…Soyinka, Falana, others fault President’s national broadcast
…protesters say demands not addressed, regroup
After three days of the #EndBadGovernance protests across Nigeria, President Bola Tinubu addressed the protesters in a nationwide broadcast on Sunday appealing for a cessation and calling for dialogue to seek resolution.
He, however, failed to address the bulk of grievances and demands that led to the protests, prompting a small group of protesters to gather at Gani Fawehinmi Park in Lagos to chant solidarity songs shortly after Tinubu’s address.
The protesters expressed dissatisfaction, stating that the President had not adequately addressed the core issues they had raised, despite mentioning some efforts by his administration. Security personnel, including policemen, were present at the park to maintain order, restricting the protesters from holding a procession beyond the designated area at Gani Fawehinmi Park in Ojota.
Among the unmet demands of the protesters was the reinstatement of the petrol subsidy that has led to hike in petrol prices and brought untold hardships in the country. He also failed to call for the arrest of security operatives responsible for killing protesters.
The protesters also demanded logistics and storage interventions with regard to food, and for government to reduce electricity tariffs and import taxes and curb insecurity across the country.
Others are demands that the cost of governance be reduced by 50 per cent and reflect on the running cost of the executive and National Assembly, as well as a full implementation of the Oronsaye Report to scrap agencies and reduce the size and cost of governance.
The groups involved in the #EndBadGovernance protests also demanded that the Federal Government put an end to pervasive hunger in the country by reducing the cost of food immediately with solutions like food importation, subsidised credits, and intervention in logistics and storage challenges.
They also want entertainment and all other NASS allowances scrapped and the immediate removal of all 7,447 projects worth N2.24 trillion inserted by the National Assembly in the 2024 federal budget.
They are similarly asking that government provide security to farmers across the country, restore stolen lands, subsidise farm inputs – seeds, fertilisers, insecticides – and ban destructive GMOs.
They are further demanding that government declare a state of emergency on education, increase budgetary allocation to education and healthcare by 20 per cent and revert to the old National Anthem.
In addition, they are calling for the implementation of the Justice Uwais Report on Electoral Reform and for the inclusion of mandatory electronic balloting and transmission to IREV, ending with an executive Electoral Bill to the National Assembly by October 1. The new Electoral Act must be signed by December 2024, they say.
The protests, which began on Thursday, August 1, were orderly in parts of the country but spiralled out of control in others, where they were hijacked by miscreants and mischief makers, leading to looting and the loss of lives.
Addressing the nation on Sunday, President Tinubu urged protesters and organizers to suspend any further protests and create room for dialogue, which he claimed he has always been open to at the slightest opportunity.
Calling for unity of mind and purpose from Nigerians, he said, “Nigeria requires all hands on deck and needs us all, regardless of age, party, tribe, religion or other divides, to work together in reshaping our destiny as a nation,” Tinubu said.
The President explained that there was no going back on the removal of fuel subsidy and the free float of the naira, two policies which protesting groups demanded be reversed.
“I … took the painful, yet necessary decision to remove fuel subsidies and abolish multiple foreign exchange systems which had constituted a noose around the economic jugular of our nation and impeded our economic development and progress.
“This has given us more financial freedom and room to spend more money on you our citizens, to fund essential social services like education and healthcare. It has also led to our State and Local Governments receiving the highest allocation in our country’s history from the Federation Account,” he said.
Reacting to Tinubu’s speech, human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), called on the President to address the demands of the peaceful protesters.
In a statement on Sunday, Falana said the presidential speech fell short of addressing the key demand of the protesters: reversal of the policy of withdrawal of fuel subsidy.
“If the government takes the fight against corruption to oil dealers and crude oil is processed in government-owned refineries, there will be no basis for fuel subsidy, which is induced by the importation of petroleum products. A positive response to the key demands of the youths to review the protesters could make them review their actions. Insensitivity to their demands can only provoke continued action,” he said.
While congratulating the protesters for drawing the attention of politicians who are eating in Abuja to the plight of millions of Nigerians who are hungry, Falana demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all protesters that were arrested and detained saying they had not committed any criminal offence.
He also condemned the repression of the peaceful protesters while commiserating with all those who lost loved ones in the protest.
He called on the government to set up commissions of inquiry to bring to justice those responsible for the reckless killings.
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka faulted the President’s speech for failing to address the brutal crackdown of #EndBadGovernance protesters by security agencies.
A number of persons were killed in the states where the protests turned violent, but while Tinubu called for calm and sympathised with those who lost loved ones in the protests, Soyinka said the President’s speech “fell conspicuously short” in addressing the “continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management”.
“His outline of the government’s remedial action since inception, aimed at warding off just such an outbreak, will undoubtedly receive expert and sustained attention both for effectiveness and in content analysis. My primary concern, quite predictably, is the continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management, an area in which the presidential address fell conspicuously short,” Soyinka said.
To Soyinka, the “nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention”.
“Such short-changing of civic deserving, regrettably, goes to arm the security forces in the exercise of impunity and condemns the nation to a seemingly unbreakable cycle of resentment and reprisals.
“Live bullets as a state response to civic protest – that becomes the core issue. Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances, certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest. Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S., not peculiar to the Nigerian nation. They belong indeed in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters.
“They serve as summons to governance that a breaking point has been reached and thus, a testing ground for governance awareness of public desperation. The tragic response to the ongoing hunger marches in parts of the nation, and for which notice was served, constitutes a retrogression that takes the nation even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed ENDSARS protests.
“It evokes pre-independence – that is, colonial – acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late stage pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera BREAD AND BULLETS, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government,” he said.
Also reacting, Convener of COUNTRYFIRST MOVT, Prof Chris Mustapha Nwaokobia Jnr., said the President “spoke without listening”.
“Mr. President’s speech this morning was a flaccid and an uneventful dance around the issues that brought us to the nadir. He sought to validate the policies that traumatize the people. He sought to decree an end to the protests without addressing the issues. Without making concrete promises. Without announcing some far-reaching reforms. And without saying a thing about cutting the cost of governance, and cutting wastage, wanderlust and profligacy,” Nwaokobia said.
