People’s power in power games

When properly channeled, there is a potentially compelling power in the civilian population of every humanistic – as opposed to martial – society that could dictate the direction of its nationhood. Even martial societies have their tipping points, a red line of sorts upon which people’s power would kick in and take hold. That is what revolutions are all about. It is not for usurpers to play God and hijack or appropriate power for their own narrow ends, because the moral superiority of properly vented power of the people could indeed overawe the physical force of arms. We have the current evidence of Sudan to illustrate that point.  

The North African country is convulsing still from an ongoing people’s uprising that has been dubbed ‘Arab Spring 2’ – that is, taking after the original Arab Spring that flared across the Middle East in late 2010, and which by early 2012 had flushed out long-sitting rulers from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen besides igniting major upheavals in Bahrain, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Oman, among others. Sudan’s uprising as well led to the overthrow mid-last month of President Omar al-Bashir by the country’s military after he had held fort for some 30 years. And at the last count, Sudanese protesters have set a new threshold in leveraging passive resistance by an unarmed civilian populace to compel an armed regime towards desired nationhood ends. Last week, their unyielding resistance forced the military council that has been in power since the sacking of al-Bashir to agree to a transition plan that will largely co-opt civilian role players.

On the heels of booting out al-Bashir, the Sudanese military had wanted to rule solely for a self-defined transitional period before they would return power to civilians. But the country’s civilian population rebuffed that plan and sat-in on the military headquarters to make the regime change its mind. And they are getting their way thus far. Speaking to a press conference last Tuesday, the military rulers announced reaching a power sharing deal with the opposition alliance (apparently exempting al-Bashir’s National Congress Party because that was the party that had been in power until his overthrow). The new deal involves forming a cabinet that will be appointed by the opposition alliance, and a legislative council where civilians will have two-thirds of membership seats. The sticking point remaining is the composition of a proposed supreme council – the topmost echelon of power that will rule the country until elections – where both sides are yet haggling to have the majority and are continuing negotiations to reach an agreement.

Those negotiations were suspended for three days last Thursday by the military rulers, who demanded that protesters remove the barricades they mounted outside a designated zone in Khartoum, the country’s capital. Shots had been fired in a confrontation on Wednesday, with some civilians reported injured as soldiers tried to clear the erected barricades. Similar violence had flared on Monday, leaving at least six people dead and protesters demanding that those responsible be held to account.

The Sudanese uprising may already have failed as a people’s revolution though, because political partisans are crass opportunists and they have hijacked the initiative to take charge of negotiations with the military rulers. When the uprising broke out on 19^th December, 2018, it was motivated by economic factors – namely increases in the prices of fuel and bread that were announced by the al-Bashir government – and it was spearheaded by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) along with some other civil society groups. But the upheaval soon snowballed into a pressure campaign to flush al-Bashir out of power, with activists sitting-in on the military headquarters in Khartoum and vowing not to move until the strongman stepped down. That turn of events forced the hand of the Sudanese military, which had been the mainstay of the ex-president’s rule, to turn on him and topple him on 11^th April, this year. From indications though, they hardly bargained for the staying power of the protesters who, emboldened by al-Bashir’s downfall, have continued to stage massive sit-ins outside the military headquarters to demand instant return to civilian rule. The score on which you could say Sudan has already lost out on a thoroughgoing revolution however is that, saddled with the imperative of restoring normalcy to the country, the military rulers have been forced to negotiation table with political partisans.

‘It is not just treasonable but also unintelligent at the current stage of our nationhood to…remotely suggest military intervention in governance’

A topical debate in the social media space of recent is whether there ever could be a people’s revolution in a country like Nigeria. Such possibility, doubtless, is extremely moot. Besides, reputed commentators have painstakingly outlined the predatory sociological ecosystem of our nationhood that kills every stimulation to such tendency upfront. For instance, ace Nigerian Diaspora scholar Farooq Kperogi, in his incisive piece penultimate week, expounded why a revolution would neither start from the North – because it isn’t in the makings of spiralling cases of banditry and kidnappings, among other security challenges in that region – nor indeed from any other region of this country which have their own essentially similar though peculiarly applicable ecosystems. My view is that even this does not foreclose the fact that people’s power could be applied as a force to influence the direction of our nationhood.

First to dispose of the absurdity: it is not just treasonable but also unintelligent at the current stage of our nationhood to contemplate or remotely suggest military intervention in governance, as was featured in our national conversation these past weeks. We rather must continually seek to strengthen our electoral system, so to make the will of the electorate routinely prevail through the ballot box. Whomever the people genuinely say they want with their votes, let them have and live with whatever fallouts may issue from their choice. But that isn’t to say there is no place for people to weigh in on governance and influence, if not altogether dictate the direction of leadership.

One of the platforms for venting people’s power in our country should be the labour movement. But truth is, it is a far cry here from the Bolshevik temper; hence, labour seems too tokenistic and self-interested to aggregate and appropriately vent the concerns of the populace as could effectively impact the direction of governance to the public’s overall benefit. Recent encounters with Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige were instructive in this regard.

Activists had picketed the minister’s residence penultimate week mainly to compel his installing labour icon Chief Frank Kokori as chair of the National Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF); but the Presidency came up after-the-fact, and after being mute on the issue for upwards of two years, to deny Kokori was ever nominated for the office. Also, labour staged a street protest in the federal capital on Monday avowedly to force Ngige’s hand to implement the new minimum wage signed into law many weeks back by the President; meanwhile, an implementation panel was only inaugurated by the President himself last week on the back of the said protest. A dispassionate observer would simply wonder whether the whole uproar by labour was all about personal confrontation with the minister or about taking on government over its policy stances.

Other than labour, civil society groups as well ought to be veritable avenues for venting the people’s power. But in the Nigerian experience, we scarcely hear their voice in the general affairs of governance.

For the good health of our democracy, however, it important the potential of people’s power remains a potent factor of consideration in governance. Economic hardship is one trigger that it is wise for government to do all it can to mitigate. And it is high time critical segments of our polity – like labour and civil society – rose up to appropriately aggregating and venting the mood and grassroots experiences of the populace.