05/08/2025
🟥🎙️ Kowa Podcast Twisdon360
One Year Later: Bangladesh’s Student Uprising and the Unfinished Global Revolt
Twisdon360 Editorial
Exactly one year ago, the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh bore witness to one of the most powerful displays of youth defiance the 21st century has seen. What began as a protest against discriminatory quota laws in public sector jobs rapidly exploded into a full-blown student uprising — one that shook the foundations of Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian government.
The protest wasn’t merely about jobs. It was about dignity. It was about a generation rising up to say: “We will not inherit your silence. We will not inherit your fear.”
In response, the regime cracked down with predictable brutality — tear gas, batons, arrests, and murders. But the youth didn’t retreat. They marched, they resisted, and they demanded the resignation of a regime that saw them as expendable.
They declared:
Enough is enough.
From Dhaka to the World: A Glimpse of What’s Possible
The Bangladesh student uprising reverberated far beyond South Asia. It reminded the world that even in the most repressive conditions, people can still rise. That when the youth say “no more,” dictators tremble. That hope, even when denied oxygen, will find a way to breathe.
That spirit is what inspires us at Kowa Podcast Twisdon360 Politics Unplugged. It is the same energy we strive to amplify — an energy rooted not in hollow optimism but in revolutionary courage.
It is a reminder to us here in Nigeria, and across the Global South, that we are not doomed to passive suffering.
Nigeria’s Turn: The Powder Keg We Refuse to Ignite
Let’s ask the hard question:
Why hasn’t a similar fire erupted here in Nigeria?
After all, we face:
Record-breaking youth unemployment
Rising hunger and poverty
A currency crisis that’s devaluing life itself
Mass insecurity and unchecked police brutality
A ruling class deaf to suffering and drunk on impunity
And yet, for too long, we’ve accepted this slow death in silence. We wait for saviors. We endure. We tweet. We hope.
But hope is not a strategy — especially when the system is designed to crush even our ability to dream.
Student Power Is Not a Myth — It’s a Weapon
Bangladesh’s youth reminded us of the power of student-led resistance. History is full of such moments:
The Soweto Uprising in apartheid South Africa
The Tiananmen Square protests in China
The 1968 student protests in France and Mexico
The uprising right here in Nigeria
In each case, young people were told to be patient, quiet, and obedient. In each case, they rose anyway.
They didn’t need permission to rebel. They understood that waiting for justice from the unjust is a trap.
So why are we, the youth and working class of Nigeria, still waiting?
The Seeds of Resistance Are Global
What unites the youth in Dhaka, Nairobi, Lagos, and Kampala isn’t just shared pain — it’s shared potential.
We are the majority. We are the workers, the thinkers, the builders, the healers, the creators. The system cannot function without us — and yet it exploits us daily.
This is why the uprising in Bangladesh is not an isolated story — it is a chapter in a global book of rebellion.
From Chile to Sudan, from Haiti to Myanmar, the people are rising. And when they do, even the mightiest tyrants fall.
We Remember. We Resist. We Rise.
As we mark the one-year anniversary of the Bangladesh Student Uprising, we do so not as distant observers, but as comrades in struggle.
We remember those who bled.
We honour those who marched.
We stand with those still resisting.
And we ask — to every student, worker, unemployed graduate, informal trader, radical teacher, and silenced dreamer in Nigeria:
What are you waiting for?
The same anger that exploded in Dhaka lives inside us. The same hunger for justice. The same fire.
All we need to do is light it — and refuse to be extinguished.
> “Rise like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number—
Ye are many—they are few.”
— P.B. Shelley
✊🏾 Call to Action
Let the memory of Bangladesh not be a eulogy — let it be a blueprint.
Let it not be an inspiration — let it be an ignition.
To the young, poor, excluded, and defiant across Nigeria and Africa:
This is your moment. Your fight. Your future.
Don’t ask for permission to rise.
Don’t beg for your future.
Take it back.
