THE Nigeria Labour Congress has warned the Nigerian government against engaging in a “war-war” situation with Nigerians by trying to suppress citizens’ fundamental right to protest.
The union in a statement, on Monday, July 22, noted that it’s condescending and dismissive to label the daily harsh struggles faced by Nigerians as a politically motivated dissent.
It urged the government to negotiate with the protesters instead of taking actions that could undermine citizens’ rights to express their grievances.
The ICIR reports that some Nigerians, along with a group led by former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore, have been mobilising to start nationwide protests in the first week of August.
The posts and tweets on the protest carry different hashtags, ranging from #RevolutionNow, #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria, #TakeItBack, #DaysofRage and #TinubuMustGo.
However, reacting to the different calls for the protest, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, on Saturday, July 20, said the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Peter Obi, should be held responsible for his supporters’ alleged plans to cause mayhem in the country.
He noted that the “protest planners are also the same people who were instigated by IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu to launch the destructive ENDSARS protest in Nigeria in October 2020. ENDSARS began as a genuine protest by youths against the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad, notorious for its high-handedness.
“IPOB members planning to extricate the South-East region from Nigeria infiltrated the protest and hijacked it for their own agenda. Lagos still bears the scar of the malicious destruction by IPOB elements until today.”
According to him, the IPOB and Obi’s supporters are the people spreading the hashtags ‘EndBadGovernance’, ‘Tinubu Must Go,’ and ‘Revolution2024’.
He further described them as anarchists and not democrats, noting that they were attempting to call out their people via propaganda due to Obi’s failure to win the presidency in the 2023 election.
“If they understand the meaning of their hashtags, they will realise they are clarion calls for treason. Wanting to end an elected government is high treason. Wanting revolution is a call for a coup d’etat, which is also high treason,” the presidential aide added.
Reacting to this, the NLC, said the government should negotiate by inviting the leadership of the protest movement for discussions on their grievances.
The NLC president, Joe Ajaero, said in the statement, “The truth is that millions of Nigerians are angry about the state of the national economy. A situation where most Nigerian families are forced to eat one miserable meal a day and eating from the dustbin beckons for serious intervention by the government.”
Ajaero also cited a recent living standards index assessment by the National Bureau of Statistics, revealing that approximately 133 million Nigerians live in multidimensional poverty.
“When this statistics is added to the millions that are being recruited into the armies of the unemployed and under-employed Nigerians, one can easily situate the hardship, pain, frustrations and despair that many Nigerians are going through right now.
“The truth is that Nigerians have been hard pushed and super-pressed right against the walls of deep deprivation and acute want. It is, therefore, condescending and dismissive to describe the daily brutish ordeal that Nigerians are going through as a sponsored political dissent.”
The presidency’s recent reaction was also at the heel of the security agents calling on the citizens not to partake in the planned nationwide protest.
Usman Mustapha is a solution journalist with International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: [email protected]. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M