Ojota lights up

Yoruba Nation agitators shot two police officers in the Ojota area of Lagos State during a rally on Monday, Lagos State Police Command…

Yoruba Nation agitators shot two police officers in the Ojota area of Lagos State during a rally on Monday, Lagos State Police Command spokesman Benjamin Hundeyin said. He added that the injured officers were receiving treatment. Channels Television also reported that a yet-to-be-identified male adult was killed in the clash between the agitators and the police in Ojota. Commuters ran for safety in the heat of the unrest which broke out on Monday morning. A source told the broadcaster that the protesters hit the streets to state their Yoruba Nation demands, amongst others, and the police came out to curtail them, leading to a clash. In a statement, Mr Hundeyin said the agitators were disrupting social and commercial activities in the area under the pretext of the rally. “Four suspects have been arrested, and investigations have commenced,” the statement read in part. Meanwhile, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Gani Adams, denied media reports that members of the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) were involved in the clash. In a statement by his Special Assistant on Media, Kehinde Aderemi, Mr Adams said the Ojota rally came as a surprise, adding that none of his members was part of the crisis.

In its 2022 rankings, Freedom House ranked Nigeria as ‘Partly Free’ with a score of 43 out of a weighted score of 100. On civil liberties, it had a score of 23 out of 60, indicating that the country’s democratic credentials are underperforming. More than anything, the violence that trailed the Yoruba Nation agitation in Ojota this week symbolised the rapidly declining space for peaceful assembly. In the past few years, the country’s law enforcement agencies have narrowed the threshold for public dissent, framing even the most benign movement as an attack on the regime and, worse, a threat to national unity and cohesiveness. In a similar rally held in July 2021, at the height of the separatist agitation led by the Yoruba nationalist Sunday Igboho, the police crackdown that ensued led to the death of a 21-year-old hawker, Jumoke Oyeleke. There are many takeaways. First, the Nigerian state is a practical example of one of the theories of the force theory of state formation. Post-amalgamation, the political elite did not do enough to veer off the path of force that British colonialism foisted on Nigeria. Instead, they doubled down on it, leading to a civil war, decades of military rule, and fractured governance. To preserve the country’s existence, it has insisted on unity at all costs instead of honest dialogue that makes justice and perhaps the need for unity naturally possible. As a result, the social contract is put on the back burner, and force is often the most favoured resource. Furthermore, every out-of-control public disorder that the police are involved in does just well enough to show the NPF’s ineptitude in handling civil disobedience. The police being the first line of state response to a breakdown of law and order, exists to de-escalate a situation. However, years of poor crowd control training and insufficient firearms training for police officers have compounded the issue. In many cases, officers have been as much the victims as they have been the perpetrators. Between January 2021 and March 2021, almost 500 police officers were killed in almost 560 incidents across the country. Continued challenges to the legitimacy of the Nigerian state are indicative of a fundamental truth — such challenges cannot be dealt with by force alone. While a monopoly of violence is one of the keys to state legitimacy, it is largely not the most important. A state that constantly needs to use violence to coerce submission will find that as challenges to its power become more widespread, it simply does not have enough force to suppress all agitation. States are legitimised when they provide the elements of their social contract to the people — security, economic opportunities, justice, equity and inclusivity. Nigeria must learn that lesson to break out of this vicious cycle.