As tensions, conciliatory moves and security strategies build up towards the scheduled August 1, date for the kick-off of the #EndBadGovernance nationwide protest against escalating costs of living in Nigeria, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, a government minister says President Bola Tinubu will need more time to solve economic challenges which date decades back.
Speaking on Channels Television Sunday Politics programme, Sunday, Tunji-Ojo, who is Nigeria’s Minister of the Interior appealed to Nigerians to give the President more time to address the country’s economic woes.
Tunji-Ojo further appealed to intending participants of the August protest to be patriotic.
He said President Tinubu should not be judged with the expectation to solve a 100-year-old problem in one year.
“What you see today is an accumulated mismanagement over the last 100, 60, 30 years,” he said.
He added: “Mr President, to the best of my knowledge, never campaigned to be a magician; he campaigned as a statesman, he campaigned on the basis of ‘Renewed Hope’. Before hope could be renewed, it had dwindled.
“When you want to reboot hope that has been down, you need a bit of time, and we are on the right step.”
Tunji-Ojo said all the avenues of engagement and dialogue should be explored before a nationwide protest.
The minister insisted that the President means well for the nation and he has taken bold decisions including the removal of petrol subsidy which he described as a cancer.
He said Nigeria is going through a surgical process and will emerge healthy and strong. “We are pleading for time,” Tunji-Ojo said.
The protest against economic hardship, which is gaining traction on social media, has been scheduled to be held across all states of the Federation as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, for ten days starting Thursday August 1.
Prices of food and basic needs in Nigeria have rising in geometric progression in the past months as Nigerians battle one of the country’s worst inflation rates and economic crises sparked by the government’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of forex windows.
