The fact that I am writing this rejoinder does not mean that I have failed to recognize Police PRO Muyiwa Adejobi for what he is – a glorified propagandist for one of the most violent and corrupt police institutions in the world.
It does not mean that I don’t know that Muyiwa Adejobi’s words about activism comes from a place of intellectual cowardice.
It does not mean that I don’t recognize the fact that Mr. Muyiwa is too dull and afraid to confront any of the activists he condemns on the field of ideas.
It does not mean I don’t know that he can only make such misguided and dangerous statements because he is hiding like a coward behind the monopoly of violence of this failed Nigerian state. I know!
It’s just that sometimes silence is not the best answer for a fool, unlike what that old adage says. There are times where you have to reply a fool just to let them recognize their lowly place in the calibration of foolishness, especially when they are elderly people or people in position who feel their age or their high position makes them immune to the pandemic of stupidity that has plagued their shallow lives.
When Muyiwa Adejobi said Activism is not a profession… beware of any activist that does not have a profession, even the bottomless pit lost its depth because of the shallowness that this simpleton dispersed into the air in an attempt to delegitimize those of us who risk our lives to fight for justice for the society we’re part of, and in an attempt to make us more vulnerable to the repression that he orchestrates, because he hopes that statement will make this society more suspicious of activists than it already does.
He hopes that we will get isolated from this society because of his ‘ungathered’ words, and that can make it easy for him to target us with oppression and tyranny while keeping our society in perpetual subjugation.
He hopes that the idea of activism and resistance will get rejected and isolated.
Going by Adejobi’s logic of ‘professionalism’, his emergence as the voice of the Nigerian Police force can only means that the NPF is so dead and lost that it needs an Archeologist and Geographer to help them find themselves, given the fact that Muyiwa Adejobi studied Archeology and Geography.
Going by Muyiwa’s poor logic, he should never be an authority on public relations or policing, not to talk of being an authority on human rights activism.
I’m not going to dwell on that too much because it is too dangerous to stay too long on that low level of logic and intelligence. Muyiwa Adejobi must have felt like he said something deep, but it is literally understandable that some people easily mistake something very low for something very deep.
If not that he genuinely believes that he is fulfilling destiny by being passionately and willfully half-witted, why will Muyiwa expect us to respect his opinion on this topic?
Being a law enforcement official who constantly misquotes Cybercrimes law to conflate criticism with criminality, and who justifies masked policemen breaking into people’s homes by jumping fences and shooting live bullets as standard operational procedure.
A law enforcement agency whose top priority is arresting people like Nurse Olamide Thomas or David Hundeyin for their comments on social media should never consider itself an authority on who is jobless and who is not.
To take the conversation back to the higher but basic IQ level of humans, how can a beneficiary of the state power and system activists fight against count himself as an authority on how human rights activism should be done?
Is the long history of human rights abuses, intense corruption and extrajudicial killing by the Nigerian police force not enough to make the bias of their mouthpiece obvious?
Muyiwa’s next meal literally depends on how many poor Nigerians the police can kill and get away with. He will not eat if many more youths don’t die.
How can anyone with basic IQ consider this condescending arrogance at dissenting voices a sensible warning because he said Beware? What conversation or debate has he started with that post, except to sow paranoia and distrust in a bid to criminalize resistance in a country that needs it so much?
Muyiwa only had one job he does for the APC and IGP Egbetokun – the job of discrediting dissenters that the IGP and Tinubu’s APC have been unable to silence with force. He is a failure trying to cover up for bigger failures.
Human right lawyers should only argue cases in their free time, because activism is not a profession?
Journalists should only write critical pieces in their free time because activism is not a profession?
What of the medics who saved the lives of some EndSARS protesters from the injuries inflicted on them by the same police?
While the forces of oppression in Nigeria operates full-time and does not take breaks, those of us resisting oppression should only resisting oppression when we have found an employment in a country where mass unemployment, caused by policies of the same government that he defends, is the order of the day?
This is what happens when a lowlife takes his “lowlifeness” literal and thinks he is a deep person. He is just a uniformed political thug! He is an empty political jobber!
The human rights situation in Nigeria today demands that everyone should be an activist – most especially the unemployed. We are presently in a country where a rich man can simply pay the Nigerian Police to keep someone they don’t like in detention for as long as possible. The present case of Tiktoker Seaking and a former pastor at Dunamis comes to mind.
A medical doctor in Nigeria today has to be an activist if he truly wants to commit himself to the Hippocratic oath of saving lives. Without activism, how will the medical doctor urgently treat gunshot wounds without repercussion, get the infrastructures and facilities they need to provide basic healthcare or get their salaries and allowances paid so that they can afford to transport themselves to the hospital where they want to go and save lives?
Without the activism of ASUU, how will the professors in our universities get better wages and the infrastructure that can help them educate millions of Nigerian students? ASUU has presently embarked on activism to save TetFund from being defunded by the Tax reform bill. It is this TetFund that provided the laboratories and lecture theatres that most of us studied in while in school.
If activism is this important for even the most respected professionals to do their job, should we not all be professional activists? Should we all not get the resources we need to do this activism like professionals? If police work (that has presently become a danger to Nigerian society) gets resources and recognition by society, why should the activism that protects us from that danger not get the same thing?
In fact, any activism that has historically gotten tangible success got it because they benefitted from the strategic direction and consistency of professional activists. The struggle to free Nigeria from the chains of these tyrants requires long-term commitment, organization, and deep knowledge. It requires expertise and structure. Is that not what professionalism is?
More than any other citizens of the world, Nigerians are the ones who need to be professional activists the most. Asking us to be suspicious of activists for corruption because they don’t have a profession is like asking us to be suspicious of our unemployed and underemployed selves, and we all know who that divide-and-rule game favors.
Corruption is not inherent to activism, and activism is relatively incorruptible when placed side by side with the massive corruption of the Nigerian police and the Nigerian state, instead of putting it side by side with our idealistic expectations.
In fact, it is when all of us become professional activists that we can make activism achieve that idealistic expectation of becoming totally free of corruption, because we can all monitor the profession to make sure it achieves it goals since we all need activism one way or the other.
Activists are essential to every society.
Slavery, colonialism or apartheid would not have ended if not for activism.
These things were legal until activism brought an end to them.
Just like his name implies, Muyiwa would have been a ‘messenger’ to a white slaver in the Southern parts of US if some activists did not stand up to demand an end to slavery. His back would probably be presently bent working a plantation while receiving serious lashes on his back if not for activism. If not for a generation of Black liberationists, Muyiwa’s potbelly would not exist as he would be struggling to survive on crumbs on a slave plantation.
If not for brave activists like Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, Muyiwa would never have gotten to the top ranks of the Nigerian police but will still be chanting All hail the Queen as a shortknicker-wearing constable at his old age, while saying yes sir to white teenagers who are in charge.
The job of an activist is more important that the job of a PR merchant like him. One person’s job is to explicitly try to shape perception – how we see things. The other person’s job is to change how things really are. It’s left to the reader to decide which job is more important. Muyiwa’s entire role is political. His job is not sustainable if a new kind of politics emerges in Nigeria.
This new kind of politics will only be a product of social movements that engage full-time in political struggle, and this can only be successful if all of us are part of the struggle – as professional activists. This is the job we all have to do to make the arrogant and oppressive political jobber like AdeJOBBER jobless as soon as possible.
Omole Ibukun is a socialist activist based in Abuja, Nigeria.
