EDITORIAL: An End To Activism?

TIME flies, and we are still trying to reconcile the fact that Yinka Odumakin transmitted three years ago. He now belongs to ages, joining an illustrious litany of activists, nationalists, and patriots who contributed immensely to a better society. They include Alao Aka: Basorun, Gani Fawehinmi, Baba Omojola, Actor Nwanko, and Yusuf Bala usman. The list is long. We salute their courage, warts all their life was a blessing.

The question is What on earth has happened to activism in Nigeria? 

The question needs to be answered. For at a time of an excruciating cost-of-living crisis, the response to the crisis has been, to say the least tepid.  

Disconcertingly, there has been known “Alternative Perspective” to crisis. we are remembered here once again of the often-quoted observation of the Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci in his “Prison Notes”. At a similar time of societal dysfunction, Gramsci noted “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.  “WE ARE IN AGE OF MONSTERS”

The “morbid symptoms” reveal themselves almost daily with deadly decisions. For example, the gruesome murder of 17 valiant officers of the Nigerian Army is still too painful to forget; kidnapping, banditry, and adoptions of the defenceless are no longer the head-shaking “Breaking News”. Indeed we are in the age of monsters!

The question has to be asked, “What is to be done?” The dearth of activists reveals a contemporary weakness of civil society. There have been honorable exceptions of course such as SERAP, BUDGIT, and so forth, but never the less, civil society needs to reimpose it exigencies.

Too often, a democratic civil society should have a domineering strength over political society. But this is not, as a result of the weaponization of poverty by political society as a means of social control. The mountain that will fight back to reimpose the authority of civil society will be difficult, but it has to be done.

Civil society and activists must find new ways of redirecting the territory of discourse. Social and other media must be used as an organizing tool to proffer new solutions and perspectives.  A country with 133 million people needs to look at alternatives to the crisis, another guide to the government and political society.

In every area from Agriculture, Health, Education, Defence, and so forth, we must break away from jaded ideas. The old methods have failed. The country needs a new form of activism to get out of the crisis and there is an urgent need for a fresh perspective. We remember fondly the activists of old and we salute their courage.