Dr Chris Anyokwu
By Chris Anyokwu When Nigeria’s Afro-pop superstar, 9ice, in his hugely popular smash-hit track “Street Credibility” lyricizes that: “The streets urging me to do more…”, he surely knows what he is talking about. Whatever it is you are doing, you simply neglect or ignore the street at your own peril. The street! Hmn, now let us get down to it, without further ado. In the most elementary sense, a street can be described as “a public thoroughfare, usually paved, in a village, town or city, including the sidewalk or sidewalks” (Google.com). Examples of streets include pedestrian streets, alleys, and city-centre streets. Again, a typical Nigerian street could be sub-categorised into a lane, a close, a side-road, a side-street or a long street usually characterised by pot-holes, puddles, craters, bumps and, sometimes, manholes, always denuded of asphalt or macadam and, thus, baldly exposed in most portions and, therefore, at the mercy of erosion, floods and constant deterioration due to human and vehicular traffic. The street may, thus, figuratively suggest poverty, crime, prostitution and dereliction. People living in a particular street may also be collectively regarded as “the street.” For instance, you could say: “The whole street knows what you are doing”. Or: “My mom kept us off the street.” Accordingly, the people who spend an awful lot of time on the street in urban areas, especially the youth, the poor, the unemployed and those engaged in illegal activities also constitute “the street”. The street is the nerve-centre of a place; its very fount of identity. Almost always, the street is boisterous, active, and eternally fraught with mystery and mystique. The footloose and the fancy-free can get sucked into its insatiable vortex, and, then, like the grave, waits for its next victim.
The street is the barometer of the mood of the times and seasons. During festive periods such as Christmas, Easter, Salah or Eleya, Democracy Day, Independence Day celebrations or Children’s Day, the streets usually come alive, with arpeggios of joyful voices heard all around dispensing good cheer and jollity. The same thing happens when the nation’s soccer teams win an international match or during cultural festivals such as, in Lagos, the Eyo festival or the Ogun festival in towns and villages across the Yoruba country. In the perfervid atmosphere of these festivals, the spawn of the street, the hobos, the flaneurs, the waifs-and-strays (awon omo ale in Yoruba) practically rule the roost. They become lords and masters of the streets, most times, brandishing dangerous weapons such as cudgels, clubs, and cutlasses. And under the pretext of having fun, they could visit violence on idle bystanders, innocent funsters and defenceless citizens. It is this spirit of spontaneity and unpredictability of the street’s temper that makes decent and self-respecting families shield their children from the street. In the play entitled The Beatification of Area Boy, Wole Soyinka, for instance, inimitably parades the varied faces of the Lagos street – riff-raff, thugs, agberos, prostitutes, pimps and gigolos, spivs, cut-throats, pickpockets, armed robbers, money doublers and ritualists, among other ne’er-do-wells. Thus, the street is often the grave of reputations, decency and character and a veritable nursery of moral reprobation, contamination, defilement and the destruction of values, mores, and ideals. As hinted above, parents serious enough about the moral upbringing of their children will never allow their kids to stray beyond the gate. They do not only engage the services of maiguards, and domestic staff, they also guard their homes with Alsatian dogs and also install CCTV all over the place. Such eremitic or cloistral existence leaves the children with the option of leaving “the gated garrison” strictly only for school, church and, at times, guided tours to the cinema or eateries. Due to this sheltered lifestyle, it is quite easy for parents to scrutinise their children’s language or speech habits to detect any hint of street slang, foul language, immoral songs, and the like. Far, far removed from the madding crowd, the family gets to learn about happenings in the outside world only on television. They get to know of what the street is up to on television. The rape incidents, kidnappings, robberies, fights, police brutality, street turf-wars, cultists’ rivalries and other forms of public may hem.
From the foregoing excursus, the deeper, real meaning of the street should by now be apparent. The anti-social, counter-cultural elements of violence, corruption, subversiveness and rebellion may be considered as aspects of the street. It is patently defined by lawlessness, spontaneity, flux, irrationality, and danger. It permanently nurses a huge grudge against polite society, against due process and law and order. Chaos, disorder and anomy are the street’s oxygen. Hence, the street is a seething cauldron of sorts, a whirlpool of contrarieties. The street as the lair of lawlessness, licence and latitude is the politician’s paradise. He usually goes out of his way to actively, meticulously nurse and nurture it, deliberately rendering it hungrier, and, hence, angrier. It is this incendiary poetics of anger that the man of power weaponises and mobilises against real and perceived opponents in the dogfight over the cookie-jar. Nigeria’s history, political history, to be precise, is replete with egregious instances of the mindless and unconscionable deployment of the social scum, the offscourings of (post) colonial angst in registering dissent and disaffection. A few examples will suffice: (1) in 1945, Nigeria witnessed the Hausa-Igbo riot in Jos; (2) in May 1953, the nation also witnessed the Kano riots; (3) protesting what they saw as unfair imposition of levies, Aba Women rioted in 1929 against the British colonial authorities; (4) on 27th November, 1947, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti led her fellow women in the famous Abeokuta Women’s Riot; (5) on account of the increase in school fees during the Obasanjo military regime, University students at the time went on rampage to register their rejection of the policy. It was dubbed the “Ali Must Go” riot/protests of 17 April, 1978; (6) between 24 May to June, 1989, Nigeria experienced the infamous Anti-SAP riots; (7) the June 12, 1993 nation-wide riots and protests would go down as the nation’s most traumatic period, apart from the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War of 1967 – 70; (8) owing to the removal of fuel subsidies and the resultant hike in prices of petroleum products, civil-society organisations, student bodies, professional groups and the masses staged what was referred to as “Occupy Nigeria”, an event which took place from 2nd to 14th January, 2013 and (9) the EndSARS riots of October 2020, the reverberations that are still with us till date.
What is worse, few years after Nigeria got her nominal independence from Britain in 1960, things fell apart, particularly in the old Western Region. The politicians, out of selfishness and greed, could not see eye to eye with one another. They had thrown decency, law and order to the dogs and unleashed a reign of terror on the helpless and hapless masses that looked to them for leadership. The political parties – NPC, AG, NCNC, etc. were, for all intents and purposes, merely a conspiracy for power capture. They remind you of George Orwell’s remark in his novel Nineteen Eighty-four: “The ultimate aim of power is power”. The ensuing mayhem and the free-for-all that overtook the entire region had nearly brought the new republic to its knees. It was high-noon for the street as thugs and rough-necks played havoc with human life and property. They had set alight government property, burning tyres, destroying everything in sight. This orgy of violence and pillage was dubbed at the time “wetie” (Yoruba corruption of English “wet it”, or, “douse it with petrol and set it on fire”!). The Southwest of Nigeria was regarded then as “the Wild, Wild West” as a consequence of this. Things had deteriorated apace, thereafter leading to the January 15, 1966 Major Kaduna Nzeogwu-led coup, the July 1966 reprisal attacks or the Hausa-Fulani counter-coup and, finally, the Civil War that ultimately consumed more than three million lives, mostly the Igbo. All of this would not have happened without the active involvement of the street, the people.
All riots, all sectarian disturbances instigated and stoked by the political class in Nigeria were carried out, not by these men of power themselves, but by their underlings, the streets. In recent times, the street has metamorphosed and morphed into a larger combustible cocktail comprising cultists, criminals, bandits, kidnappers, UGM, the Boko Haram and its splinter groups, and even members of the National Road Transport Workers Union, among others. We are not alone, we have examples from overseas. On January 6, 2021, the US Capitol Hill, the seat of the US legislature, was overrun by insurrectionists of various stripes. They were aided and abetted by former US President Donald J. Trump who, having lost the presidential elections, has refused to vacate the White House and hand over power to President Joe Biden Jr. of the Democratic Party. Among Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol Hill included the ultranationalist street group known as the “Proud Boys”, adherents of the QAnon, white supremacists, anti-maskers and militiamen, most of who were decked out in their Bohemian clothes, signs, flags, banners and other markers of rebellion. The UK has long been used to the spasmodic flare-ups of Mobs such as the Yiddishers, Hoxton Mob, Watney Streeters, Aldgate Mob, Whitechapel Mob and the so-called skinhead subculture that had held sway, especially in the ’60s and after. On the European continent, neo-Nazi movements keep the streets pulsing, just keeping out of the radar until a triggering event happens and all hell is let loose. Then welcome to the Yeatsean anarchy. Amidst the trigger-happy gun culture (especially in the US), Biblical poverty, social alienation, working-class solidarity, racism, an oiling education system, disenfranchisement and a host of other aggravating social conditions, it is pointless searching for veritable compost-beds of street conflagrations. As 2023 hurtles down towards us, it is absolutely disheartening to hear of some ethno-religious bigots trying to stop people getting their PVCs. This has allegedly happened in some parts of the north, outlying towns around Abuja and, most recently, the Ojo area of Lagos.
“From the foregoing excursus, the deeper, real meaning of the street should by now be apparent. The anti-social, counter-cultural elements of violence, corruption, subversiveness and rebellion may be considered as aspects of the street. It is patently defined by lawlessness, spontaneity, flux, irrationality, and danger. It permanently nurses a huge grudge against polite society, against due process and law and order. Chaos, disorder and anomy are the street’s oxygen.”
The INEC and other relevant agencies must prevent this from continuing; else the street will take over. But the street can equally defend its turf; fight for its own survival. This can be seen in the current Obi-for-President Movement. The Obi mania is the heart and soul of the street, especially when the street is comprehensively imagined to imbricate the entire nation itself. Yet, the all-important question remains: will the politicians who represent the ancien regime fragment and fracture the street all the way down the middle, using –what else? – ethnic blackmail, religious swords and, of course, filthy lucre? Will the street (i.e., the people) seize the initiative in 2023 and vote wisely to usher in a new progressive order? And in what direction will the pendulum swing? The North, the West or the East? Nigeria has crossed the Rubicon; the street’s not for turning now. Even the dead are quaking in their graves as the nation travails to bring forth a New Nigeria. We can, finally, say with T.S. Eliot in “The Journey of the Magi”:
Were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. (italics added for effect)
Chris Anyokwu writes from University of Lagos