Considering the high profile of those who attended last Monday’s meeting of Northern regional leaders in Nigeria, the output can be regarded as a lost opportunity for authoritative intervention on the #EndSARS protest. Unsurprisingly, instead of calming nerves and mending frayed fabrics, the communiqué of the meeting, with its combative tenor, instantly provoked angry reactions from socio-cultural and elite groups across the length and breadth of the nation.

At bottom, the meeting, it appears, was more concerned with regime salesmanship, and the fact of having survived yet another legitimacy challenge to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd)’s regime, than with the fundamental issues. That is why for example, it contemptuously dismissed the protests as subversive, divisive, and the work of those it termed ‘separatists’. In the words of the communiqué, as read by the chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum and governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, “the meeting rejects and condemns the subversive actions of the #EndSARS protests, the agitations, and other change regime actions outside the ballot box. Some took advantage of the peaceful protests to push their separatist’s agenda”. Take for instance, the fact that the communiqué did not distinguish between those advocating restructuring of an overcentralised federation, and those they described as separatists or secessionists which is the same thing. Consider for example that the All Progressives Congress, formally endorses restructuring, and even went so far as to set up a high-level committee, a few years back to promote the agenda. As the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, has consistently pointed out, and for that matter correctly, you cannot successfully police a sprawling nation like ours, with a centralised policing system.

Recently, too, in the wake of the youth upsurge, the APC national leader, Bola Tinubu, said that state police is the answer to many of the omissions and commissions of the police in the country. Indeed, restructuring constitutes a buy-in to the federation which one wishes to improve rather than destroy. It is regrettable, therefore, that the Northern leaders preferred a blanket dismissal and demonisation of restructuring which it chose to label as ‘separatist’. Ordinarily, the pedigree of those who gathered in Kaduna leaves one to expect a higher quality of thinking, analysis, and interrogation of ideas than sound bites from a political rally.

In the same vein, the deliberations as reported in the newspapers did not draw a clear distinction between the protest proper, and the subsequent commotion which derailed it. If we go by sequence, that bedlam accompanied by looting and arson only took centre stage after the tragic use of arms by the military on peaceful demonstrators at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos. Before then, there are suggestions that counter-protesters allegedly conveyed by government vehicles acted as strike-breakers forcing the protesters who are demanding police reform and good governance to greater self-defence tactics.

It should be instructive, that much of the looting that trailed the Lekki tollgate saga, dovetailing on palliatives rotting away in warehouses, had a genuinely federal character, suggesting that hunger, and abjection are not ethnically but class determined. Without a clear intellectual mapping of these events, one cannot correctly inform or reflect on policy making that will move the country forward from the current social impasse. Perhaps, the Northern leaders should have invested effort and time in gathering the kind of data that can feed into genuine and germane policy analysis that can help the Buhari regime to better face its many challenges. Remarkably, the statement as captured in the media was silent on the tollgate shooting saga, which although apparently exaggerated, constitutes a remarkable watershed in the unfolding of events.

Furthermore, there was little or no discussion of the ancillary agenda of the protesters centred on #Endbadgovernance in Nigeria. True, most Nigerians have come to accept the ballot box with all its imperfections as the legitimate way of changing government. Even as that, can we ignore the insight of enlightened observers and scholars on Nigeria, such as Emeritus Prof. Richard Joseph who observed recently that it is doubtful whether Nigeria can survive yet another round of electoral chicanery. Such lines of thinking, should open up enquiry into the riddle of why election after election, the country’s development problems appear to be multiplying rather than diminishing, while poverty gets overwhelming. For that matter, one could go on to ask, is there no connection between the current state of our underdeveloped democracy and the burning national issues that provoke unrest? True, and as the heated and controversial presidential election in the United States is showing, democracy, to borrow a familiar expression, is very much work in progress, nonetheless, there is a difference, a qualitative one at that between a democracy that is wired to respond to people’s outcries and wailing and one that very much resembles a dialogue of the deaf where the citizens are unable to penetrate official walls of silence and contempt built by cabals.

What this columnist is driving at is that the times call for sober reflection on the fundamental causes of #EndSARS revolt rather than official rehash of the cant and clichés that have got us nowhere. For example, it is hard to imagine that a protest which at one stage involved the daughters of the President and that of the Vice-President, who excitedly enlisted in the peaceful conversation, could have as its objective, regime change.

Interestingly, government itself displayed a great deal of tolerance in the early days of the protest by agreeing to implement police reform and the 5-point agenda provided by the youths. Its language of acceptance that things had gone wrong including an apology from the Vice-President is far more conciliatory than the stern and dismissive verbiage of the Northern regional leaders.

It is important, in building or rebuilding Nigeria, to carry all parties on board including those who may be calling for secession as there is much to be gained in a united Nigeria. However, the advantages of unity for a country that is more of a market than a cohesive polity cannot be assumed but has to be demonstrated. Merely asserting as the Northern leaders did that ‘the meeting endorses the indivisibility indissolubility and oneness of the nation’ may be self-evident to those saying it but is hardly calculated or likely to persuade others who are not easily convinced. At any rate, if the dialogue is a democratic one, it must be assumed that even those dissenting may be doing so because they perceive themselves as being at the receiving end of our several woes.

Going forward, the Northern regional leaders may consider broadening their purview and focus to include such matters as persisting poverty in the country in a situation where poverty in the North is particularly acute. This apart, they should also consider rising insecurity in the country, with the North being especially hard hit, state and nation building projects for forging together a more united country out of a contentious multi-ethnic one. Others include inclusive governance which will deliver the dividends of democracy to large swathes of the population currently excluded as well as creating bridges between a restless but predominant youthful population and the rest of the country.

Ayo Olukotun