Independent of government, Nigerians sat down and prioritised six social pillars for the new future we want. This is what became of the hashtag #wemove. It is now a struggle to find Nigerians who expend all their energy lamenting national problems, most of us now wear a ribbon to show the pillar(s) we actively work on. #Wetrulymove. Ribbons earn respect.
The year is 2030. The police brutality epidemic in Nigeria has come to an end and the country is on a steady path to recovery from bad governance. How did we get there? Let’s begin with Q4 of 2020, when Nigerians created a governing vision and held onto it. The vision changed the course of our collective destiny. 2020 is now well-documented in our history books as the year large swaths of the Nigerian public took on the establishment in a spate of protests. True to the laws of combat, some battles were sadly lost. Yet, the people remained undeterred, taking the battle to alternative theatres of engagement, where they recorded more victories. Nigeria’s visionaries were unwavering about two goals: Delivering on the promise of our own “Yes We Can” moment and ensuring the “moment” lasted for more than one lifetime.
On that journey, Nigeria reached a watershed when it became clear that our dream is not perfection. For there is absolutely no country on the world map called “utopia” and the potential for perfection is perhaps Nigeria’s longest-standing enemy. By the end of 2020, we truly moved on from this long-standing ideal. We chose progress as our new promised land. Progress that comes “back-to-back”, as Olamide once put it at the 2015 Headies Award.
Nigerians agreed that the World Bank rankings and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts will not be our only measures of progress. In our new social charter, we insist on progress that we can all feel, see, and experience. Progress not only in election seasons, when the politicians come bearing rice bags and mobile phone recharge cards. But in every season and every year, we had a simple, one-word demand. Progress became the engine of our reconstruction. We insisted on progress we can measure from morning till night. It starts with running water and power when we rise up. It includes progress with generating livelihoods that we want to rise up to in the morning. At the end of the workday, we required improved infrastructure that takes us back to affordable, decent homes. Demanding for progress across various classes of transportation infrastructure also improved our commuting time home. It is still far from perfect but surely improved.
On this matter called progress, we resolved not to negotiate. Impatience became a virtue. So did eternal vigilance. Nigerians voted out governments that did not deliver progress to protect lives walking on the street or sitting in the sky. We made violators famous on social media, when they tried to backslide progress with rogue policing, or to use the civil service to make us servants, when we came to ask for permits or passports. Most times, you were not expecting the fame because you were secretly filmed. Exploitative university lecturers took note as well. Your company stocks plummeted because public investors noticed that your directors routinely fixated on doing well and not doing good. Consistent good. Extensive good. In state houses of assemblies, Nigerians voted in enough members who committed to impeaching governors, after two years, if state schools and hospitals did not show progress. The neglect of education and healthcare was the new definition we settled on to meet the “gross misconduct” impeachment standard in the constitution. As a collective, we committed to taking stock of our progress by 2030.
Long before we reached 2030, society demanded to see your personal voter’s card (PVC) in hand when you post your protest attendance on social media. Our eyes now fixate on every fist raised above the head to seek out the contours of a voter’s card. Nigerians need confirmation that social warriors have also invested in the political war of getting a PVC — and won.
We planned ahead, starting in 2020, mindful we can only manage what we measure. Progress came by measuring where we are each year. For how else would we know whether to call the next year progression or regression? Companies sponsored NGOs to measure crime and police brutality. We used data to tell a story about hospital investments and school performance. Civil society moved away from policy documents and towards data measurement, a once-notorious national challenge. Neighbourhood associations measured our daily power supply in hours and days and weeks and collated it on mobile phone apps made by social entrepreneurs. On these measurements, we were able to judge progress. We rewarded or punished accordingly — across all three tiers of government.
We, the citizens, measured ourselves too. We held ourselves accountable, rectifying where we did not measure up. Because in full truth, we are living in the same system that throws up clichéd politicians, a system akin to devastated soil. What can truly grow from it? This self-accountability included re-allocating the same enthusiasm involved in casting 900 million votes – (four-and-a-half times our population) for the Big Brother TV show in 2020 – toward our elections in 2023. Not simply because only one of those enterprises has the power to structure our collective future, but it is also how we will truly do justice to the hashtag #neverforget: the widespread promise made on social media on October 20, 2020. Did you notice that we reminded everyone who made that post on social media that sitting at home on election day in 2023 was – in a critical way – forgetting?
Another act of collective accountability occurred at the end of 2020, when we lined-up all the years we were promised one unit of the police force would be disbanded – 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 – but then we also put an asterisk besides 2019 to acknowledge that it was a year we were called to participate in an exercise called #NigeriaDecides the fate of the same president who held power in that entire period. This self-accountability and reflection left us with the same greatness of spirit that we habitually seek out in our leaders too.
Long before we reached 2030, society demanded to see your personal voter’s card (PVC) in hand when you post your protest attendance on social media. Our eyes now fixate on every fist raised above the head to seek out the contours of a voter’s card. Nigerians need confirmation that social warriors have also invested in the political war of getting a PVC — and won. While our society still uses protests to address burning issues, we now use voting to address systemic issues.
We went beyond “Not too young to run”. Nigerians added something that proved to be more pragmatic: “Not too young to be appointed”. We only voted in presidents who committed to having 33 per cent of ministerial appointees under the age of 40. We made certain governors do the same with their commissioners. No more anomalies.
We took inspiration from the historic over 81 million people who enthusiastically voted for an imperfect Biden, overcoming the opposition force of over 74 million, who were set to make their own turnout history. In the words of Biden Snr., “do not compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.” We looked inside our soul and self-inquired: Do we have our own over seven million difference-making Nigerian voters at each election? These difference making Nigerians now hire leaders pragmatically, not perfectly. Since 2020, we insisted that all presidential candidates have a police reform agenda. In turn, our leaders do the long-term work of progressing police reform for four good years at a time.
“But come on, Nigerian elections are rigged!?” Have you noticed we no longer rely on that notion as the default reason to give up our power? We realised that rigging thrives where there is voter apathy. Secret recordings came out where past presidents were caught joking at an elite meeting of their counterparts on the continent that, “the easiest election to rig is the one where these same noisemakers stay at home.” In response, Nigerians promised to never make elections “easy” to rig again. After 2020, that resolution ended up being the first collective promise we kept as a society — unwaveringly. To riff on Van Jones’ words about Black Lives Matter, we also turned our moment into a movement and then into a machine. Suppression became our precise reason to vote, not our excuse for abstaining. We resolved to fall in line for progressive candidates, forgoing the imprisoning expectation of falling in love with perfect ones.
We claimed the long-term future too. To build on the “five for five” demands, we paired them with a set of longer-term demands which convinced the establishment there is no Instagram box that we think within. We demanded our PVCs are distributed all year round and every year in between elections; and to correct a system where people resident in one state and “originate” from another cannot vote easily. We went beyond “Not too young to run”. Nigerians added something that proved to be more pragmatic: “Not too young to be appointed”. We only voted in presidents who committed to having 33 per cent of ministerial appointees under the age of 40. We made certain governors do the same with their commissioners. No more anomalies.
Independent of government, Nigerians sat down and prioritised six social pillars for the new future we want. This is what became of the hashtag #wemove. It is now a struggle to find Nigerians who expend all their energy lamenting national problems, most of us now wear a ribbon to show the pillar(s) we actively work on. #Wetrulymove. Ribbons earn respect. We challenged local billionaires, NGOs, and foreign supporters to prioritise the six pillars. In time, candidates for office started to centre their campaign platforms on the six pillars to equally move in alignment with us.
Daniel Akinmade Emejulu is a Nigerian citizen who has written about Nigeria for The Financial Times, The Economist Group, Brookings Institution, Huffington Post, among others.
The long version of this article originally appeared in Business Insider Africa as a four-part series.
