During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, I was with a friend in Manchester when I got a call from Nigeria. It was a former course mate of mine at Igbinedion University asking for my help.
According to the Head of Department, her records showed that she was missing a 100-level course, so she could not graduate that July with everyone else. The solution? Have sex with him or pay him N20,000.
What is not important is that I sent £100 to her the next day via one of those eye-gouging money transfer services, and she was thus able to pay off Mr Lecturer and graduate on time. What is important is that nobody reading this who is familiar with how Nigeria works, is in any way surprised by this objectively horrendous story. It is just casually accepted that such interminably parasitic behaviour is normal here – acceptable even.
Whether it is university lecturers sexually molesting their female students at will, or armed police officers dressed like pantomime gangsters traumatising upwardly young men and robbing them of their money and valuables, it is assumed that in Nigeria, wherever a person with any power meets someone subject to that power, a parasitic relationship will develop.
Excising the parasites once and for all
When one falls victim to malaria, the advice repeatedly heard is “complete the dosage.” This is because while antimalarial drugs do often have an immediate impact that may result in the sufferer achieving some relief, the only way to conquer the illness is to tackle the parasite with more firepower than it can handle. If that does not happen, the parasite only suffers a temporary setback before successfully stepping up its efforts to inflict more suffering on its host.
In fact, the parasite may develop a measure of tolerance for the drug counteracting it, which means that only the complete recommended dose has any chance of displacing it. The same principle applies in the context of dealing with Nigeria’s entrenched parasites who feed on their youthful hosts. The efforts to fight against Nigeria’s social parasitism in all its forms must be joined up, coherent and consistent.
Currently, the known pattern for dealing with these controversies when they occasionally boil over is to get a hashtag trending on social media, followed by a few days of furious back-and-forth “conversations.” In the real sense of things, this does not particularly achieve anything, but as with all things social media, people come away with an inflated sense of achievement for having taken part in an “important conversation.”
The parasites have become aware of this and have developed a coping strategy for dealing with social media firestorms. Some simply wait out the controversy, banking on our goldfish-sized attention spans. Others send proxies to poison and divert the conversation, for example turning a conversation about sexual harassment of women at universities into a critique of female dressing. Whatever the specific tactic, it has the undesirable effect of taking attention away from offenders and the need for systemic change to protect vulnerable young Nigerians.
From the point of view of a Nigerian affected by parasitism, this clearly, is just not good enough. Let us consider a couple of examples from Africa and beyond, illustrating how to deal with situations we find unacceptable.
What Hong Kong teaches us about opposition campaigning
Until recently, Hong Kong was not somewhere associated with conflict or unrest of any kind. That has changed completely as the city’s youthful population has staged one of the most effective and visible protest campaigns in modern history over the past few weeks. There are many things to take away from how they have gone about seeking their desired outcome, but for the purpose of this article, their sheer persistence is what I want to pick out.
The protesters understand two things clearly – that Hong Kong’s only leverage against the Chinese central administration is its position as a truly global trade and finance hub (which gives China something to lose); and that it is futile to negotiate democracy with Beijing. Rather than peter out of steam after a few days, the protests have only gotten bigger over the weeks, becoming a real headache to China’s conformity-hungry government.
Unlike their Nigerian counterparts who often fail to understand that they have nothing left to lose, young Hongkongers have displayed a consistent willingness to thoroughly disrupt the economic and governance system of the island until they are heard. They understand that power yields only to power, not to impassioned tweets or light protests with all of 30 people in attendance.
The fight against sexual harassment in Nigeria’s higher institutions likewise, must dispense with all pretensions to civility – rapist lecturers and a system that excuses, enables and covers for them have already struck the first blow. This blow has to be returned with interest through unusual measures to thoroughly disgrace implicated lecturers and make their employment and private lives as unfeasible and uncomfortable as possible. The parasites must not get a break – full dosage must be administered.
The people sitting in the university senate buildings have an obvious vested interest in avoiding systemic changes, so it is the student bodies themselves that must embark on a series of nonviolent guerrilla campaigns to drive home the point that #TimesUp is not just an optimistic social media hashtag. If it means sacrificing a few months to campus closures and student union actions, they must understand that it is better to take that pain than to persist with the status quo, because being raped is not an acceptable price to pay in exchange for graduating from university.
Weaponising video: The Sudanese masterclass
Sudan presents another recent example of what goes into successful revolutionary campaigning. The Sudanese protesters used social media and the internet, not merely to organise and exchange “gist,” but as a weapon against the regime. The day-to-day reality of the protests and the regime’s brutal response was comprehensively filmed and documented via livestreams and uploads for global consumption, complete with a successful online colour campaign that further raised awareness.
Through this massive effort, the whole world developed empathy for the protesters as real, 3-dimensional people, and got to witness a Sudanese military massacre live and in real-time. Global news media picked up on the story and soon Bashir’s government was left without allies at home and abroad, tried and convicted with evidence submitted by thousands of Sudanese people with cheap smartphones. Parasites hate international media coverage because it leaves them isolated and vulnerable.
Young Nigerian men and women must similarly be constantly prepared to film all parasitic interactions with people abusing their authority, and put it before billions of eyeballs on the internet. This is a power far greater than anything a crooked police officer or a rapist university lecturer can muster. We must not be afraid to use it. Clandestine video recording equipment embedded in clothing or eyewear is cheaply and readily available for as little as N7,000. Young Nigerian men at risk of SARS harassment in particular must quickly learn how to weaponise documentation through video sharing like our Sudanese counterparts did.
For the avoidance of doubt, the fight against parasitism and abuse of power against young Nigerians is just another front in the wider war for the soul of a country led by octogenarians while its median age is 17.9. Instead of being helpless victims constantly praying for a miracle that never comes, perhaps it is time for us to follow the footsteps of other young people in Africa and Asia who are seizing control of their own destinies. We often hear that power is taken, not given.
Are we finally ready to start taking it?
DAVID HUNDEYIN
