“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights by the creator, among which are freedom, justice, the right to own property, and the pursuit of happiness …”
These were the opening words of the American (US) declaration of independence in 1776. How many of us remember these words? And quote it glibly? How many of us take it for granted?
Well, to be sure, as self-evident as “these truths” were to the signers of the Declaration of Independence, as at the time of making the proclamation, virtually all the delegates to the Continental Congress, all the authors of the declaration, and all the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave owners, owning slave plantations, and representing colonies which accepted slavery as normal, and the rights of slave owners as sacrosanct! In point of fact, slaves were at that time considered properties, and thus the right to own property included the right to own slaves.
Again, as at the time of the proclamation and signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN in 1948, more than half of the world’s population were living in colonies, where the very survival of colonialism depended on the routine and ‘legitimate’ violation of the rights of the colonial subjects. What is the implication of this? What does this tell us?
Simple; Rights are fought for, not given; rights are the outcome of a struggle for justice. All rights, political, economic (and yes economic as with the recent unconscionable hikes in electricity tariffs, fuel price, and taxes), social, environmental or ecological, and cultural; are won, preserved and expanded, only on the basis of struggle, of resistance. The right to assembly, the right to freely express oneself, the right not to live a life of misery, the right not to live a life shackled by poverty, the right not to be out of work, the right not to live a life bedeviled by insecurity and fear, the right not to live a life of unending want, the right not to have one’s life taken and arbitrarily cut short, and the right not to live a life ensnared by ill health.
Added to the foregoing is the right to not to live a life where justice is denied, the right to have government manage the resources of society in a manner that does not promote inequality and the concentration of societal wealth in a few hands. All of these rights, universally guaranteed, held to be indivisible, and enshrined in chapters two and four of our constitution, are rights that daily being consciously and unconsciously breached and violated, often with impunity, by our governments and our thieving ruling class; and they are all rights that can only be enjoyed, protected and guaranteed only when we fight to enjoy them, and wage a concerted and continuous resistance struggle to preserve and expand them. Unless we attach a grave cost to the violation of our rights, they will neither be guaranteed not preserved.
That is why even the celebrated American declaration of independence proceeded to state that it is for the protection of these tights that governments are instituted, and once a government has become implicated in the systematic and structural violation of these rights, such a government deserves to be recalled, and replaced by another one. These was the case made by the American patriots against the British Crown and colonial authority.
This is the case we are making now against Nigeria’s entire ruling class, who since independence in 1960, and particularly sin e the 1999 return to civil rule have relentlessly and grievously violated and with impunity our rights as human persons, as Nigerian citizens enshrined in all the global declaration of rights, as well as in our constitution. In the struggle of the American patriots for independence and against the impunity of tyranny, they also rejected taxation without representation.
Similarly, today, in our country we equally reject hikes in the cost of basic services, engendering unaffordable cost of living, and resulting in abysmal standard of living for our people, without Social dialogue, in the absence of equitable and inclusive governance, in the midst of the widest gap in living memory between the poor and the rich, in the context of the most unequal society yet since independence.This is why we must fight, this is why all the social forces organising for resistance must be supported, this is why I endorse the actions being taken against the current punitive economic hardships being visited on our people. This is why we are mobilising, organising and preparing for more inclusive, and wider based resistance against bad governance.
