Natasha and lessons of history, by Omoniyi Ibietan

Natasha is about to be recalled because there’s no organised counterpoise from her side or on behalf of the idea she represents (not on her behalf). Let me clarify right now, that I used the word ‘Natasha’ for convenience and not in solidarity with the uncivil movement that thinks she should be stripped of the title ‘Senator’ because she has been suspended from The Senate. Do you address a judge as ‘Mr’, ostensibly for his temporary suspension from the bench?

That incivility, also found expression in the celebration by some people, of Mr. President’s reference to the ‘suspended’ governor of Rivers State as ‘Mr. Fubara’, instead of ‘His Excellency’ or even the ‘estranged Governor’ for want of a better phrase. I was surprised by many aspects of PBAT’s broadcast on the Rivers State crisis but language usage, tenor and tonality (I mean, the non-verbal dimension, which today constitutes about 80 percent of communication), did not place us well.

As a student of communication, as an activist for social rights and importantly as an educator and practitioner of communication management, I am always rankled by occurrences of troubled conversational capacity, because communication is the spirit of the matter called democracy.

Back to Natasha, the brass tack. So, one of the earliest reflections that shaped my interest in political communication, and the reason I grounded my Ph.D. thesis in that sphere of communication studies (although intrinsically multidisciplinary), was my hunch (prior to stumbling on scholastic evidence), that revolutionary offerings cannot succeed if they rely essentially on social technology oriented protests, advocacies and communication campaigns. Sadly, those are the primary designs that have guided Natasha’s resistance.

However, what history teaches is that those activities are of higher value when combined with offline strategies involving defiant protests by granite coalition of forces determined to implement and sustain resistance against any onslaught on freedom.

In contemporary memory, the lessons from Tahrir Square in 2011 and the totality of the Arab Spring, beginning with self-immolation on 17th December 2010, by Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year old Tunisian hawker; The Intifada (the Palestinian protest against Israeli occupation of West Bank and Gaza Strip), especially the first phase of the Intifada (1987-1993); the endSARS in Nigeria in 2020; and the Kenyan protests of 2024 against Finance Act, attested to the efficacy of integrated union of online and offline resistance against unfreedoms.

Yet, Natasha’s cause could have benefited from the strategy of people of Kogi West District, when statecraft failed in the recall of Dino Melaye, who was representing the district at the same Senate. I was a student in South Africa when Dino’s recall process started in 2018 and I was intimately involved in the online mobilisational efforts that defeated the State-orchestrated recall. But it was the organised conscious self-activity of the ground forces of the people of Kogi West that ensured the success of the movement against the recall.

Therefore, it will be saddening if the people of Kogi Central Senatorial District, who elected Natasha through uncommon resilience and offered her a ride to the Senate on popular struggle, succumbed to the ongoing plot and actions to recall her. The success of democracy as a social organising principle depends on eternal vigilance. The supposed flagship of democracy in North America is crumbling, right before their eyes because many Americans took it for granted that their democracy could not be subverted.

So, there must be a counterpoise in Kogi Central District, using constitutional means to halt this lethargy of a people noted for resistance and rare solidarity. Otherwise, as I had earlier predicted two weeks ago, it is plausible that Akpabio, patriarchy, statecraft and primitivism may win the battle against the Natasha idea, even though as history has taught us, they are unlikely to win the war.

Let me go and sing from the hymnal. Have a great week, friends.

-Ibietan (PhD) is the Head of Media Relations of Nigerian Communication Commission