows it’s citizens are always eager to remain quiet, they wouldn’t mind doing things wrongly and having the audacity to go internationally and declare that the people are happy under their government. Don’t just keep quiet, do something!  There is really no better time to act than now.