Former National Vice Chairman, Northwest, of the ruling All Progressives Congress APC, Salihu Moh. Lukman has described the recent nationwide protests against hunger and bad governance as sufficient grounds for the impeachment of President Bola Tinubu and some state governors.
In a statement issued Sunday in Abuja, Lukman said due to the mishandling of the protests by the Tinubu administration, there is information suggesting that the organizers have announced October 1 as date for the resumption of the protests.
He said a situation where government resorts to cheap campaign of blackmails with argument of opposition sponsoring the protests should simply be ignored.
“In any event, it is legitimate for the opposition to start working for the defeat of a ruling party once they are unable to justify the confidence of the electorates.
“In fact, ideally, if democratic structures of the country were functionally working such as political parties and the National Assembly, with what is going on in the country, President Tinubu and many state governors are candidates for immediate impeachment.
“The comatose reality, which has reduced the National Assembly to a rubber stamp with political parties that are nothing more than leprous fingers, is responsible for the current high levels of frustration and desperation of Nigerians to register their anger through protests. Combined with a reality whereby INEC seems to be unwilling to discharge its statutory responsibility of registering new parties that could produce veritable options for legitimate leadership contests in the country, all hopes of democratic change of leadership in the country are fading away”, Lukman declared.
He said with governments at all levels failing to engage the organizers, practically underestimating the capacity of the organizers to mobilize for the protests, ordinary citizens are left at the mercy of angry Nigerians.
According to him, the trigger for Nigeria’s current situation is the withdrawal of subsidy on petroleum products and floating the exchange rate of the Naira against other international currencies.
“For an import dependent economy, it is predictable that the two policies will produce inflationary pressure.
“Unfortunately, so far, the government of President Bola Tinubu is unable to produce any clear definitive policy response to the situation. All that citizens hear government to be saying is calling on citizens to be patient without outlining how long it will take for the harsh reality to abate.
“Meanwhile, daily, Nigerians confront challenges of hunger and threats to daily survival. Many citizens die prematurely on account of hunger and preventable diseases. While acknowledging government explanations about how bad the economy has been mismanaged by previous administrations, it must be stressed that being an elected government, Nigerian political leaders should be more responsive. The minimum should be to acknowledge the reality facing citizens and demonstrate some measure of compassion and seek to ameliorate the harsh conditions facing citizens by relaxing some of these policies.
Instead, painfully, elected leaders, including President Tinubu are grandstanding behaving basically as colonial overloads who have conquered Nigerians. With a conquest mentality, our leaders have proceeded to demobilize virtually all political structures in the country such that today Nigeria has earned the bad reputation of being a democracy without any functional political party. All the registered political parties are nothing but legal entities that only present candidates for elections. Partly, because of that reality there is none of the parties that is able to recruit the leaders of the #EndBadGovernance protest or at least publicly join the protest. Although individuals such as Alh. Atiku Abubakar and Mr. Peter Obi have declared support for the protest, they were unable to contract any strong relationship with the protest organisers.
“So long as political leaders and political parties in the country will be unable to contract strong relationships with veritable and energetic constituencies such as the #EndBadGovernance protest organizers, Nigerian democracy is imperiled”, he declared.
VANGUARD
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