PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his national broadcast on Sunday called on protesters and organisers of the ongoing nationwide #EndBadGovernance protest, popularly called Hunger Protest, to suspend the nationwide rallies and mass action and embrace dialogue.
The protest, which began on Thursday, has witnessed violence in some states, leading to loss of over a dozen lives and properties worth billions of naira destroyed.
While protest organisers accuse security personnel of orchestrating the violence, state authorities, including President Tinubu, blame the protest on political infiltrators.
“Let nobody misinform and miseducate you about your country or tell you that your government does not care about you. Although there have been many dashed hopes in the past, we are in a new era of Renewed Hope. We are working hard for you, and the results will soon be visible and concrete for everyone to see, feel, and enjoy,” Tinubu said, stressing that he has heard the protesters “loud and clear”.
“My dear Nigerians, especially our youth, I have heard you loud and clear. I understand the pain and frustration that drive these protests, and I want to assure you that our government is committed to listening and addressing the concerns of our citizens.”
Tinubu, however, deflated any expectation of hope that he might use the broadcast to address the core challenges brought by his neo-liberal policies – of subsidy removal and naira devaluation – which are at the heart of the galloping inflation and economic hardship in the country since he assumed power on May 29, 2023.
“For decades, our economy has remained anaemic and taken a dip because of many misalignments that have stunted our growth. Just over a year ago, our dear country, Nigeria, reached a point where we couldn’t afford to continue the use of temporary solutions to solve long-term problems for the sake of now and our unborn generations.
“I therefore 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.
“These actions blocked the greed and the profits that smugglers and rent-seekers made. They also blocked the undue subsidies we had extended to our neighbouring countries to the detriment of our people, rendering our economy prostrate.
“These decisions I made were necessary if we must reverse the decades of economic mismanagement that didn’t serve us well. Yes, I agree, the buck stops on my table. But I can assure you that I am focused fully on delivering the governance to the people – good governance for that matter,” the president maintained.
