Comrade Osazee Edigin, is a former Public Relations Officer of Edo Civil Society Organizations (EDOCSO) and coordinator, Action for Social-Political and Economic Change which has an acronym as ASEC. He is a man who has seen so much when it comes to activism and fighting for the masses in Edo State and Nigeria at large. In this interview, hee speaks about his challenges, good times, and what led him into activism…

Excerpt

Tell Us About You?

I am Comrade Osazee Edigin, I am a civil rights activist and also a business man. I am the immediate past Public Relations Officer of Edo Civil Society Organizations, EDOCSO. I am also the coordinator of My civil society group, which is an affiliate of Edo civil society organisations. The name of my group is Action For Social-Political and Economic Change which has an acronym as ASEC.

How Long Have You Been Into Activism?

Well, I can take you through memory lane. It is as far back as 80’s, precisely, 1989. My first outing was during the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) Riot during the military head of state, Ibrahim Babagida.
I was still in secondary school then, when the SAP Riot broke out. I was still very young then. We have to join some of our elder brothers to be on the streets to be part of the riot. I was part of the procession to the House of Assembly through the GRA, and some notable politicians houses, then, to express our grievances and it is not like now that we have protest, then it was riot where you see burn fires, government property are destroyed just to express your grievances.
In that riot, an uncle of mine was arrested while some of us ran and he was taken to Maduguri in a military cargo plane for trial. I could remember very well, and on till six months before he resurfaced.
I also partook during the Abacha maladministration wherein there was fuel scarcity. There was poverty in the land, and he wanted to continue as a civilian president and there were riots.
These were some of the things that spurred my anger against so many things that were not going well in the country. Then, the death of Ken Saro Wiwa was another one that I also partook in and since then, it has been one struggle to the other.
We are now in Edo State where there is civilian government and I have been part of different struggles. Outside that, I became the Public Relations Officer of Edo Civil Society Organizations, (EDOCSO) which was a coalition. Some of us were the brains behind it.

What Led You Into Activism?

Like I said earlier, looking at things that are not going well in the society – I hate oppression. I have always desired things to be done appropriately. I have always wanted a society where people can live freely, a society devoid of oppression, a society where we have a responsive government.
Some of these things have been some of my worries and of course, I can’t do that by hiding. I saw the need to take action. Now, right from the time of the SAP Riot which I mentioned in 1989, it has been from one thing to the other. So, those were the training days as a very young man then and looking at the society, I think that we need a change. We need to live like the way other ideal society live not retrogressively. So, some of these things motivated me to say it is good to speak up. And when you talk about activism, it has to do with citizens who have the ability to speak up. So, there is nothing spectacular about it. Your ability not to hide in the face of challenges, that is what makes you an activist.

What Are Your Trying Moment?

My most trying moment has been most times, when you look at some of these things, and when people see you as one who speaks truth to power, they tend to avoid you, they also try not to bring you into certain things mostly on the part of government even within your family cycle too. There are certain things they want to discuss and they know you will not take it likely, they will not bring you in.
There are instances where we have been arrested; where we tend to stand for somebody, so, the authority took us into custody for standing for somebody that doesn’t have a voice.
At a time, the Trade Union Congress of Ghana invited us to Ghana sometimes in 2015 or 16 if I am not mistaken, when we went to join in a well mobilised protest against the hardships in Ghana, we were arrested and we spent days in their custody but we thanked God some of our comrades in Nigeria, their agitations, the support we got from people in Nigeria here, actually made the Ghanian government to know that they cannot just take us into custody because from what we gathered, we did not commit any criminal offence.
As a member of ECOWAS countries, we are also citizens in Ghana for the time being, as at the time we were in Ghana at least, we had up to three months to be seen as citizens of Ghana because Ghana also belongs to the ECOWAS Community. The experience has been that people seem to just sideline you in so many things that they think you will speak against and these are the things that don’t make the society move forward. How do you marry your activism with your personal affairs? Well, some of us have taken activism as a way of life but again, we also know that we have another life which has to do with our families, our businesses, so, we try to schedule our time, our resources as it were, being that we are not in activism because we want to be politically relevant. We are in activism because we want to contribute our quota to the society and in doing that, you must also know that you have a life to live outside activism, you must have time for your family, take care of your family’s need. As an activist, it doesn’t stop me from working; it doesn’t stop you from doing business. So, you must be able to arrange your time adequately so that everything will flow accordingly without you having much challenges. Though, it is not easy, most times, when your wife hears that you are going out for a protest or you are in one police station or the other, she gets agitated.
There is this fear that we live in a society where people can be very wicked and if you are speaking truth to power, there is this fear that you can be harmed by the system we belong to. The fear is there, but what we do most times is to see how we can assuage these fears, encourage them that nothing will happen but it has not been easy, anyway.

Why Did You People Choose To Wade Into The Issue Of The N750 BEDC Fixed Charge?

Well, as an activist, you look at areas the masses are suffering, you look at those people who can’t help out, yes, not necessarily that you are part of such suffering but because you hold those people that don’t have the voice to speak in high esteem, so you have to put yourself in their place in fighting for them. As an activist, you just begin to think, why are things not in the way they used to be? We sat down and x-ray Nigeria, why are people suffering? Why is there hunger? And part of the things we realized is that, the lack of electricity was part of it. Lack of electricity has actually reduced productivity, it has reduced entrepreneurship and in a society where you don’t have such, it means that the people are going to be poor. If people are poor, it means crime rate is going to increase. So, there are a whole lot of chain connection to all these.Now, we realized that one of the reasons we don’t have electricity in Nigeria is because Nigerians have been shortchange because of this N750 which they called fixed charge. A lot of people know it as Metre Maintenance Fee, but the actual name is fixed charge, whether you consume electricity or not, you are asked to pay a minimum of N750 for residential buildings, for industrial buildings, it ranges from N50,000 to N250,000 that people pay every month. I said no, we need to interrogate this N750, it is unfair. It is not justifiable for somebody to collect what he has not worked for. That was part of things that motivated us to begin to ask questions and when we saw we could not get convincing response from the power company, we have no choice than to begin to take steps in stopping the fixed charge which also took us to a Lagos High Court where it was ruled that it was illegal and other steps we took before the Federal Government in 2016, I think, in February 1st, it was now abolished. We saw it as a disservice to Nigerians that private entities, they have been so empowered to be taking from Nigerians for services not rendered. So, it was appalling and we needed to fight it. So, we went out with our strength, our resources and all that we got to ensure that it was abolished and indeed, we did succeed in 2016 and till date, it has been abolished.

How Did You People React To The Support Given To EDOCSO By The National Assembly?

We felt very important to the development of Nigeria when the national assembly also made efforts sometimes ago to criminalise estimated billings and every other charges that will not make Nigeria move forward.
When we paid our visit to the national assembly by meeting our various Reps and Senators, Senator Uzamere, from Edo South, presented our petition before the floor of the house and it was like an eye opener even to the lawmakers. It now occur to us that even the laws that are being made by our lawmakers, they are not even abreast with the provisions of these laws. So, we were able to bring out those areas that gave the players in the sector to extort Nigerians and that made their eyes to be opened to see that this thing has been going on for quite some time. So, we were happy that for a very first time, we were able to open our lawmakers’ eyes to see a sector that has been extorting, exploiting Nigerians. So, it was a great time to express the need for government and civil society to collaborate for the advancement of the society.
For most times, people see civil society as trouble makers; people who just want to criticize or do not have anything to bring to the table, but that is not correct. We were able to prove a point during that engagement.

Do You Have Intention Of Putting Up All Your Experiences Into A Compendium?

Yes, I thought about this because we have actually engaged in so many activities, so many of them are not even documented and why it is so is that, we did so many of these things so selflessly and on that, we did not see the need to document so many of them, but a lot have also been documented.
So, in the nearest future, it is my greatest desire to put some of these things together in a small essay that people can actually refer to. But what we have also noticed is that, our actions over the years, have inspired a lot of young activists too who can now stand and demand for their rights.
Now, you have seen so many groups coming up with different names, demanding for one right and/or the other. You could remember recently, there was a group who came up to fight this land grabbing of a thing.
These are some of the inspirations gotten from what some of us have been able to do over the years. They saw the passion, the enthusiasm we exhibited in ensuring that the right things are done. So, I plan to put some of these things together in a book that the future generations can refer to and such should be able to spur them on how activism should be carried out. Whether we like it or not, some of us have been able to redefine activism which has also affected how government behaves. So, these are some of the things that we have been able to do and before anybody goes out to do things, he thinks what will the right groups do if I go this way and if we did not document some of these things, it will be something that we did not do well in our generation. The newspapers reports that we have been able to assemble as it were, owing to our duty, over 300 as I speak with you. It is over 300 that we have kept in our archives. So, there is a whole lot of information that we can put together for the next generation to see how the nation was able to fair in our own time.

How Will You Rate Activism In Nigeria?

Well, I can say, there are different levels of activisms. There are some who are in activism because they want to get political relevance. There are some who think activism is an opportunity to get what to eat.
There are also some who are genuinely fighting the course of the common man without expecting any gratification, but you can’t compare activism of today to where we are coming from because politics has been able to eat so deep into so many of our people. That is so because there is no job for a lot of our youths and most times, when you see them raising their voices, it is because they want to be noticed, because they want to be given relevance, but in our time, it was not like that, it was selfless and a lot of people saw that selfless attributes in us even when we have so many temptations of being compromised, but we never gave in, we were resolute in whatever struggle we decided to engage in. So, politics is actually destroying activism and those that can stay on, they will always distinguish themselves.

Are You Quitting Activism?

No, there is no programme entry time and exit time, an activist is an activist. That you hold an positions does not make you superior to every other activists that all of you are in the same group.
What we have done over the years is to institutionalise activism in Edo State. I will break it down, when we came up as an individual, the fuel subsidy in January 2012, when the protest broke out in Nigeria during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, so many of us were operating at individual capacity then, handling our different groups, so we came together to prosecute that protest. That was where we began to mute the idea of having a coalition which later metamorphose into the Edo Civil Society Organizations. Edo Civil Society Organisations is coalition of civil society groups and individuals in Edo State and from there, we now moved to having study centres, where we create community based classes where we teach locales about their rights and the society, we build their consciousness and why we are doing that is to make sure that the civil society movement is institutionalised and as at the last count, we have 22 of those classes in different communities across Edo State. We have in Edo Central, South and Edo North and we are building more. So, persons have come into the movement, they have been trained, they have been conscientized, they have the passion to take off from where some of us have taken them to and that doesn’t stop the fact that, I still remain as an activist. At this moment, I still response to issues as an activist that I am, but as part of the persons that have built the institution of activism in Edo State, I remain one of the persons who also give my advice, my experiences to the younger ones on how to go about activism. It is not that I am quitting activism, it is just that I tend to dedicate more of my time to my private business now to activism but activism is in my DNA. So, any day they may call, it is an act, I am out there to defend the helpless irrespective of whose horse is gorged.

Is There Any Time You Were Offered Money To Jettison An Idea?

That is a common phenomenon in activism but we tend not to mention some of those things because we see these as some of those things that will come. We live in a corrupt society. We live in a society people think with money, they can buy your conscience. It is not an easy thing to always stand against a society that has been programmed with corrupt practices because what we do as activists is to raise issues, issues that will better the life of the masses, but a lot of people in Nigeria who have attained leadership do not actually want the betterment of Nigerians, they want the suffering and they are self-centred. So, when an activist speaks up, it is either they want to give you a preferential treatment or they think they want to buy you over. Yes, I have been to offices where processes have been circumvented and when I appear, raise my voice, they want to give me preferential treatment, I tell them no. I want everyone to be treated the way I am being treated. These are things that we come across everyday. For instance, when we go to police station to go and take somebody on bail, maybe they are two or three suspects, police will say we are only giving you one, I will say no, we came for the three suspects and we are taking the three at no cost.
Talking about money, it is a normal thing in activism. But if you want to grow as an activist, you must be able to resist the temptations of being bought over, it is key, if you really want to succeed as an activist. Any activist that wants to go down so early, is the one that will go and be compromising his stands, he struggles.A lot of people who have come into activism have sold out their conscience. You can’t eat your cake and have it. You must either stand with the truth and remain resolute or you get yourself compromised and you get yourself out of the system.

What Would You Like To Be Remembered For?

I want to be remembered as someone who contributed his quota to a better society and who spoke at a time things were not done properly, as a voice who stood out and refused to go by the general direction of those that don’t want things to be done well in Nigeria. I want to be remembered as somebody who has the true passion for a better society. You see, we live in a country where people go for vain glory but to someone like me, everything about this world is vanity. What will make me happy is when someone that is oppressed is able to be delivered from the hands of the oppressors. These are the things that have given me joy and I am glad I have been able to do that all these years, I have touched so many lives, I have fought so many battles and God has kept me alive till now, it is something that has given me joy.

Have You Been Confronted With Threats To Life?

Severally, there are some, they will attack us physically with dangerous weapons many times but you can’t remove the fact that the truth will always stand. We see those attacks as part of the job.