A few days ago, it was reported that a series of disturbing phone calls and text messages were successively sent to Yinka Odumakin, the national publicity secretary of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG). The shadowy group called themselves (sic) “The great international Assazins, harm Robbery, kidnapkers,” simply requested for (sic) “our offering” failing which his life and those of his family would be in danger. They provided bogus Nigeria and UK telephone numbers for return contacts. It is difficult to know at this stage whether the perpetrators of this life threatening harassment are yahoo boys, men of the underworld, political adversaries or even any of the current rampaging militias as Yinka was referred to as Mr. Afenifere in the text messages. But this is not the focus of my commentary.
Yinka’s ARG activities are also vibrant online in at least 3 discussion egroups that I know. In fact, the internet represents one of the fastest outlets by which ARG positions and releases are disseminated. Nigerians of various extractions on the egroups appreciate Yinka’s selfless socio-political ARG efforts and actually associate these efforts with the struggle to liberate Nigeria from forces of backwardness, darkness and vacuous political class. Though Nigerians online reacted to the threat on Odumakin’s life with dismay, overall, the reactions were largely suppressed, somewhat timid. The most responders could do was to convey their good wishes to Yinka and offer to keep him in their prayers. Some worried whether the Nigerian police had been contacted; others offered passages from the Bible that Yinka could be reciting for protection during this period of fear in his life. Then the beat goes on across various other exchanges on how to reclaim Nigeria.
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Folks, this Odumakin incident define that critical intersection in any social struggle where the rubber meets the road. It is the crucible moment in the life of any fighter, social critic or activist that is engaged in the struggle for emancipation of the Nigerian peoples from oppression and impoverishment. If any Internet warrior is unsure about how hard this struggle is! This is a clue. When you fight the Nigerian rot, it fights you back. The Nigerian corruption doesn’t fight according to some United Nations war ethics or Geneva conventions. It fights back with its own rule of no-rule. It could use fetish means, 419 warfare, intimidation, corrupt legal system, area boys’ violence or blackmail. Any method is fair game in the hands of our visionless political class just so they maintain the status quo.
In our Internet activism, we write and pontificate on the problems with Nigeria and sometimes proffer similarly theoretically logical solutions. But it is folks like Odumakin who impart action that moves the cheese. The nature of this kind of confrontation that the Odumakins have to live through at any time is an example of deadly challenges to the struggle that is conspicuously missing or poorly analyzed in our numerous Internet discourses. Just how do you support or defend yourself or a comrade against threat to life from nondescript origins or sources? Do you then just simply report and hand over the incident to the Nigerian Police, double-board your home and nervously go about your life prayerfully with a rented security following you depending on how much you can afford? I mean, just how do you fight for sanity and progress in Nigeria under these kinds of unconventional circumstances? Have asked yourself lately, just how far are you ready to go in the struggle long before encountering your own crucible moments? If you a sympathizer of social activism on the struggles for Nigeria, just how much can do in supporting activists especially during their crucible moments.
This reality is telling us we do not yet have any effective infrastructure whatsoever on ground, on land or online, to fight for Nigeria. We only have a bunch of ragtag ethnic militias and dozens of outdated non-government organizations (NGOs). Fighting for the soul of Nigeria means fighting against extensive corruption and deep social rot; citizen disenfranchisement at elections; stupid national policies; and for accountability; incorruptible judiciary and other institutions; etc, that will provide the platform for national progress. This is a serious charge and it is currently way past midnight of floating conventional NGOs. As things stand now, a group of ordinary criminals or cultist individuals could stop the struggle from making any reasonable advance by simply sending frightening text messages to core personalities. There is probably a need for new-age NGOs. How about an NGO on intelligence gathering? If only to fillip the police in their lack of resources and culture of incompetence. And another NGO on fear neutralization, thus checkmating activities of rented hoodlums that function more as fronts for unscrupulous politicians than as true anti-progress groups. And so and so forth.
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Though a few sympathizers may have been putting up some support actions behind the scenes on land, I believe we could do more online, a heck of a lot more, than merely offering prayers and good wishes to Yinka. One misnomer about Internet activism is that people on ground often dismiss it as sheer noisemaking. But this noisemaking has proved to be a potent social weapon on numerous occasions. Internet discussions have come of age on the Nigerian struggle, now constituting a formidable temperature gauge of social unrest for many a politician at home. Memberships and defensive plays on Internet discussion groups are on top of the menu of character makeover PRO artists whose job it is to burnish questionable images of objectionable politicians. Besides, these days, the politicians themselves sleep with one eye on land and keep the other eye online to verify the new frontier of their unpopularity. Internet noise is regularly used by participants to scuttle ridiculous pastimes that are our corrupt system often rolls out as national policies. The most recent was the idiotic idea of training outgoing kleptomaniac governors on capacity development by the Harvard University in USA. The internet warriors took their outrage to the doorstep of Harvard with email, phone calls and faxes without moving an inch out of their bedroom, forcing Harvard to soft pedal on the profligate project.
Perhaps internet noisemaking can play a role on nondescript warfare technique as well as used by the rich opposition. Send so much email, articles, phone calls, faxes, etc to news outlets at home such that people on land become aware that a life threatening incident is generating so much voltage on the internet that even the local press is forced to treat it as newsworthy news to follow.
As ethnicity still constitutes a bane of our lot in Nigeria, it will probably not be unexpected if some see Odumakin’s situation as only a Yoruba affair. That is perhaps on good reason the Yoruba should have a pretty group blueprint on how to protect its Afenifere “socio-cultural” organization - old or renewed. Above are some humble thoughts.
Me? How far do I want to go in the struggle?
Are you kidding me...I just spent hours writing this!
My papa dey for house...my mama dey for house.
I just build house...I wan build house.
I get one child.... I no wan go.
You should be asking yourself...how far can you and do you want to go in the struggle?
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