THE organising committee directing the activities of the protest against hunger and hardship at the Gani Faweninmi Park, Ojota, Lagos State, says the protest continues on Monday, August 5.

They said in a statement, ‘Re-President Tinubu’s Broadcast on ongoing #EndBadGovernance Protest’, issued on Sunday, August 4.

It was signed by Hassan Taiwo Soweto, Ayoyinka Oni, and Oloye Adegboyega Adeniji for and on behalf of the #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria Organising Committee.

According to the organising committee, the activities for Monday’s protest will include holding a congress to discuss the President’s broadcast and issuing a press conference.

“We have listened with rapt attention to President Bola Tinubu’s broadcast earlier today, Sunday 4 August 2024, on the ongoing protest by the Nigerian youth and people over the condition of hunger and hardship in the country.

“We consider it rather unfortunate that it took President Tinubu three days of protest during which over 40 Nigerian people were massacred and several others injured across the country by security operatives and state-sponsored thugs before he realized the need to address the country,” the statement read.

The committee said it considered the President’s address an important victory for their movement, stressing that without their courage and resolve to dare the odds, Tinubu would not have taken the decision.

Tinubu had, in its national broadcast on Sunday, ordered the protest to be suspended.

In their view, the organising committee said this was tantamount to signalling the police, the army and so-called hoodlums to drown their movement in blood, just like EndSARS four years ago.

“The president cannot be approbating and reprobating at the same time. The President cannot offer an olive branch while at the same time holding a dagger to our throat.”

They alleged this played out earlier on Sunday at the Gani Fawehinmi Park, where thugs attacked protesters who had gathered for morning worship thereby injuring many, they said.

“We have on record the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Okafor, telling injured protesters the thugs were justified to have attacked them because they had no right to be there since the President has ordered the suspension of protest.”

To consider any offer of dialogue, the President needs to clarify if he wants to dialogue with us as slaves or as freeborn, they said, maintaining that the President had largely ignored protesters’ demands.

They urged the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the media, and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) “not to watch with arms folded as President Tinubu uses state terror to chase us out of the streets instead of addressing our demands.”

The #EndBadGovernance protest emerged from the suffering and frustration of ordinary Nigerian youth and people, and is planned for August 1 to 10, The ICIR can report.

“We are by this statement notifying the Commissioner of Police in Lagos state to ask his men and women not to harass and repress protesters in Lagos and across the country,” the organising committee added.