Nigeria: Celebrating the Triumph of Fuel Subsidy Protest?

24 January 2013
opinion

A few days ago, the African Independent Television brought home to viewers a candle-lit event organised to mark the anniversary of the anti-fuel subsidy removal protest which paralysed the country for many days early in January last year and whose deleterious effect on our economy is yet to be fully accounted for; for the harm it did is so monumental that it cannot ever be fully or accurately quantified. The event was held by some 'activists' who consider themselves heroes of that event that I, and no doubt, many other patriots, regard as a national tragedy of immense proportion. It was obviously their own way of celebrating what they apparently consider the triumph of the forces of 'progress' and 'patriotism' over the forces of 'oppression' and 'retrogression'. And if that is their reading of the war fought on the streets of many Nigerian cities last year, my question is: are they really correct?

Before I answer that question let me say that it is not entirely surprising that of all the nation's TV networks, it was only the AIT that gave elaborate treatment to that news event. This is consistent with the AIT because during the protest last year, that station threw caution, circumspection, professionalism and responsibility to the winds and opened its airwaves to just any Nigerian or foreigner who had something evil to say against the subsidy removal to use the foulest of terms to say it. Market women, vulcanizers and all manner of persons who did not understand the issues involved, had their say. It looked like the station did not see any single person in this nation of 160 million people who had something even tangentially positive to say about the government move. The way the AIT carried on in its crusading zeal against fuel subsidy removal looked like the station's owner had a personal grouse against the government and was desperately looking for an opportunity to draw blood and that it was not love for the nation that was the motivating factor for the crusade.

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