Some of the recurring problems of poverty, corruption, vices, and the perennial decay in our society can be attributed to a hope decline. When people are no longer driven by hope, they stop trying. When they become convinced that nothing they do ultimately matters, they imprison their own agency; they look everywhere else for survival except within themselves. When they cannot find what they are looking for, they let things decay and die. When a people no longer have hope, the wellsprings that enliven their societies dry up.
People can survive environmental disasters, nuclear bombings, setbacks, poverty, and whatever lousy hand fate deals with them, but no society can beat a loss of hope. Hope is a self-motivating essence, an ethic, and a prerequisite for a society to keep advancing.
Two recent incidents in the country got me thinking about how people act when this source of self-directing agency has been toxified. The first was the vandalisation and looting of government establishments, including the ICT centre in Kano scheduled for opening the following week. The second was the protesters flying the Russian flag and openly calling for a coup. Both incidents look disparate, but they are connected by the embitteredness of people who are missing a vital ingredient and happy to destroy what subsists, even if only for the perverse delight of watching it all burn.
You look at the photograph of the protesters cum looters, and you see young men for whom the ICT centre spelt nothing but just another space where the scions of the oppressive ruling class will deepen the privilege that will further deepen the divide among them. They do not see any connection between what will happen in an ICT centre and their own future—not because they are blind, no—but because they are well-informed enough about the state of the country to know that very little of what it represents concerns their future. Without the hope that the outcome of the gatherings that will take place in that Kano centre will have any material impact on their future, why should such a place be allowed to stand?
People who still have some hope protest differently. They are mindful to preserve the symbolic objects of the administrative state knowing that, for all its faults, it still has enough integrity contained within it, to do right by them. Even when they are angry enough to destroy things, they are strategic. People who have lost faith that anything can be better will burn things just to be tickled by the dancing flames.
We can say the same of those carrying the Russian flag and baiting Vladimir Putin to come to their rescue. Call them deluded all you want, but do not overlook their driving outlook. Their misbelief is coming from somewhere. If they want a breakdown of democracy, it is because its meaning no longer corresponds to their desire to thrive. Democracy no longer spells freedom to be; it has become a four-year carnival during which we renew the power of our regular oppressors. What we call democracy in this part of the world is an ever-increasingly expensive venture with little or no returns. The sum of money an impoverished poor country like Nigeria regularly wastes on conducting poor elections that will inaugurate poor leadership is enough to make one despair. You can take away the flags, incarcerate the tailor who sowed it for them, and even try these protesters for sedition, but their mindset to destroy a country that has become oppressive will remain.
The easiest thing is to look at these people and dismiss them as blindly ignorant. But what if they are not? They have eyes and can see that the African countries recently overtaken by a coup are not faring any better. Since 2020, Africa has turned into the world’s coup belt. Some have been successful, others failed. But when was the last time anyone heard anything about these countries thriving under their new military overlords? Those looking for a coup in Nigeria are also people who live in regions ransacked by Boko Haram and banditry; they know the weaknesses of the Nigerian military. They know that the golden age of the military has passed and what now subsists is an institution heavily diminished by the Nigerian factor. Yearning for a coup, backed by Russia or not, cannot be simply because they are stupid enough to believe it will bring a radical change in their conditions; they just want to see the existing order burn.
In the wise in which they are looking for a strong man who can use their power to override reality, they are not all that different from their southern counterparts similarly waiting for Donald Trump to win the US presidency so he can magically wave a wand over the crises in different world zones. Neither Putin nor Trump considers them relevant to anything, but that will not stop them from fantasising that a higher transcendental power can put an end to this present darkness. It is a loss of faith in the country and its bureaucratic systems.
Some have been content to point out the complacency of these same coup seekers under the administration of Muhammadu Buhari where they serially went through enervating policies, but which they patiently endured. While this prejudice might be true, it is not enough to merely point out the obvious. We must also go beyond the simple and satisfying answers. To dismiss these people as little-minded bigots who assume that political power in Nigeria must begin and end with them will satisfy our prejudiced instincts but leave us no clearer on why things came to be the way they are now.
Why would those who suffered under a leadership whose connection to them was merely symbolic be zombified by the mere vicarious pleasure of seeing him as a representation of themselves in power? Is it that shallow political representation is the only citizenship claim Nigeria presently extends us? Buhari offered them nothing, and in fact, took everything from them. Yet, they could hardly be motivated to act on their condition until he was replaced. That itself is telling of the meaninglessness at the heart of what we call the Nigerian nation.
Now that all is calm again, our leaders need to think deeply about seeking ways to offer people hope in themselves and the nation. It is worth noting that the All Progressives Congress 2023 campaign slogan was “Renewed Hopefulness,” alluding to the 1993 election that also promised hope. One year later, I do not think anyone looks around them and sees a basis for hope renewal. If anything, the APC has drained the little hope that mobilised people. And that is a problem.
When people do not have hope, they also have nothing to lose. When people have nothing to lose, they also gain nothing. Everything around them decays and dies. Hope is not just a feeling or a sense of anticipation; hope is an ethic, freedom, and progress. When Apostle Paul says the greatest of the triumvirate of faith, hope, and love is love, it is because love culminates faith and hope. Without faith, one cannot hope; without hope, there is no faith; without both, one cannot love. People cannot love their country if they lack the hope that gives faith.
The greatest calamity that can befall a nation is not corruption, poverty, sickness, or disease; it is loss of hope. How a society demonstrates hope reflects its relationship to time—the past and the present as a means of charting the path toward a more auspicious future. When people are no longer hopeful of the possibilities that can unfold through their reason and action, they deactivate their moral agency and start an uninhibited acceleration toward decay.
Credit: Abimbola Adelakun