Protest: Professor Olurode recommends creative, scientific approaches  (Updated)

A retired professor of political sociology at the University of Lagos, Lai Olurode, has called on promoters of the planned nationwide protests to be creative in expressing their grievances rather than taking to rallies or public demonstrations that can turn violent or hijacked by criminals.

The professor, who is also a former National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, made the suggestion in a statement against the fears of street protests becoming uncontrollably violent.

He recalled that civil protests became popular in the US in the early 1960s to register dissatisfaction with social discrimination against the minorities particularly the black and people of colour and women as well.

Protests, he added, had since then largely become a positive force in righting the prevalent social wrongs.

In the most civilised and democratic countries of the world, Olurode contended that ‘civil protests are rarely outlawed.

“Even, under dictatorships, protests, where they are forbidden, get smuggled into modes of registering dissatisfaction and social discontent with harsh government social policies. “Without street protests and marches, the military would have probably remained in power in most of the African countries.”

Olurode also said, “The most common form of civil protest in Nigeria is street protest or march.

“But Nigerians can be more creative by considering alternatives to street marches as forms of civil disobedience. If we go by previous experiences about the consequences and backlash of civil protests, the outcomes have not been salutary.

“The question then is why employ the same mode of behaviour that hadn’t produced any substantive outcome in the past?”

Olurode appealed for more creativity and reliance on science to decide on whether this pending protest should hold or not.

“I hereby advocate that those who have subscribed to the protest option to register their protest against hunger in the land through petitions or even boycott of government services in place of street protests.

“Without any doubt in the mind of many, the 2020 EndSars bloody protest left sour taste in the mouth. The scale of private and public destruction was massive.

“Though the protests led to the erasure of EndSars inscriptions on police vehicles, the protests by no means eliminated police ‘tollgates’ and the associated sharp practices. These gains got flattened in the midst of the losses of lives and property which followed the imbroglio.

“In the light of this, I appeal for caution on the resort to open protests. Let’s deploy more creative thoughts and scientific simplicity to feed our decisions.

“A desirable outcome is an improvement in Nigeria’s citizenship project which is achievable through alternatives to street protests or marches.

“Never must we allow opportunists whose narrow concern is to promote ethnic rather than class politics to take advantage of our innocent expressions of social discontent.”