Wole Soyinka: Back To The Trenches, Predictably!

Rarely has government alienation from the people it is meant to serve been so pronounced as demonstrated in the recent removal of the so-called oil subsidy. The bruited palliatives, as illusory as electoral promises, belong to what Nigerians routinely describe as ‘medicine after death’. A serious government would have emplaced the ‘palliatives’ first, worked assiduously to ensure that they were effectively enforced, with, at the very least, a guaranteed stabilization of the existing level of Nigerian subsistence – which was nothing to crow about in any case. Nothing remotely approaching this protective measure has taken place, only – Business as Usual.

That this government has found it expedient to approach the courts for a restraining order on the Labour Movement and supporting civil protesters is an irony of history to savour, seeing how little consideration the same government paid to the judiciary as an institutional bulwark in the case of Justice Salami. If Labour therefore chooses to ignore the order, it has impeccable precedents – it is merely the chickens coming home to roost. While Jonathan’s predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, repeatedly pummeled the Judiciary into a state of coma, Goodluck Jonathan has driven an iron stake through its heart.

Equally impaled is the Nigerian civic polity, the barbed stake of economic incontinence – and electoral prodigality – through its productive sinews. The people are placed once again at the mercy of rampaging market forces. That patient beast of burden called the Nigerian citizen is overloaded, its knees are buckled, only its spirit refuses to be crushed. No wonder the gasp that emerges from its constricted throat is that cry of historic desperation: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

Wole SOYINKA, January 6, 2012