An Invitation Of Intimidation, by Kene Obiezu

Show some dignity! That should be what  anyone  that has the ears of the Nigerian state should be telling it. In these days when Boko Haram has returned to the North from its hiatus with vengeful wrath, it is unseemly and especially scandalous for the Nigerian state to elect to distract itself and divert the attention of its critics by deploying its resources against Joe Ajaero, the president  of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).

What is his crime? Of course, a long list has unfurled at the same time he unfolded the summons by both the police and the DSS. But the world and his wife knows that the invitations are instruments of intimidation.

The NLC Is the powerhouse union of Nigerian workers. When it sneezes even Aso Rock, the seat of Nigeria’s president, catches cold. Given the central role it plays in corralling Nigerian workers into a single union that is a union of unions, forging them into a formidable coalition that has stared down successive governments, the NLC’s considerable armory includes weapons that can shut down the country on very little notice.

Indeed, on many occasions, chilling notices of strike action by the NLC has sent the Federal Go scrambling to the NIC for injunctions.

Recently, the NLC has collided with the FG on the issue of national minimum wage. Tense meetings redolent of terse exchanges between government officials and the union have yielded a slew of grudging concessions by the government.

The NLC has historically been a thorn in the side of successive governments which largely prefer to sidestep it.

The protests of August 1 to 10^th may have failed to pick up full steam, but there is no doubt that it has rattled the administration of President Bola Tinubu to its core which is a surprise because Nigerians waited for a long time to do it.

While the NLC did not join the protests which found surprising impetus in the North as a union, the union threw its weight behind the protests, blaming the government for making life unbearable for Nigerians.

The protests may have died down for now, but the government is worried sick about a repeat and the ripple effects in a country where insecurity and poverty make an astonishingly combustible combination. To forestall future protests, the NLC president has been interrogated by the police and invited by the DSS. This is as far as intimidation and the weaponization of fear can go in a country whose hardwon democracy is an inconvenience for temporary occupants of public office.

But if the instruments of intimidation pointed at the NLC president and invariably at the union he leads are meant to preclude futures protests, then those instruments are doomed to be blunted against the newly ferocious will of the Nigerian people.

Something is unmistakably stirring. Nigerians are no longer as docile as they used to be. Its young people have acquired the desperation and defiance of an animal at bay and are prepared to take their chances. The last elections showed it. The relatively short time it took for people to find their voices in protest against the current government is another pointer.

As the cost of living makes living unbearable just as Boko Haram has turned many parts of the country to killing fields, Nigerians have lost their traditional sense of caution and courtesy towards power and even the intimidatory gimmicks and tactics of security agencies are failing to restore them. Such is the potency and insolence of hunger.

As for the police and DSS, the obsequious eagerness cast into repeatedly inviting the NLC president thereby intimidating the union he leads is ominous. In a country where terrorists are carving out vast killing fields out of defenceless communities, one would think that the agencies of state to which Nigerians have contracted their security would be too busy with pressing priorities. But, no, what do they do?

Since the protests ended, they have been eagerly rounding up those who got involved one way or the other, no doubt intent to show them that the government will not condone any dissent or disruption.

However, a government that is not prepared to condone dissent or disruption must also be one above board. It must be a government doing and seen to be doing all it can to give those who live under it the best of leadership and life. This lofty aims which seem to currently be beyond the present administration cannot be without the constructive dissent and disruption which is the tonic of any democracy. If the government is serious about its commitments, it should welcome the stones Nigerians throw at it and use them to built solid foundations for the country instead of clutching at straws, grasping the thin air, and seeking to build castles in the air out of grandiose promises and illusions of competence and sophistication.

Nigerians can no longer be cowed by the fathomless and bottomless chasms of silence erected by the Nigerian state. The DSS and the police which have shown an alarming predilection to provoke and be provoked must rein int their excesses and concentrate on the real enemies of Nigeria.

The enemies of Nigerians are not in the NLC. Neither is the man who leads it one of such enemies. Nigerians know who their enemies are and where they are, and it is only a matter of time before they go after them again.

How tragic indeed is the fate of a state that leaves weighty matters affecting it to chase imaginary rats.

Kene Obiezu

keneobiezu@gmail.com