Making democracy work amid hate speech, increasing angst
EVEN as the blind cannot see, they can explain whirlwind if
they encounter it. When signs evolve into manifestations, they cease to be mere
hints. There is tension in the air. Nigeria is at the precincts of a dire
social situation. Our saving grace is that we are still in the budding stage of
the emerging trend hence, we can nip it in the bud or manipulate the tender
shoots to grow into a healthy plant.
It is no longer news
that across country, there are theatres of protest that exhibit orchestrated
disaffection, angst and anomie. Someone would quickly conclude that the land is
engulfed in crises. Many of which are man-made while some are caused by natural
circumstances. Streets are charged by expressions of outcries over elections
(be them of community leaders or of the leadership of public organisations and
states).
There are vociferous protests on air in the media, in pubs,
community squares, churches and mosques over almost everything, be it general
internal security situations, office appointments or one policy or the other.
There are so many public hoots over all
manner of developments by several bitterly agitated interest groups that it seems
some folks now reason that they now have ample opportunities to exhibit some
long-bottled acrimony over the nation state or that everybody is now being
annoyed at the same time.
The streets are simmering in so many fronts in all parts of
the nation, and all are venting without letting to the extent that even the
most indifferent would find a need to show concern. Most vilified in the
plethora of public opprobrium are government agencies and policies, then
politicians and in just a few occasions, business firms. But the worse
dimension of the trend is the emergence of unjustified ethnic exclusion and
group stigmatisation to whip up public hatred against some innocent sections of
the citizenry.
From nowhere, short films, parodies and skewed viginettes pitching one Nigerian
ethnicity against another are now emerging in startling numbers in social
media. Producers of the contents consciously package them to spread messages
that will create bad blood in one part of the country against their targeted
section or sections of the society. They serve the pieces of hate
communications in such sensational manner that they almost instantly sow fear,
high suspicion and enmity in the mind of their receivers with an intent to reap
from the crises that could ensue.
Through WhatsApp, I recieved at least three of such
intensely hate-ladden materials within the last five days. Nothing could move
against logic in the contents! But it would take a very informed person or at
least someone who is genuinely keen on verifying facts to unravel the lies from
the pits of hell in the odious, deliberately obscured materials with spreading
hatred as their core goal.
One was a WhatsApp video recording which featured a
loquacious, boastful and crudely trash-talking young man in a white shirt boxed
in one corner of an enclosure (with nothing in the plain background to indicate
his location). In the video the man, possibly in his thirties or forties, dwelt
garrulously on how Igbo and Hausa/Fulani people destroy and abuse Lagos. As one
struggled through a harrowing 10-minute waste of time to survive the disgusting
broadcast before dashing out to the loo to vomit, it became clear that he was
actually ranting on Igbo nuisance in his Yoruba Lagos.
Not quite 24 hours after, an Edo-born pal and colleague of
mine in Lagos forwarded a long WhatsApp text message with the title, ‘Who
Handed Over Nigeria to the Fulani,?’ (sic). I tried to read the whole length
but got pissed off. It was another disjointed conspiracy theory article spread
on social media with the intention of showing the Yoruba that their enemy is
Igbo and Fulani. Knowing my friend, a highly placed and influential journalist
in a national newspaper, neither wrote nor could have encouraged the writing of
such piece but angry with the message still, I replied him.
My words:
“I am miffed at the current rise in trend of cross-talks on
‘Yoruba this’, ‘Igbo that’, ‘Hausa/Fulani the other’ themes.
“This is how it started in the Rwanda of 1990 to 1994.
“Like play, like play, we will run ourselves into a boiling
hole of uncontrollable social hatred and shit will spread.”
Kindly cope with informal language. It was a friend to
friend exchange.
The Rwandan situation I referred to was the East African
country’s civil war of October 1, 1990 to July 18, 1994 (the Rwanda Genocide)
which had the nation-state’s two ethnicities, Hutu and Tutsi clash against each
other. It was one of modern world’s most gory wars. Exchange of hate speech in
the mass media fuelled and sustained the conflict. The media so spread and
enshrined bad blood that pogroms even happened inside churches, schools and
hospitals. To date, narratives of Rwanda civil war like the Holocaust of 1930s
Germany and Eastern Europe still embarrass authorities of major Christian
faiths.
I reminded my friend of the better not recalled Rwanda odium
because both of us were practicing journalists when it happened, and none of us
would want it repeated anywhere even in countries of our enemies. We witnessed
an almost similar situation in Liberia and Sierra Leon of 1980s.
Upon reading my comment, my colleague replied thus: “Not my
report oooo.” (inserting cartoon images of laughing faces).
“I know but it riles,” was my further comment.
It became clear to me
that such social media exchanges were in vogue when, in one group WhatsApp
platform, I encountered a piece entitled, ‘Was Zik Wrong in Rejecting Awo for
Balewa in the Leadership Partnership of Nigeria After the 1959 Election
Stalemate of the Three Contenders? The creative writer and media man who wrote
the rippling somewhat like ‘throw-to-me-I-throw-at-you’ piece served a
radically different perspective of the event in contradiction of the issues
raised in ‘Who Handed Over Nigeria to the Fulani,?’ (earlier cited). It is such
that anyone who seeks knowledge would ask: whose account is correct? That is a
peculiar Nigerian doom – absence of sources for fact check which makes citizens
of the country not know much of her civil war, half a century after.
There are a lot more of such troubling communications
currently making the rounds. Though in one part they build gulf between
Nigerian peoples instead of the badly needed bridges, the healthy part of them
is that they remind us that when you fail to give the people facts of vital
historical developments that are important to them, ahistoric historians,
social manipulators and crises merchants will exploit the lacuna to cause
trouble. Countries like Rwanda and Germany have moved on to higher economic
success and ethnic harmony despite their bitterly fought wars because they
creatively avoided the pitfall of making stories of their wars haunt them. They
beat propagandists by declassifying information about the events, building
monuments, galleries and museums, and establishing research faculties where
young ones engage the events as references to the lowest level the nation can
descend, and resolve ‘never again!’ The countries have creatively build nations
where there are people who believe and are given no reason to doubt that they
are bonafide citizens of the same nation as the people who were once their
enemies in war through such a way they structure their politics, and use such
ventures as the arts, sports, and communication for inclusive social
reorientation and mobilisation.
It is also worthy of note that the currently growing trend
of extreme expressions on our streets and in our social media, though worrisome
is evidence of the emergence and thrive of democratic culture. Freedom of expression
is a hallmark of democracy. Placards, loud protests and even grandstanding and
nauseating hoopla are not threats to the wellbeing of democratic societies.
They are it’s traits.
Hence, it will be improper if not damning to attempt to
react to the matter by pressing the ‘panic’ bottun. Some would suggest an
invasion of the streets to disperse protests or placing gags for social media
communication. These may bring short-term relief but long-term damnation. We
just have to evolve creative democratic solutions like creation of
institutional checks and incentives that would divert the frenzy and make the
opportunists who ride on the odious developments know the harm they do to
themselves too whenever they opt to sell their conscience and become vendors of
hate speech and advocates of danger.
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