Last week we tried to call the attention of the Federal Government on the need to take the clear message which some Nigerians sent across from the streets during the #EndBadGovernance protest across the country as a guide or feedback to understanding what really agitates the people or how the people on the streets perceive governance at all levels.
We had argued and warned against seeing the action of the people as a revolt or call for regime change, which often tends to be a smokescreen for hunting down opposition or perceived enemies of governments.
This is more so, given the fact that it is still early days for the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu government and so there is still ample time for the president to begin work to redress the ruinous actions of his predecessors, worse still that of his immediate predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari.
This advice becomes so poignant given that even if the sponsors of the protest have ulterior motives or have external interference, those agitations represent the mood of the mass of people on the streets. The protests reflected the despair, desperation and dejection which the people today feel after 24 years of uninterrupted democracy.
Therefore, for President Tinubu it becomes imperative for him to take this as feedback and intensify work on addressing these misgivings since he still has three years of his first term to make the desired impact and hit the right notes and deliver good governance.
Again, the president must realise that presiding over a country like Nigeria can never be a tea party or leisure work in the garden on a Sunday morning. It is a task and a fact that whoever seeks that office must be abreast with. It’s a tough and demanding job that ill-affords the occupant of the office of president the luxury of distractions of cracking down on perceived enemies, both imaginary and perceived. The four years term will come and go like candles in the wind, before he realises it.
However, President Tinubu, a self-confessed protest leader, is idly watching while his government is being distracted and derailed through the pursuit of the inconsequential at the expense of the consequential and critical issues at hand.
What are the issues? Is it true that the people are hungry? Is it true that the cost of living is increasingly getting unbearable? Is it true that the political class are feeding fat at the expense of the people who put them there? Is it true that the unemployment rate is dangerously increasing by the day with our institutions producing graduates who have nothing to do because even their training are no longer addressing the needs of the society? Is it true that the cost of goods and services are so astronomically high that the once endangered middle class has now been wiped out? Is it true that our youths are daily driven to despair with a prospect of a gloomy future that they are now seeking pastures even in hostile territories? Is it true that the insecurity across the nation remains a hindrance to the progress of the nation?
Now, if all of these and more are our experiences today, why chase or hunt the sponsors of the protests when the catalyst for such upheavals are there on the streets? What this means is that if you waste precious time chasing these perceived enemies it would only be a matter of time before these disruptions or unrest would happen again since the circumstances which gave birth to them are ever so present.
Sadly, rather than to seek ways of addressing these issues and explaining to the nation why some of those hard decisions needed to be taken and the measures being made to mitigate the inevitable consequences of key government policy measures, the government seems bent on pursuing the so-called sponsors of the protest.
Many of the alleged sponsors are reported to have been placed on the watchlist of security agencies. What are the issues? That they allegedly sponsored protests in the country. Again, this is unnecessary dissipation of energy chasing shadows when the real issues are still there unaddressed.
The Comptroller General, Nigeria Immigration Service, Kemi Nandap, had revealed that the Diaspora sponsors of #EndBadGovernance protesters have been placed on its watchlist.
Nandap, who didn’t reveal any name, added that the watch-listed individuals would be arrested upon their arrival in the country.
Speaking at a meeting of heads of security agencies and Service Chiefs in Abuja, last Tuesday, she said, “We have diaspora sponsors, they are on our watchlist. They are watchlisted, any attempt they make to come into the country, we’ll be notified and they will be picked up and handed to the appropriate authority.”
Also last week, the national headquarters of the Nigerian Labour Congress was raided. Earlier reports had it that the then unknown operatives were possibly linking the NLC with the protests.
However, the police were to later admit carrying out the raid but said that it was not targeted at the NLC but at a foreign national who operates a rented space within the NLC building.
Similarly, the Director-General Department of State Services, Yusuf Bichi, also said the agency had uncovered some sponsors but declined to give further information.
The DG, DSS also said some of the persons operating such accounts are staying abroad, adding that they are being monitored.
Meanwhile, the same police continued their crackdown on the organisers and protesters, many of whom had been detained. Some of the alleged protest leaders have also gone underground and switched off their phones.
This approach by various security agencies simply portrays the government as being high-handed and this has no place in democracy especially when one realises that President Tinubu himself has openly admitted having led protests in the past. Peaceful protest is a constitutionally guaranteed right of the citizens in a democracy. If the APC led similar protests as opposition in the past and its members were not arrested, molested or detained then how can they explain this high-handedness and clear case of intolerance?
It was pathetic seeing former NLC president, Adams Oshiomhole, labouring in vain to rationalise the actions of the government, when he too became who he is simply as a result of his actions on the streets as labour union president.
The earlier the government begins to refocus itself to addressing the main issues and stop this shadow-chasing the better for it. President Tinubu just cannot successfully explain these arrests when he also has a history of such struggles both against the military and civilian governments.
This is a wrong and inexcusable move and must be stopped. The president must continue his work to address those salient issues raised by the protesters to sway the people to his side, that is a more lasting and enduring solution. If he continues on this road of cracking down on protesters he will have nothing to show at the end of his tenure. For as long as he fails to address the needs of the people, the protesters would continue to have the oxygen to do more.
The high level of intolerance exhibited by some overzealous police officers in Abuja and Lagos and other places, who molested and harassed journalists for exercising their constitutional guaranteed duties is to say the least appalling and a shame to the police.
Nigerians are hungry and angry, that it is true. Tinubu cannot provide answers to the questions raised by the people instantaneously, that is also true, but it behoves the government to begin to work and provide timelines for some of its interventions to give hope to the people. That is the only positive path to take.
