We began this project with a simple observation.
Nigerianmovements,theonesthatproduced#EndSARS,#EndBadGovernance,andcountlesssmalleractsofresistanceareextraordinaryatsayingno.Wecanfillastreet.Wecantrendahashtag.Wecanmakeagovernmentblink.Butwearemuchlessgoodatsayingyes.Wehavenotbuiltashared,vivid,compellingpictureofwhatwearefightingfor.Andthatimaginativegaphasproventobeapoliticalvulnerability.Itallowsadictatorialstatetofillthevacuumwithfear,cynicism,anddivision.Thisisavulnerabilitywemustadmit.
“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.”Amílcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts
Thesewordsarethespiritandtheoperatingsystemofthiswebsite.Weadmitthatvulnerabilityandthefactthatshyingawayfromthatvulnerabilityhasopenedusuptomorevulnerabilities,thatthiswebsitealsoseekstoaddress.Onthiswebsite,tellnoliesmeansnoheroicpressreleases,nosanitisedvictorynarratives,nopretendingthatfailuredidn'thappen.Claimingnoeasyvictorymeanswerefusetheseductionofthequickwin,thehollowhashtag,themobilisationthatburnsbrightandleavesnothingbehind.
Movements learn. Or they should. But in Nigeria, movement learning is mostly invisible. It happens in WhatsApp groups that disappear, in chaotic debriefs after protests, in the heads of a few exhausted organisers who never get to write down what they learned before the next crisis hits. This lack of grounding has created a situation where we are sometimes chasing shadows and undertaking action for action sake. We have found that this is not sustainable.
“Many people lose energy and effort, and make sacrifices combating shadows. We have to combat the material reality that produces the shadow.”— Amílcar Cabral, Return to the Source
Without an honest archive of struggle, we end up fighting shadows like our own assumptions, our borrowed theories, and our recycled slogans, which can feel very comfortable sometimes. We often fail to see the actual shape of power: the rural chief who controls the police, the cruel landlord who knows the magistrate, or the market where their solidarity culture is stronger than any political party. PraxisAsItIs is a tool for seeing the material reality. It is a live, public, geospatial map of what people are actually doing, block by block, street by street, struggle by struggle.
What This Website Does
Every post on this site answers four questions
- 01What did we do?
- The action, described in concrete detail. Dates. Numbers. Locations. No abstraction.
- 02What did we learn?
- The hard‑won insight. What changed in our understanding of power, of our community, of ourselves.
- 03What is still unclear?
- The honest admission of confusion. The question we cannot yet answer.
- 04What do we need?
- A request for help. A lawyer. A printer. A venue. Solidarity. Then we put a pin on the map. Anyone can zoom in, see what is happening in their neighbourhood, and/or learn from someone they have never met. This is where lived reality meets ideological learning.
““Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.””Amílcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts
Thesewordsarethespiritandtheoperatingsystemofthiswebsite.Weadmitthatvulnerabilityandthefactthatshyingawayfromthatvulnerabilityhasopenedusuptomorevulnerabilities,thatthiswebsitealsoseekstoaddress.Onthiswebsite,tellnoliesmeansnoheroicpressreleases,nosanitisedvictorynarratives,nopretendingthatfailuredidn’thappen.Claimingnoeasyvictorymeanswerefusetheseductionofthequickwin,thehollowhashtag,themobilisationthatburnsbrightandleavesnothingbehind.
PraxisAsItIs was initiated and will be edited by a researcher‑organiser (Omole Ibukun) in collaboration with a Movement Advisory Council (domiciled within the Movement Lab Collective) of trusted grassroots movement leaders. The initiation of this project was funded as one of the outputs of a research grant from the Open Society Foundation to the researcher-organiser to study Movement Learning in Nigeria. We, therefore, operate largely as a commons of movement intellectuals, and not as an NGO.
“[The revolutionary petty bourgeoisie] must be capable of committing suicide as a class, to be reborn as revolutionary workers, entirely identified with the deepest aspirations of the people to which they belong.”— Amílcar Cabral, Recueil de textes
This website is an attempt to practice what Cabral preached that intellectuals who wish to serve movements must dissolve their privilege, not translate it into a new form of authority. Therefore the editor is a scribe, not an expert. The map belongs to the people who put the pins on it. We do not intend to speak for the movement, but to provide the infrastructure for the movement to speak for itself.
- Editor
- Omole Ibukun
- Institution
- Movement Lab Collective
- Funded by
- Open Society Foundation
This website was created by uzoma.studio ↗