Peasantry revolution, they say, is the very worst of all kinds of revolution

Echoes of warning from South Africa

So it could happen. They called it Xenophobia. I call it a peasantry revolution. It is bad; whatever leads to the killing of innocent human beings is bad. Bad as it was however, it did not come without its own reasons. Unjustifiable reasons one might say, but the reasons had their own bases. However warped they are. So much has been said, but part of the learning to be picked in the wake of the recent xenophobic violence in South Africa is that a people will throw law to the winds and take their destiny in their hands as soon as they are irked to a breaking point and can identify the causes of their inconvenience.

Part of the lessons should go to the pilfering kleptomaniacs in my country Nigeria who have made it a business looting our monies and investing them overseas. Not knowing that they are most likely looting these monies away to be owned, spent and even lavished by sons of strangers, who know nothing about where or how these monies came to be.

South Africa, a country that has known only violence for the better part of three decades, suddenly found itself berthing at the shores of political and economic emancipation in the early 1990s. At the cost of the peace and happiness of many generations; the blood of many freedom fighters; killings and maiming in the hands of the pro-apartheid oppressors, the nation emerged a truly free country with the emergence of President Nelson Mandela and the subsequent crowning of Thabo Mbeki as a two term president. From the fall of apartheid in South Africa till now, the country has steadily climbed up the ladder of political, economic and social leadership in Africa. Beating even Nigeria and other great African nations in several indices and becoming the true giant of Africa.

As a result, South Africa became the beautiful bride for several companies all over the world. Conglomerates who would establish their African headquarters found South Africa a more likely country of location. This tremendous positive change in economy attracted much influx of Africans from several other countries who flooded into the country in search of employment and indeed a better life. Soon South Africa became filled with several foreigners who besieged the economy to bite their own chunk of the South African pie, highly skilled personnel from Nigeria and other nations took over key positions in corporate and elitist South Africa to the consternation of many indigenous South Africans who had not acquired adequate education as a result of the violent and abnormal society they had grown up and known as adult South Africans.
Coupled with this rude takeover came an alarming increase in drug trafficking in the country, perpetrated mainly by foreigners. It is not a strange fact that many Africans who live in South Africa peddle drugs and are involved in different levels of scam. This undoubtedly resulted in a higher level of crime in a country that was already bedeviled with the gun psyche.

Now the indigenous South African has suddenly woken up from their slumber and they seem to be saying to themselves ‘what the hell is going on? All the years we suffered under the oppression of apartheid, we were all by ourselves. Now that we have won the battle and there is an air of freedom in this country, we should enjoy the dividends of our struggle; these foreigners have flooded in and taken over everything that rightfully belongs to us. Down with them all!’

The South African Xenophobia is outright condemnable. There are many ways a nation can deal with an unwanted influx of foreigners into their economy other than the barbaric annihilation of innocent people, but it does send a signal. Foreigners flooding South Africa had better tread softly; the land is soft and marshy. There is a deep-seated resentment lurking in the hearts of the indigenes, especially if your coming brings along with it unnecessary ostentation and wanton display of wealth.

The South African xenophobia sends echoes of distant, remote and faint signals to Nigeria. Many politicians in Nigeria today, do not realize yet that they have sown the seeds of bitterness and discord amongst a people who are totally irked at the path through which their lives have been taken in the past two to three decades. The same feeling of resentment, which drove South Africans crazy, crazy enough to declare a peasantry war of annihilation on foreigners, resides in the hearts of most Nigerians today. Why wouldn’t it? In the face of so much cheating, oppression, corruption and manipulation? How can a country be at peace in the face of all these anomalies? Calm, there may be, but peace, I think not. The calm in this nation bellies deep down a lot of acrimony, bellicosity and bitterness towards a political class that has continuously taken the people for a ride.

Just like it came to the fore in South Africa a few weeks ago, I wish to alert our leaders in this nation; a revolution is just about to explode in their faces. It will come right from within the heart of every Nigerian who has suffered the bitter pangs of hunger in the midst of plenty; every Nigerian who has watched in silent frustration the ostentatious display of wealth acquired from the nation’s purse right in the midst of the suffering thousands; every Nigerian bitterly pained at the extent of pilferage of public funds. Heads will be broken, houses will be burnt down, mansions will be pulled to pieces, vehicles will be destroyed, skyscrapers will be razed, and some will flee this country and never return. When the frustration and hunger of the poor reaches the apogee, when the anger of the common peasant turns against an evil, greedy and self-satisfying political class which has for years on end taken good care of itself while impoverishing the rest of the populace, and yet telling them ‘we are doing our very best’.

Why would this not happen in Nigeria? Rationality and ‘sense’ would rather have things go easy and by and by regularity would take pre-eminence. Unfortunately history has shown time and again that a mountain of corrupt mis-governance and oppression is rarely ever pulled down in the face of rationality. Freedom is rarely granted from the oppressor to the oppressed without an asking, a refusal of the status quo, a revolution, which is most of the time bloody. If things have to get to that extent in Nigeria, what bloodshed we will see!

What with the rude, impudent and disgraceful bazaar the political class has made of the power situation in Nigeria over these past years, with the issue coming to a crescendo with the embarrassing attempt of the immediate past administration. 16 billion dollars! Some said it is merely 6.5 billion dollars! The former or the latter, what have we seen of it? I mean, this is simply crazy, 6.5 billion dollars is equal to 780 billion Naira, and 16 billion dollars is equal to 2 trillion Naira! Common, I do not need to be a guru of electrical engineering to turn around the fortunes of the energy sector in Nigeria if given that kind of money. All I need is sincerity of purpose and a true, deeply sincere desire to have it done and I am most certainly sure it will be done.

The whole power sector wahala has been investigated, a lot of rubbish revealed, but the case is going the Nigerian way now, with everything getting muddled until everything blurs out of the people’s memory. Hmm! And someone thinks things will continue this way, with the populace suffering the pains of power outages day in day out? It will happen, believe me it will happen, that madness, that situation similar to the xenophobic violence of South Africa, is coming to happen soon, if the people of this nation do not get redress in the face of this mortal injustice.
What with the discovery of the rot in the Ministry of power and housing? An approximate 1 trillion Naira in eight years! Yet there are still no roads, the few ones that are constructed start getting destroyed in a few years, and one thinks, the frustrated Nigerian masses are going to be passive, docile forever? I think not. Every day, thousands die from accidents caused by these bad roads, poor people whose loved ones die every day, poorly funded hospitals who will not treat the poor without money, and then one thinks a mad revolution will not happen someday in the face of all these injustice? My people dying while some are junketing around the globe with our money? Bone story!

This is yet one more cry from another faceless Nigerian, the South African story will be a child’s play with what will happen in this nation if this trend does not stop. Let he who will administer our nation key into the Joseph spirit and administer truly and sincerely, without looting or stealing from his nation. Let him who will fight corruption do so without fear or favor. Let him fight truly and sincerely. Let this nonsense stop where a few benefit at the expense of plenty. One day that suffering plenty will become wise, they willbecome angry, they will take the bull by the horns, damn the consequences and react badly, whatever happens next will be ‘the big bang theory’.