Words and their meanings scared us as children. We stayed away from the high-sounding ones and accused the English language of complex instability in the behaviour of words and rules – synonyms, antonyms, lexis and structures etc; a phenomenon that affected the fortunes of our school career in those growing up years.
Generally, the words we sought to use were the ones we encountered on a daily basis; the ones that would not abandon us in embarrassing situations. Only on occasions did we go for highfalutin words that built a sense of importance around us because of their rarity on the streets but change was never one of them.
Change as a word was common and familiar; everyone knew what it meant and what to expect whenever it was used. It remained consistent and predictable in meaning for it always simply conveyed a sense of a different way of experiencing, of a conscious and natural transition – the way the night gives way to the day or the way a child is moved from one school to another. But away from school experience and its mixed recollections, change – the word – appears now to have lost a sense of its own meaning in our political context, or in the political lexicon of the country called Nigeria.
How did we get here? Throughout the opening quarters of 2015, change was a word that gripped and possessed our sense of awareness with urgency and singularity of purpose. It loomed large in the consciousness of whoever desired anything else. It ceased being a mere word and suddenly appreciated in value and acquired fresh relevance. We had never seen change possess such authenticity and enthusiasm. It was padded with layers of expectations and a majority of Nigerians yearned for it for it worked like magic in its promise and delivery. Each time it was chanted in homes and public places, it split the air with great expectations, thus setting 2015 and the years to follow as the golden age of our democracy and, of course, the best historical period to be alive and proud in Nigeria.
Change, then, was thought to signify the epilogue of what was considered pervasive, political profligacy – and some said, cluelessness – and the prologue of what had all the promises of political renaissance. We were happy. Not less than 14 million Nigerian voters strutted upandan the streets as the right-thinking humans blessed with the logic and insight to reorder our political preferences with their votes. The atmosphere was overwhelming and we often went to bed bidding farewell to our daily troubles of existence, in the assurance that a solution bigger than our travails was on the way. Our political differences were suspended. Change sounded like a new country to which every Nigerian was ready to migrate. It became more promising to experience it than it was to hold an opposing belief or to go abroad.
After a period of tension and trepidation, the change ticket was won and change officially became a national destination. When it thus took six long months to assemble the transformation team, change, again, was chanted to dispel all fears, criticism and cynicism. We were given to believe that the viruses of the past years had eaten deep into the political community and corrupted the career files of most Nigerians, destroying their eligibility to the now fumigated corridors of power. The search therefore was well advised, we were told. We waited. When time eventually came, expectations were, however, shattered as the final selection reflected what was considered a curious breed of complex influences and gratification. It was not worth the wait, Nigerians grumbled. But we needed to move on. In the final analysis, these men and women were charged with the multiple implications of the change agenda and it fell on the shoulders of a few of them to take the message to town and, possibly, win more believers.
The other half of Nigerians believed what was unfolding before them though much against their better judgement. Body language of a sheriff in town became a weapon, a political charm that dispelled growing pessimism. Dozens of foreign trips were initiated to reconnect Nigeria, as we were told, with relevant countries of the world for investment and economic recovery. Today, time has passed and sadly enough, this is 2016 – 17 months after – and Nigerians are transfixed by the change that has overcome the change campaign. The chant has lost some decibels and weakened to heartbreaking murmurs. The campaign, if it is still being mentioned, now speaks different languages to different people inevitably creating in the process a babble of meanings and expectations. One’s preferred inflection or intonation depending largely on one’s socio-political affiliation or mother tongue. As it is, Nigerians do not know where to go for the substantive meaning of change. The dictionary, as we know it, cannot help anymore; we have consulted many times and returned with meanings that widened the gap between perception and reality.
Before now, change was a word we used without looking over our shoulder. I wish I could explain. It is perplexing that a word so commonly used by children to demand options and choices from their nanny has now turned rebellious in our hands. Change is now being reconstructed to take in different meanings and obligations. What it meant in 2015 and what it means now in 2016 appear to meet on unfamiliar territories. Could time alter the meaning of a simple word this much? The change agenda is now pushed back to Nigerians who are told that they, themselves, are the real custodians of change – that it begins with them. This, of course, was not the bargain! Nigerians are shocked not because they are righteous and see themselves as immune from change. No. Rather, they are shocked because government’s current attitude is tantamount to a reversal of role that smacks heavily of political betrayal and bad faith.
The meaning of change is now lost in transition and Nigerians are polarised. To government, change is synonymous with open-ended patience and sacrifice through very difficult process and time; a long journey in which lives and jobs and the dignity of human life would be lost. A journey that would see businesses crumble in the face of inscrutable policies; a journey that would see Nigerian families trade or exchange their loved ones for a coveted bag of garri or rice; a process that would see the pump price of fuel hit an all-time high amongst many other dreary variables and components; yet a journey that means blaming the past and stripping it naked in order to reveal a new future; a foray into the embarrassing closets of the last government where have been found loots of varying sizes; a journey that means a deafening battering on the doors of corruption. A journey…change is a journey.
Nigerians feel hard done by to be charged with the burden of change, to be told it begins with them. In effect, Nigerians fulfilled their own part of the change treaty when they forced the past government out of power with the power of their ballot. So, they feel bitterly shortchanged that this is where all the high hopes sold to them have led them – to desolation and despondency.
To all intents and purposes, the reconstruction of the change agenda is diabolical and destabilising. It is a classic case of a creditor who after many months of expectation discovers that, for reasons beyond his comprehension, he is now the debtor. Kafkaesque disillusionment. Someone somewhere has challenged Nigerians unjustly and set up a programme of subverted expectation against them. If anything, government’s volte-face spells doom for our political culture and optimism. At the end of the day, the prevailing trauma and anguish would condemn change and integrity into our receptacle of political nothingness and produce a political ecosystem filled with endangered species and Eliot’s Prufrocks.
– Mr. Dumebi Onwordi-Okonji, a Copy Strategist, wrote from Lagos.
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