Thursday, Aug. 1, manifested the very thing those that advised against the planned 10 days of “hunger protests” feared: violence. That day, destruction and death trailed the protesters’ march and security forces’ high-handed response – an inevitable outcome of a meeting of bonfire and gunfire.
The protesters, iqqn their large numbers, exhibited a typical crowd mentality. A man lost in a crowd is no different from a beast in the wild. Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to his son, advised the young man to “observe any meetings of people and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers; when the numbers are very great, all sense and reason seem to subside, and one sudden frenzy to seize on all, even the coolest of them.” And Floyd O. Rittenhouse says, “Under the whipped-up emotion of group psychology, so-called “good citizens” participate in lynching and burnings, acts which under saner conditions of individual morality they would not even consider. In war men will kill strangers, although in other circumstances they would never do it.”
The immensity of the “crowd pull” on the individual is great. We saw it in the violent behaviour of demonstrators during last June’s ant-tax riots in Kenya. The anger was directed against the government but those that were hurt the most were not government officials but innocent citizens and their businesses. Before then, Nigeria had its #ENDSARS anger boiling over and spilling onto the streets in October 2020. Property was destroyed and several lives were lost in the terrifying waves of crowd madness or mindlessness. Violence need no be the inevitable result of crowd action if the organizers control their “foot soldiers” and the government learns to withhold suppression of a protest until the stage of action is reached. It should be possible for protest leaders to “sift the grain from the chaff”, separate genuine change agents from troublemakers. However, this isn’t always the case. This is because the organizers are more interested in numbers than motive. The higher the number of people that take part in a protest march, the more successful it is, in their view. But, always, this mix of “the good, the bad and the ugly” proves too hard to manage. As for the government, its resort to political oversimplification instead of showing true understanding of the cause of the discontent isn’t helpful either. In its thinking, the majority of citizens lack the capacity to articulate their opinions about the government unless some political party or politician pushes them. This is wrong.
Democracy recognizes the right of citizens to dissent. Protest is a form of dissent which, itself, is an expression of the will. The American First Amendment provides “Congress shall make no law …. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people … to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Thomas I. Emerson in his book “Toward A General Theory of the First Amendment” states that “open discussion, far from causing society to fly apart, stimulates forces that lead to cohesion”. He argues that this position “rests upon the concept of political legitimation.” According to him, “allowing dissidents to expound their views enables them to “let off steam””, leading to “a release of energy, a lessoning of frustration and a channeling of resistance into courses consistent with law and order.”
Nigeria’s amended 1999 constitution, parodied from America’s, awards the citizen the right to assemble and to express disapproval of unfavourable government policies and actions. But he must do so, only making sure he is within the parameter of law and order. The government, on its own part, must recognize this right and make its expression possible. For instance, the government should instruct its security forces to protect, not provoke, protesters who stay within the armbit of the law. What troops did on the first day of the protests in Abuja, shooting and killing a young man who, apparently, was walking away, not running, from them was provocative. And so was the mob attack on and murder of a woman who didn’t join in the protest. The point I’m trying to make here is that both parties must recognize their powers and responsibilities and act as they are required to. This way, to quote Shakespeare, all will be well that ends well. Or will it?
