Why Protest Must Stop Having Achieved Its Objectives From Day 1

Despite repeated appeals from many stakeholders against the #Endbadgovernance protest, it still went on as planned on August 1st, 2024 disrupting economic and social activities across the country......Read The Full Article>>.....Read The Full Article>>

In some states of the federation, specifically Kano, Borno, Yobe and even the nation’s capital Abuja, the protest was far from peaceful as it shook the fabric of governance with those currently in the helm of affairs in the President Bola Tinubu led government expressing fears that the situation might degenerate to the Kenya episode where citizens went on killing and burning spree.

There were various twists to the protest particularly in thenation’s capital as pundits following developments saw when pro and anti-government protesters openly clashed on the scene of protest.

But one thing was clear before the protest broke out, the people wanted to vent their frustrations on the government for perceived lack of ability to control the inflationary trend. They also wanted to voice their grievances over the rising spate of insecurity in some parts of the country, especially kidnapping of citizens for ransom becoming a daily occurrence.

Although the protest had no specific coordinators, some activists who braved courage to come on television programmes to air their opinions, attributed the challenges to reasons why many Nigerians were leaving the country in droves for greener pastures in ‘saner climes’.

Be that as it may, Day 1 of the protest largely achieved the aim and objectives for staging it.

If for nothing, Day 1 of the protest tagged #Endbadgovernance, may have brought sober reflections on the part of the government to refocus and deliver the expected mandate.

Hence sustaining the protest for ten whole days leaves much to be desired, especially with the wanton destruction and looting that trailed the protest in Kano state in particular.

In one viral video during the protest, we saw youths looting warehouses owned by private individuals and carting away goods stored for sale.

In another scene we saw a young man who climbed traffic light and made frantic attempt to pull down the light obviously to go and sell the metals as scrap. In Kano too we saw a video footage of how a yet to be commissioned Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) office was vandalised with protesters taking away desktop computers, seats among other valuable items.

For God’s sake why will citizens who are complaining of bad leadership go ahead to show poor examples of destroying infrastructures built with their own money?

The Tinubu led government which came into power in May 29, 2023 has also hinged some of it spolicies so far adopted on the dead economy it inherited from the Buhari administration.

To be specific, President Tinubu on first day as President exited Nigeria from subsidy payments, on account that it was bleeding the country of resources for all round development. For several decades successive governments including that of Buhari struggled to meet huge bills for subsidy payments.

No thanks to huge corruption that held sway in the oil and gas sector such that those in authority then never bothered to ensure due diligence or verification to ascertain whether the products were supplied or not. Vouchers were flying left and right and the government was helpless paying billions in debt as subsidy for Nigerians to its detriment.

In fact it took Bayo Onanuga, Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media and Strategy, to speak out when the criticism against his principal got to a boiling point.

A damming feature report au­thored by Ruth Maclean and Ismail Au­wal in the New York Times published on June 11 prompted Onanuga to react so as to bring Nigerians to speed on challenges the Tinubu government was secretly shouldering.

To clear what he termed as misconception from foreign media Onanuga debunked the report titled, ‘Nigeria Confronts its Worst Eco­nomic Crisis in a Generation’, saying it reflected the typical predetermined, reduction­ist, derogatory, and denigrating way the western media reported African countries for sev­eral decades.

According to the journalist, President Tinubu did not create the economic problems Nigeria faces today but inherited them.

“Tinubu inherited a dead economy. The economy was bleeding and need­ed quick surgery to avoid being plunged into the abyss, as hap­pened in Zimbabwe and Venezu­ela”, he had stated.

He said this was theback­ground to the policy direction taken by the government in May/June 2023: the abrogation of the fuel subsidy regime and theuni­fication of the multiple exchange rates.

According to thepresiden­tial aide, for decades, Nigeria had maintained a fuel subsidy regime that gulped $84.39 billion between 2005 and 2022 from the public treasury in a country with huge infrastructural deficits and in high need of better social ser­vices for its citizens.

Onanuga also alleged that the state oil firm, NNPC, the sole im­porter, had amassed trillions of naira in debts for absorbing the unsustainable subsidy payments in its books.

He said by the time President Tinubu took over the leadership of the country, there was no provision made for fuel subsidy payments in the national budget beyond June 2023.

Onanuga went on to lament that the budget itself had a strik­ing feature: it planned to spend 97 percent of revenue servicing debt, with little left for recurrent or capital expenditure.

Again he blamed theprevi­ous government which had resorted to massive borrowing to cover such costs. Like oil, the exchange rate was also being subsidised by the government, with an estimated $1.5 billion spent monthly by the CBN to ‘defend’ the currency against the unquenchable de­mand for the dollar by thecoun­try’s import-dependent economy.

To keep the rate low, ar­bitrage grew as a gulf existed between the official rate and the rate being used by over 5000 BDCs that were previously licensed by the central bank. What was more, the country was failing to fulfil its remittance obligations to airlines and other foreign businesses, such that FDIs and investment in the oil sector dried up, and notably Emir­ate Airlines cut off the Nigerian route.

Onanuga recalled that to deal with the cancer of public finance, Tinubu on his first dayas President rolled back the subsidy regime and the gener­osity that spread to neighbouring countries. Then, his administra­tion floated the naira.

Responding to the New York Times publication, Onanuga said the economy recorded a trade surplus of N6.52 trillion in Q1, as against a deficit of N1.4 tril­lion in Q4 of 2023. Portfolio inves­tors have streamed in as long-term investors. When Diageo wanted to sell its stake in Guinness Nige­ria, it had the Singaporean con­