George Floyd: Who will bell the cat for Nigeria?

The world watched aghast as American cities erupted in protests over the chilling murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a white policeman last week. From Minneapolis, Minnesota where the outrageous murder occurred, to major cities including Los Angeles and New York on either coast, irate youths invaded the streets in the biggest nationwide riots in the US since after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King in 1968. Poignantly, the skirmishes served as yet another timely reminder of the eternal words of the late Dr King: “a riot is the language of the unheard.”

Months ago, there were cries of disapproval when a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was fatally gunned down while jogging in Glenn County, Georgia. The cries rose to a deafening call for justice when footage emerged showing his cold-blooded murder by an ex-cop Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis. The numbing clip not only prompted the arrest of the father-son murder suspects, it rekindled the #BlackLivesMatter movement which had quieted down after a relatively prolonged period of public sanity.

Things however took a steep southward bend following the viral video of an officer – now identified as Derek Chauvin – burying his knee deep in the neck of George Floyd, sneeringly ignoring his desperate cries of “I can’t breathe” until he died. Enraged by the sickening clip and the cavalier attitude of the police department – who only fired the four officers at the scene – youths took to the streets in total bedlam. Blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians, united in shared angst, literally set the country on fire.

Ex-Cop Derek Chauvin, now under arrest, buried his knee in Floyd’s neck, until he died

Floyd had been accused of using a phony $20 bill to buy cigars

The protesters destroyed and looted stores and public buildings as loud chants of “I can’t breathe” rent the air. A police station was torched in Minneapolis, shooting broke out in Philadelphia and a patrol car rammed into menacing protesters in New York in chaotic scenes reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s epic, ‘Gangs of New York’.

It was a wild, over-the-top response that sometimes threatened to drown out the original objective –Justice for George Floyd. But for many, the imagery – a white man’s knee in a black man’s neck – is a stinging, provocative metaphor for systemic racism and oppression.

The protests occurred bare a week after the US reached the grim milestone of 100,000 coronavirus deaths. And as it spread like wildfire over 35 cities, the world watched, both in horror and glee, as the very concept of American exceptionalism went up in smoke.

The world’s superpower was imploding with inevitable global ramifications.

Protests turned violent across US cities

As the hashtag #JusticeForFloyd grew, Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeni rather ironically called for the protesters to remain in the streets. It however took a more comical turn when Nigerians – always eager to hop on global trends – joined in condemning police brutality in the US. Reacting to President Donald Trump’s ill-advised tweet saying “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, Nigerian Twitter warlords lashed out at the US president and justice system. Replete with faux-outrage and mobile data, they unequivocally condemned all forms of discrimination and police brutality. Some of the more extreme elements even went as far as saying the police in the US were worse off compared to the Nigerian police!

As a friend and columnist for Premium Times, Nicholas Ibekwe, put it: “we joke too much on this app.” Though pithy, his words were a damning indictment on the collective psyche of Nigerians. Without bothering to delve into the ludicrousness of comparing the situation in the US and that in Nigeria, this Yoruba proverb will suffice: “You can’t lend broom to a neighbour when your house is dirty”.

Since the #BlackLivesMatter protest over the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, the US has witnessed about a dozen shooting-deaths of unarmed black men. That’s a piece of cake compared to the Nigerian situation. If Americans are outraged over a knee in the neck, then Nigerians should be doubly outraged because ours is a case of multiple knees in the neck. However, through a debilitating combination of idiocy and cowardice, Nigerians can only rant on Twitter or resign to fate in the face of brazen rape by a dysfunctional system perpetuated by thieving public officials.

It’s a knee in the neck when Africa’s most populous country emerges as the poverty capital of the world. Nigerians have a knee in the neck when bloodthirsty herdsmen prowl the rural communities unleashing mayhem. There’s a knee in the neck when the north-east region comes to a grinding halt over Boko Haram insurgency. It’s a knee in the neck when kidnapping becomes a lucrative business here. Nigerians have a knee in the neck when a seminarian is yanked from his seminary and murdered in cold blood. There’s a knee in the neck of Nigerians when federal character is burnt on the altar of nepotism. We have a knee in the neck when abducted Dapchi schoolgirl, Leah Sharibu, is denied freedom like her peers on account of her religion. Nigerians have a big knee in the neck when the top 1% control over 90% of the national wealth. And of course, there’s a knee in the neck when security operatives kill Nigerians for fun.

Ours is a country in rapid decline, beset with a myriad of problems yet the only response is social media activism. If Twitter hashtags were so effective, every Nigerian knows that the despicable FSARS would long be history.

Incidentally, the George Floyd protests come as Nigeria is rocked by two shocking murders. Tina Ezekwe, a 16-year-old girl preparing for her Senior School exams, was shot dead by a policeman in Lagos. Two days earlier on May 27, Uwaiza Omozuwa, a 22-year-old UNIBEN student, was gang-raped and killed in a church. And how did Nigerians react? You guessed right: they used the hashtags #JusticeForTina and #JusticeForUwa over the weekend. By Monday, the two trending topics on Nigerian social media were #Wizkid and #CristianoRonaldo!

As the protests intensified in the US, the Minneapolis Police department announced that the three remaining officers at the scene of George Floyd’s death – Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Alexander Keung – are also complicit in the gruesome murder. It’s another step in the right direction, albeit one that wouldn’t have been achieved without the forceful demand of street protest. While the endgame in the US remains unclear, there’s comfort in the fact that social changes are brought about by gradual, incremental victories over time.

Amid the entire ruckus, award-winning journalist Kadaria Ahmed saw the bigger picture. Taking to Twitter, she wrote: “The veneer has been stripped and we now see America in all her glory. But here is the thing, black people will never be treated as Human until there is a successful black nation. Nigeria is not only letting Nigerians down, but also all black people.”

There’s some light at the end of the tunnel as it’s not too late for Nigerians to save the situation. To do that, however, we must ponder on the words of Howard Zinn in ‘A Play on History’.

“But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is … to tell the truth.”

It’s time we told ourselves some hard truths – we need to wake up and arrest this slump because nobody will do it for us.