The organisers of the Nationwide hunger Protests, tagged #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protests, have castigated the assertions of President Bola Tinubu during his nationwide broadcast.
According to them, the president’s speech demonstrated that he has lost the touch with reality in the country.
Addressing journalists in Abuja on Sunday
The National Coordinator of Youth Rights Campaign, Micheal Lenin, while addressing journalists in Abuja on Sunday, said, “We wish to express our sadness and deep disappointment at the latest broadcast by President Tinubu, which is his first address to the nation on the #EndBadGovernance protests, after over three weeks since Nigerians started mobilizing to take to the streets and after scores of dead protesters and assaulted journalists from the first three days of the protests.
“Many had requested that the President should just address the nation when the protest was being mobilized and when it started to escalate, but most of us did not know that the President would only justify state violence on protesters and journalists while dismissing the demands of the protesters whenever he decides to speak. This, plus the failed attempt to co-opt the progressive and radical language of the protests, only shows how much President Tinubu is out of touch with the masses.”
The representative of the Take It Back Movement, Emiola Osifeso, also stated that the claim by President Tinubu that the nationwide protests are driven by a political agenda to tear Nigeria apart is nothing but an attempt to call a dog a bad name so that he can easily hang it. He tagged the claim, "a gross misrepresentation of the obvious facts that have become the economic reality of all Nigerians."
According to him, “These protests have been largely faceless and leaderless because it was a spontaneous response of Nigerians triggered by the deep multidimensional poverty, sharp inequality, barbarous corruption and gross human rights abuses that we see every day before us.
“The protest was the lawful response of the Nigerian people to the failure of the Tinubu government to address these endemic systemic issues after over 14 months in power.
“These protests were mobilised for by the flagrant extravagance of political office holders in Nigeria for the past 14 months while asking Nigerians to be patient in our hunger and hardship – which they claim to be our sacrifice for the nation. It is almost better for the President to have kept silent than to make this kind of broadcast in which he continued his attitude of ignoring the legitimate grievances of the Nigerian people, by delegitimizing our protests as politically-motivated.”
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