Nigerian post-civil war protest culture is unfortunately largely foreign based. Present day Nigerian radical elements mostly prefer to protest from safe heavens(foreign nations). A Nigerian writer, journalist, musician, etc, who wants to embark on an anti-establishment project for example, relocates abroad, usually to Europe or America.

This is the major reason ballyhoos staged as protests in capital cities of some foreign nations in recent times could not register the level of impact needed to effect meaningful changes in the status quo.

Why for instance should a corrupt cabal sitting in the comfort of the presidential villa in Abuja, awash with petro/gas dollars, pick up its briefcase and vacate office just because a group of foreign based Nigerians and their friends are having jamborees on the streets of London, Washington and Moscow in the name of protests? No pragmatic person would expect that to happen of course since nothing was disrupted at the location in which the cabal is domiciled, as we normally say on the streets, “nothing spoil”. What would rather happen would be that this cabal would balance the situation by renting the ever available crowd to stage counter jamborees in its favour.

In rare occasions when these so called protests are staged locally, they are usually built around egocentric personalities who live mostly in the cities, with little or no contacts with the masses. When these super stars are eventually “taken out” one way or the other by this usually astute reactionary cabal, those left would be too unorganized to sustain a meaningful resistance.

What the Nigerian masses need at this point in time are “peoples’ warriors” in the mould of Fumilayo Ransome-Kuti and Margaret Ekpo, living with them and feeling their daily pains, to rise and lead them to sustained, localized and broad based resistance.

By Chidi Anthony Opara
   
http;//www.chidiopararesume..com