Fela Anikulap-Kuti, the inimitable Nigerian musician, was a trail-blazer in many parts. He created the music genre called Afrobeat; he rendered the lyrics of his popular tunes in pidgin English, and he deployed his music to fighting social ills and the government’s oppressive policies. He had a running battle with the Nigerian police, more than any other establishment. As their regular guest, he must have visited police detention centres over a hundred times in his chequered life. 

After one of his controversial arrests and detention at Alagbon Close, a cul-de-sac of a street in Lagos Island that served as the police criminal investigation facility in 1974, he released a song called Alagbon Close, with lyrics that lampooned the police for maltreating him. The popular refrain…uniform na cloth, na tailor dey sew am…mocked the police for being inhuman, just because they were putting on uniforms that any tailor could sew. 

Uniforms are not the only clothes that change the status and circumstances of men. Flags are even more so. Though simply a piece of cloth, or pieces of clothes sewed together, flags symbolize things of different meanings; it is an instrument of authority and it symbolizes the status of sovereignty. 

So when the #EndBadGovernance protests got underway 11 days ago, it was expected to be a show of public disapproval of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s handling of the socio-economic affairs of the country. In less than 15 months, his administration has shown great incompetence in managing the nation’s economy. While it embarked on questionable expenditures, some of the major projects are either self-serving or have no significance to the needs of the poor. 

Tinubu set the wrong foot forward from day one. While many agreed on the need to remove the subsidy on petroleum products which was guzzling humongous amounts of our resources, the manner it was arbitrarily removed at the inauguration ground, without first studying the books, consulting with industry stakeholders and emplacing social safety nets for the people whose life and livelihoods revolve around the industry, was fatal. 

There were other neo-liberal policies like the much-criticized floating of the Naira which plunged the nation’s currency into a tailspin it has not recovered from till today. Unable to survive in the harsh operating environment, over 12 major multinational companies have exited Nigeria within the period, while countless local business concerns have folded up. In nearly all sectors, production has plummeted and food insecurity has added to the general insecurity ravaging the country. 

In the midst of all the adversity, the Tinubu administration and the National Assembly that enables its every financial request rides the wave of luxury. The presidential air fleet that boasts 5 aircraft recently welcomed one more super jet; convoys of officials in the executive got longer with more shinning vehicles; the legislators use the latest SUVs from Japan’s Toyota, and the Vice President has moved into his mansion that cost a princely N21 billion to complete. Even the presidential guest house in Dodan Barracks, got about N5 billion for another face-lift, just in case the president may want to spend a few minutes there while in Lagos.

If that is not profligacy, Nigerians wonder what is?

In the build-up to the protest, Tinubu showed nonchalance, Senate President Akpabio taunted the poor masses the more while Police IG Egbetokun talked tough. The protesters must have thought a mere demonstration against the pervasive profligacy was not enough since no official of any consequence appeared to be losing sleep. 

The idea of the Russian flags must have been a brilliant idea to draw attention and frighten security personnel out of their slumber. So, after a violent first day of the protests in Kano during which buildings and cars were torched and offices and shops looted, they arrived the streets of Kano the next day with Russian flags.

A year after Nigeria’s northern neighbours, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger expelled the French authorities and entered a security understanding with Russia, the sight of Russian flags on the streets of Nigeria was not just embarrassing, it was scary. Have the Sahel nations that spurned Nigeria and the ECOWAS headed by President Bola Tinubu become a route through which our sovereignty could be threatened?

All attention turned to Kano. Has the state with two ‘governors’ and two ‘emirs’ for one emirate, also split into people of two nationalities?

For a moment, the security chiefs who had been scare-mongering about a possible foreign sponsorship of the protests, appeared to have hit the bulls eye on intelligence. Though the Russian government – through its Embassy in Nigeria – denied any involvement, our security analysts seized the stage with extrapolations on the wider ideological battles the two major world powers were turning Nigeria into. To say that it was a frightening scenario is to put it mildly, especially when some of the protesters were calling for regime change, a senseless and outrageous proposition. 

But after three days of doomsday analyses, and a national broadcast that some people say was forced on the President by the dire circumstances in Kano, the chips finally came down to one tailor called Ahmed. 

The Directorate of State Security announced that it has apprehended Ahmed, the tailor that made the Russian flags. The picture of Ahmed appeared with pieces of clothing materials in the colours of the Russian flag. Could this haggard-looking man be the source of the events that caused the nation so much scare and discomfort? If he is, then the reports of massive infiltration of Vladimir Putin’s supporters from neighboring countries may have been exaggerated or totally off-point.

As it turned out, the flags that some people were prepared to swear were first soaked in the communist chambers of the Kremlin, were actually produced in the dingy backstreets of Gyadigyadi in Kano City by one ‘Obioma’ tailor.

The result of investigation by security agencies is not out yet, but one question comes to mind: was Ahmed the tailor aware of the consequences of his treasonable acts? I wager he didn’t but it doesn’t count for an excuse. Any 100 level law student will tell you that ignorance is not an excuse in law. He may jolly well be a pawn in the hands of some more enlightened sponsors. Or like the tailor in Fela’s ‘Alagbon Close’ who innocently sew the uniforms that turn the mere mortals in police uniforms to beasts that delight in the ill treatment of fellow citizens. 

As the nation awaits the outcome of investigations, the fact is that flags – even the Russian flag – is, after all, mere pieces of clothes that any tailor can turn into an instrument of national scare.

Sheddy Ozoene, Editor-In-Chief of People&Politics, is Vice President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.