Nigeria Protest: The vultures gathered, but the truth overcame

By: Dr. James Bwala

In 2003, the words of the late Chief Chuba Okadigbo say: The vultures will surely gather, but you shall overcome. This he said to our beloved president, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, while they were campaigning in those days when they were struggling to set a new phase in the democratic experience. This great man of Igbo extraction does not mince words. When he uttered these words through his prediction of Senator Bola Tinubu becoming Nigeria’s president, he said of himself that he was not sure whether or not he would be alive to witness this. That prophecy has come to pass with the gathering of these vultures against President Tinubu and his government. The good news is that he did say that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would see this gathering of vultures and that he would overcome them. 

Barely a week before the August 1, 2024, gathering to stage the ongoing protest against the Tinubu administration, the protest was ‘tagged’#Endbadgovernance.’ I happened to be in a church closer to my house. It was a Wednesday prayer meeting, and I was listening to the man of God my family called Baba-Harry. A couple of times I have attended his weekly service when I could not have the luxury of time to be in my place of worship, and I enjoyed his massage. This fateful Wednesday, I listened to him as usual with such attention when he began to speak about the protest that is coming with a storm of violence and warned his members not to join in the protest. According to the Man of God, the protest will happen, but it will not hold water. The youths, he said, will go out, and some of them will be killed, and in all their attempts with their sponsors, they will fail to make the impact they desire against this administration because they have failed to see reasons beyond their imagination and thinking. 

After that Wednesday meeting, I reached out to some of my friends to tell them what this man of God has said and also urged them to stay indoors and not go out because, according to this man of God, the protest will turn to violence. Every day I tried to flop through the pages on the internet to read the handwriting on the wall and to capture the mood of the country with regards to the looming hunger protest, as they referred to it. I am vigilant of the details in his words because this man of God said many things that I have seen come to pass. He is not the careless type in his speech, and I know this too will happen, as he said it would. 

On the first day of the protest, I was around the popular Maraba area in Nassarawa, and I saw how the youths were coming out in their numbers, with thousands of teenagers going with them. The words they were chanting were words that portray the songs that their paid masters have put on their lips, and that was not a movement for a peaceful protest. I quickly recalled a certain time when we were discussing issues about the North and the Almajiri child as a time bomb. They were supposed to be religious students who should seek peace and pursue it at all times. But their actions never portray the reasons for their knowledge-seeking of the holy book, the Quaran. They appeared to be an army of violence seekers and always-ready tools for enemies of the state. I have witnessed their deeds in Maiduguri, in Kano, in Kaduna, and in Jos. I have always read the ugly stories about these young men and teenagers who abandoned their cause of seeking knowledge to delve into the sneaky business and join the underworld in every city where they are found across the country. 

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I know what is coming, looking at their faces full of anger and rage for no just cause. Right there, they started robbing people by collecting people’s phones and money, especially when they discovered you cannot speak “Hausa” and were struggling to push the words in “Hausa language.” These boys, however, would not harass anyone who had the full appearance of a northerner, and I know this is also a problem. It tells me that they are not only angry with the president but are also out to rob—’Ganima” as they would say, like taking what naturally should be theirs. Before I left my position as an eyewitness to return home, they had robbed and beaten a number of people. The disturbing thing is that they are doing all this before the security operative station to protect the protesters until the table turns and the ensuing clash with the security operatives takes a turn. 

Returning home, I continually checked with my pages and colleagues who were on the ground across the states. The story was ugly based on the reports I began to receive. It was indeed the vultures gathering with the mission to destroy the remainder of what the eight-year rule of the Buhari regime has left and to stop every effort that the Tinubu administration was battling to rebuild through renewed hope for Nigeria. The mass outing, the bloodshed, and the destruction of properties, especially across the North, left one to wonder: what manner of people did the North raise over a period of time? I have read a lot of pieces from northerners who are trying to look inward at our problem. Has the Almajiri system of education we have been practicing helped the North other than breeding an army of directionless youths and teenagers prowling the streets and full of anger waiting to be unleashed at the slightest given opportunity? 

The so-called “gidan bola” or scrap houses I went round-checking are full of stolen irons and all manners of scraps, both from those they brought through scavenging as well as those they acquired illegally, most of which were also acquired by the destruction of people’s property and carrying them as ‘ganima’. Thank God, day seven of the protest has shown the calm expected from this unholy plan to render millions of Nigerians homeless, but God forbid. We have seen the prophecy of the late politician, Chief Chuba Okadigbo, come true. As the vultures disperse, we pray that we in the North have learned some lessons from this and hope that this misunderstanding between the government and citizens ends with this rather unfortunate outing. We pray that Nigerians will learn the tenets of the holy book and learn to pray for our leaders as our faithful callings. Let Nigeria heal, and we hope that the agenda to renew our hope will build a solid country where peace and justice will reign. 

* Dr. James Bwala, PhD, writes from Abuja.

Nigeria Protest: The vultures gathered, but the truth overcame