In response to mounting fears of potential suppression or intimidation tactics against the #EndBadGovernanceProtest, the United Action Front of Civil Society has issued a strong warning to all relevant authorities and stakeholders, emphasizing the inalienable rights of Nigerian citizens to engage in peaceful protest.
The group affirmed that no amount of coercive tactics or scaremongering by the government can silence the growing outcry against socioeconomic hardship and institutional corruption, adding that the Nigerian people will continue to exercise their rights to speak out and seek change in the face of mounting grievances.
This was made known in a press statement issued on Monday, where Olawale Okunnuyi, the Head of Coordinating Secretariat for the United Action Front of Civil Society, emphasized that the demands of the Nigerian people are the key to avoiding a nationwide wave of protests set to begin on August 1. According to Okunnuyi, immediate and sincere attention to the concerns and needs of citizens by the Bola Tinubu administration is the only way to prevent the protests from erupting into a full-blown crisis.
The statement partly reads: “Key among the citizens’ demands already put out by initiators of the nationwide protests is the urgent reversal of the price of fuel from N1000 per litre for which it is being unofficially sold today to pre-January 2023 price of N167 per litre.
“Second on these demands is the drastic reduction of government profligacy and high cost of governance in Nigeria, which will require slashing of the humongous emoluments and allowances of all elected government officials in Nigeria by fifty percent of what currently receive from the state coffers.
“For democracy to thrive in Nigeria, elections to be credible and the country to be politically stable and prosperous, citizens and peoples of Nigeria, have agitated severally for government to initiate a profound process of democratic reforms of the constitution of Nigeria to allow the diverse peoples of Nigeria take ownership over their constitution, democracy and country as it is in other advance democracies.”
They said what was most fundamental was correcting what is entrenched in the “warped and undemocratically imposed constitution of the country” by the military as decree 24 of 1999, described as “largely corruptive and divisive of the country” and sadly had no remedy except it is replaced through a democratic and legitimate process.
“In the light of the foregoing intervention of the organised civil society, the government is to be held responsible for not taking urgent steps in addressing the crucial concerns and interests of the Nigerians critical to the planned nationwide mass protest and any unintended consequences therefrom.”
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