Niger, Kano protests pose serious lessons for the presidency. They are wake-up calls that cannot be ignored. Nigerians are hungry. And angry!
By Emeka Alex Duru
I did not reckon with the Monday, February 5, protests by women and youths in Minna, Niger State and Kano, before my last piece, three days earlier, titled, “Mr. President, this house is falling”. I didn’t need to, anyway. It was pretty obvious that things were getting bad in many parts of the country. Any Nigerian, living by honest means, knows how difficult surviving in the country has been, lately.
What is rather surprising, was the tepid and casual approach of the presidency and the All Progressive Congress (APC) to the worrisome situation. Communications from the party and Aso Rock Villa on the issue, indicated the extent the leadership has distanced itself from the people and the realities on ground. The APC in trying to make light of the Niger and Kano protests, accused the opposition political parties of orchestrating them. In equally puerile manner, the presidency had amidst the soaring rate of inflation and without statistics, claimed that Nigerians are enjoying the lowest cost of living in Africa.
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, made the senseless assertions in response to remarks by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar. Atiku had argued that President Bola Tinubu’s poor response to the nation’s challenges was setting the stage for a prolonged and deeper economic crisis.
“His economic policies, drawn from a so-called Renewed Hope Agenda, are ironically dashing hopes, creating pain and causing despair. The private sector is shrinking by the day as small businesses are emasculated and as Multinational Companies, confused and weary of the economy, leave Nigeria in droves. The intense cost of living pressures has created more misery for the poor in towns and villages. There is hunger in the land as basic commodities, including bread, are becoming out of reach for average Nigerians”, Atiku observed.
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But the Presidency would take none of that. Onanuga wrote; “His claim that the government’s policies have created intense cost of living pressures are also not grounded on facts as recent comparative cost of living indices show that Nigerians still enjoy the lowest cost of living in Africa. Atiku’s claims that the private sector is shrinking and that multinational companies are leaving our companies in ‘droves’ are not grounded on facts”.
Nothing could be more insulting to the ordinary Nigerians as the thoughtless stance of the presidency and APC on the matter. In fact, there seems this inexplicable tendency of people in government or their aides not being bothered at the challenges the common man goes through on account of their ill-conceived policies and actions.
The people only matter during campaigns for votes but are readily discarded and despised the moment elections are over and politicians parcel out offices to themselves and their cronies. That absurdity has always been there since the days of the Second Republic. At a point then, the Minister for Transport Umaru Dikko, had even sniggered that talks of Nigerians suffering, were mere gossips since the people were not rummaging through the waste bins in search of food.
The immediate past Muhammadu Buhari, toed same inglorious path. Going for re-election in 2019 when he campaigned on the punch-line of taking Nigeria to the Next Level, it was thought that Buhari would change his languid style of governance to the path of national recovery. The situation rather became worse, as the economy took more disastrous shape, with inflation, unemployment assuming frightening dimensions. The standard of living dipped each day, accounting for Nigeria being ranked the poverty capital of the World. In the midst of the obvious loss of focus by the government, Buhari and his image makers kept deceiving Nigerians that things were working in the right direction.
That is what the Tinubu presidency has embarked on. Nigerians do not need an Atiku or any other person for that matter, to remind them that things have really gone out of control here. A visit to a grocery, fish shop or neighbourhood market, is enough for one to know how bad things have gone.
Since the inauguration of this administration on May 29, 2023, there is hardly any policy blueprint or programme of the government that is clearly defined to the understanding of Nigerians. The citizens are rather being fed on a cocktail of propaganda and outright falsehood, with the admonition to keep faith while the leaders wallow in nauseating ostentation. Snippets of under the table dealings in the Ministry of humanitarian services, which filtered out recently, spoke volume on the bazaar going on in the presidency, while Nigerians are being urged to tighten their belts in the hope of better days ahead. Things don’t work that way.
There is a point at which such deceits can no longer work. At such moments, the maxim; ‘do not push a loyal person to the point that he no longer bothers’, becomes instructive. The Niger and kano protests are pointers to the level of despondency in the land. Nigerians now adopt desperate measures to stay alive. Last week, a 32- year-old mother of nine, hacked a fellow woman to death in Abua area of Rivers state, in her bid to escape with a bunch of plantain she stole from the deceased shop. In Anambra, a widow was caught trying to sell two of her kids for N1.8M to raise funds to cater for the other seven. There are cases of people pilfering from their neighbours to stay alive. These are ordinarily, odd and condemnable engagements that have become the norm.
Cost of basic food items have gone beyond the reach of the ordinary Nigerian. A measure of garri that used to sell for between N800 and N1,200 has gone up to N2,000. A bag of rice that went for N45,000 or thereabout some weeks ago, currently costs about N70,000. Sachet water that was bought at N20 is now selling at N50. Transportation fares have equally hit the roof tops.
Small and medium scale enterprises are closing shops on daily basis due to unbearable production costs. With many mouths taken away from food and many hands thrown out of jobs, the web of insecurity in the country, continues to widen. Prof Pat Utomi was right in his newspaper interview some days ago, that ‘every Nigerian is distressed except those stealing money.
Time has therefore come for the Tinubu presidency to sit up and convince Nigerians that it is alive to its constitutional responsibilities of according them welfare and protection. Truth be told, the past eight months of the administration have been virtually wasted on frivolities. The government needs to get up from its self-induced slumber. The Niger, Kano protests pose serious lessons for the presidency. They are wake-up calls that cannot be ignored. Nigerians are hungry. And angry! Government should be careful, not to push them further.
