#EndSARS and the Making of History

Nigerian anyhowness is the Nigerian state’s most consistent and most effective strategy in its defence. And it is a fairly simple one. It relies on the principle that: confronted with thorough and unrelenting dehumanization—with ordinary, everyday violations—a people will deny their own humanity and the better instincts it affords them. By withholding access to welfare of even the most basic standard of living, the state succeeds not only in constructing a ‘good life’ as an aspirational ideal but well-being—humanity—as an individual, external and ultimate pursuit. To be accorded the dignity reserved for human beings, a Nigerian born outside the political class grows with the overwhelming desire to attain wealth and the power associated with it. A humanizing power. Yet, her pursuit of this power is closely monitored, intercepted and sabotaged at every stage by the state who must, to maintain the purity of the class, keep its masses dispossessed. The attacks arrayed against her, subtle and overt forms of violence, work to desensitize her to her own reality, to her sense of what is good, normal, and acceptable; to distort her sense of what is real. She, like many others, enters a state of passive absurdism.