The ‘Eníkànlómòs’ and 2023 General Elections

From queuing to buy premium motor spirit (PMS) at inflated prices while the Minister of Petroleum Resources President Muhammadu Buhari pretends everything is fine, to queuing at the Automated Teller Machine (ATM ) gallery to pick up the scarce newly designed naira notes, Nigerians are a unique group of people to study in terms of their resilience and adaptation to idiosyncrasies. Suffering is normalized while those who protest against the system programmed to enslave people are ruthlessly attacked into silence. In this season of anomie, the structures of civil society have collapsed or mingled with the structures of oppression. Blind loyalty has masked the faces of the enslaved people so as not to see that their oppressors, what they themselves fight for, do not suffer to queue to get fuel or access the new naira notes . Their ‘banks’ supply them with the new naira notes and they spray it at social events. The politicians among them get the redesigned currency to pay the crowds mobilized to their campaign grounds and keep the rest for election-day voting transactions.

Afrobeat legend Eedris Abdulkareem released Jaga Jaga in 2004, in which he questioned the disruptive nature of Nigerian society. Jaga Jaga speaks to Nigeria’s systemic chaos and malfunctioning system that breeds high-level poverty, suffering and crime. The late Fela Anikulapo Kuti captured this in 1978 in ‘shuffering and shmiling’. In it, Fela descended heavily on religion as one of the tools to enslave people. He wondered why people were hesitant to challenge the status quo despite their suffering and found that religion was at the root of this obedience. Armed deprivation is used by the ruling class to divide, rule and suppress resistance. They choose one person or persons from each ethnic group to nail their people into servitude. The parasitic ruling elite is united against the oppressed, but the oppressed are divided against themselves. A divided oppressed group cannot mobilize to challenge their oppressors. This piece seeks to provoke readers’ minds to situate their lived experiences as they make decisions about who to vote for in the February 25, 2023 Presidential, National Assembly and Governorship and Assembly elections of March 11, 2023.

Eníkànlómò records people’s lived ‘negative’ experiences regarding policies, life events or political actions and inactivity. Aptly captured because he who wears the shoes knows where it pinches, eníkànlómò explains the pain of 133 million Nigerians experiencing multidimensional poverty. It touches on the plight of the unemployed, the agony of bad governance and the tyranny of the silence of apparently incapacitated trade unions struggling to find the right strategies to deploy, if any, to liberate their members from anti- workers’ governments. I had gone to buy medicine and came back to see no more than 20 people lined up at a bank near the Oyostate government secretariat. I decided to get in line. It was the shortest row along that axis. Tension was high at the ATM gallery as everyone tried to get their hands on the scarce new bills. The discussions that followed the gallery showed no people ready to challenge bad governance. One of those at the ATM said, “Where are the unions that are supposed to be fighting for Nigerians?” and he saw me decorated in Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) shirt and said “see people who should fight for us”. I replied, “you people will have to fight for yourselves, as you support the ruling class against anyone who tries to fight for their rights”.

That discussion ended and what I read was the aggression of the oppressed against another oppressed. The oppressed want people to fight their battles, but do not want to own the war. Still waiting for my turn to back off, a man in his sixties shared with me how Nigeria happens to many, frustrating people’s lives and livelihoods. He was pessimistic about any positive turnaround from those who will be elected in the February and March elections. He said: “Do we have options again? There are some things you want to cry about in Nigeria. Is it Buhari who doesn’t know where Olódó is or Seyi Makinde who won’t remember the way to my house? I’ve told people this isn’t a PDP or APC issue. Just give us the basic amenities. That’s all. We don’t ask too much. Give us good roads. Give us light. We are the ones who drill our boreholes, we buy generators. It’s that bad. It’s not easy at all. Now if we get in line to vote for one person expecting things to get better, don’t lie! None of them can do anything. I will only vote to fulfill justice. Aren’t these the same people who can’t fix the roads in the metropolis? Can you drive a brand new car on the roads of Nigeria for five years? I have high blood pressure but when I travel I may go off my meds for days and when I check my blood pressure it is normal. So I’m not sick, it’s the location (Nigeria). Once you are in Nigerian airspace, the darkness will welcome you. You cannot drive on roads without fear of being kidnapped. When you come home, warmth will welcome you because there is no light”

The Enikanlomos are those whose relatives have been kidnapped and those who have been murdered in our ill-equipped hospitals. They are professional drivers who have to queue for hours to get fuel to survive on a daily basis. They are passengers who pay extra for transportation because their government cannot solve the problem of petroleum refining in Nigeria, which they had promised for over seven years. Still, people have to survive. Private companies have to make ends meet in this difficult economic climate. Consumers will suffer. The minimum wage of civil servants has become a poverty wage. Nigeria’s power holders do not supply power to homes, so people have to queue to buy fuel to power their generating sets and their vehicles. The masses, the poor, the weak, the talakawas, the working class, the students in public tertiary institutions who will soon pay new fees all over the country and their parents are also among the enikanlomos who feel the pain of a dysfunctional system.

But the victims of a bad system can also contribute to the creation of a dysfunctional system by being fanatical about variables such as religion, ethnicity and political party in determining who should be elected next (Talókàn) to lead and control them. to govern.

Unlike enikanlomo, Emilokan (I am next in line) takes the right to acquire socially valued or desired roles and status. It was popularized by All-Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Bola Tinubu when he thundered that he was next in line to become the “king” after many years of working as a “kingmaker.” However, Emilokan only elevates the person above the people and does not necessarily show how selfhood embodies altruism. Aside from Tinubu, all the participants say it’s their turn to rule, but it’s hard to see any substance in their quest to serve the people other than realizing lifelong ambition. Talókàn (who should be the next leader?) is a question voters should answer by trying as much as possible to scrutinize those who are contending and asking which of these top candidates for the position of president, state governor and legislature i would employ if nigeria or my state would be my private company facing the current challenges?

• Dr. Tade, a sociologist and media consultant, writes at dotad2003@yahoo.com

READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN STAND