Looting and looting light…

A man sent by his father to rob will break the door with his feet. I learnt this anecdote when I lived in Awka, the Anambra State capital. Then, as a correspondent, my job afforded me the opportunity of having different types of interactions with different types of people and I learnt a lot, including the proverb. The import of this imagery was pungent and struck differently each time I hear someone use it. It speaks to the amount of confidence and guile that would be deposited in a messenger when he enjoys the strong backing of his master. It speaks to the looting spree we have come to know now, and that which has been with us all our political life.

There are various shades of crime. Crime comes in degrees, criminals are graded. In the catechism of the Catholic Church, there is venial sin and there is mortal sin. They vary in degree and seriousness. This is just like what we get to know when we simplify  ‘gradient’ in mathematics. Some criminals are described as ‘hardened’ while some are known as ‘petty thief’.

We do not carry the same amount of burden of guilt (or innocence) as we daily trudge on, navigating the rough to locate the Nigeria of our dream. We are not equally yoked… That is why we have some prisons designated as “maximum security” and there are those referred to as detention centres or remand homes.

In one of the scenes in the film ‘Coming to America’ by Eddy Murphy, Clarence the barber is sharp in both his mouth and his wit. After making a knockout point in one of their usual gossips and arguments at the barber’s shop, he used some expletives on his co-debaters, saying they were ‘…hole’ and ‘…hole light’, giving it to them according to their complexion. This imagery in the epic flick gives looting and looting light its bully pulpit. The looters in the picture here are both …holes, but one is light.

The narrative currently being pushed by the government is that the symbolic EndSARS protests laid the foundation for the criminality that took over after the legitimate protesters were unjustly dealt with. The genuine protesters were known to have cleaned their spots after each session, engaged doctors, lawyers etc and had a well-organised accounting system. They could be identified through their dressing and were careful not to let their agitation be hijacked by self-seeking people.

Government knew that the protesters were different from the people who stole from palliative and sundry stores and invaded public property with the aim of destroying them. We can conveniently argue that those pushing the narrative that EndSARS protesters caused destruction, also know the thugs that were unleashed to break the protests after all of their other efforts to break them failed. It would be more sensible and credible if we draw the line and desist from further arguing that it was the EndSARS protesters that did those despicable things. We should demarcate the hoodlums and the looters. Each had its motive.

The persistence of the blackmail of the EndSARS movement has created the ‘hungry Nigerians’ and the ‘angry Nigerians’ scenarios. Nigerians have brought a comparison of the looting of the food and other stores and the looting of the country’s treasury and assets to the table. It is now something like one of the jokes cited by hilarious Sam Levenson in one of his four books. Levenson stated that black people who were enslaved and who laboured in the plantations of their American masters had made a valid observation but were helpless. Out of helplessness, they joked thus: “When black man steal, him steal small; when white man steal, him steal whole plantation.”

The imagery is vivid but the matter has grown wider and more confusing, because people also stole irrelevant things while there was destruction of property. Or how could one reasonably explain the destruction of legitimate businesses people laboured for years to build after stealing them blind. The despicable crime of stealing and vandalism across the country is one thing, the underlying issues are another. There must be a line drawn and a clear distinction made of the roads we have plied to get to where we are.

It is expedient to also distill the fact that many young Nigerians being called names by some politicians, especially Desmond Elliot and Mijosola Alli-Macauley of the Lagos State House of Assembly, are working hard but still come down under the brutality of some very unreasonable police units.

This indeed is what led to EndSARS; that is what EndSARS is all about. This is what we should address. The muddling up of the issues around the EndSARS protests may not take the sail off the wind of the protests. Rather, it would send the youngsters underground and it will smoulder till it erupts again, and this time, with more vigour than the first. We must be careful in dealing with this development.

That issues around the widespread looting and vandalism vis a vis the EndSARS protests are getting muddled up, does not remove the fact that people know and are always aware  of who the true looters of their common patrimony are. Nigerians are no fools; they can reel out the trajectory of the wealth of many rich Nigerians, especially of those politicians who were nowhere on the rich ladder before they became public officials.

Of a fact, not a few Nigerians still hold the strong belief that hunger was the foundation upon which the invasion of the many storage facilities, store chains and warehouses across the country were routed. The calibre of people found at the scenes of the looting is a pointer to the argument that hunger and depraivation might be the true reasons. However, it is still difficult to read the contents of a man’s mind on most occasions.

On another plane, there are arguments to the effect that many of the people who trooped out to join in the ransacking of government property and investments of private individuals is not hunger. To these people, looting showed that there is deep-seated animosity against those in authority and the show of anger is a pointer to the knowledge of the people who are their true enemies. To them, the looters of food items are looters light, while their anger are actually directed at the real looters, who are engage in what Fela Anikulapo Kuti called “authority stealing” in one of his numerous evergreen songs.

Nigerians are watching what the government and its officials, who have recoiled and are now planning bolekaja policies, would come up with.

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