There’s a special sort of helplessness that has recently come to define my relationship with Nigeria. It occurs to me that all over the world it is normal for citizens to feel a certain frustration directed at their governments, or at institutions within their countries – for example the Arab Spring, which brought down entire governments in North Africa, or the Occupy Movement, which emerged as a backlash against the “institution” that is Wall Street.
This is a different sort of helplessness; the vulnerability triggered by the realisation that a small group of politically powerful persons, sometimes not representing any formally constituted authority, is attempting to subvert the will of the ordinary citizens of a country.
This is a far more discrete type of helplessness than what emerges from a general, lingering, wide-angle sense of dissatisfaction with the way a country is being run.