The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has described the national broadcast of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as diversionary and insensitive to the plight of Nigerians.
In a statement by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Debo Ologunagba, the opposition party said the president failed to address the real issues bothering Nigerians, which is the high cost of living, especially the rising cost of food items and the volatility of the local currency against major currencies which has made planning almost impossible.
Ologunagba said: “PDP asserts that the speech by President Bola Tinubu over the ongoing protests in the country confirms the All-Progressives Congress, APC, administration’s insensitivity towards Nigerians and the very precarious situation in the country.
“Our party is appalled that even though it took President Tinubu the prodding of the PDP to speak to the nation, it is distressing that the speech failed to offer any concrete measure to address the excruciating hardship in the country.
“Mr. President’s speech failed to respond to the demand by the citizens for immediate measures to reduce the price of petroleum products, halt the fall of the Naira and urgent intervention in the provision of food items to starving Nigerians.
“It is equally shocking that the speech did not order an investigation into the brutal killing of unarmed Nigerians by certain unscrupulous operatives of the APC-controlled security agencies while demanding good governance, protection, security and welfare, which are the primary purposes of government.
“Instead, the speech dwelt on APC’s counter-productive action of disregarding the feelings and pains of the people by focusing on self-praise, claims of imaginary achievements and empty projections in the face of the apparent and obvious failure of the APC in every aspect of governance.
“It is clear that the APC administration is overwhelmed and has no answers to the myriads of problems occasioned by its anti-people policies that are suffocating life in the country.’’
Tinubu Failed to Address Violent Crackdown on Protesters – Soyinka
Also reacting to the national broadcast, Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, faulted the President’s refusal to address what he described as violent crackdown on protesters.
Soyinka, who in a statement, expressed concern over the president’s omission of this critical issue, said: “I set my alarm clock for this morning to ensure that I did not miss President Bola Tinubu’s impatiently awaited address to the nation on the current unrest across the nation.
“His outline of government’s remedial action since inception, aimed at warding off just such an outbreak, will undoubtedly receive expert and sustained attention both for effectiveness and in content analysis.
‘’My primary concern, quite predictably, is the continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management, an area in which the presidential address fell conspicuously short.
“Such short-changing of civic deserving, regrettably, goes to arm the security forces in the exercise of impunity and condemns the nation to a seemingly unbreakable cycle of resentment and reprisals.
“Live bullets as a state response to civic protest – that becomes the core issue. Even teargas remain questionable in most circumstances, certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest.
‘’Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S, not peculiar to the Nigerian nation. They belong, indeed, in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters.
“They serve as summons to governance that a breaking point has been reached and thus, a testing ground for governance awareness of public desperation. The tragic response to the ongoing hunger marches in parts of the nation, and for which notice was served, constitutes a retrogression that takes the nation even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed #EndSARS protests.
“It evokes pre-independence – that is, colonial – acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late-stage pioneer, Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera BREAD AND BULLETS, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government.
“The nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention.
“Need we recall the nationwide 2022/23 editions of what is generally known as the YELLOW VEST movement in France? Perhaps, it is time to make such scenarios compulsory viewing in policing curriculum.
‘’In all of the coverage that I watched, I did not catch one single instance of a gun leveled at protesters, much less fired at them, even during direct physical confrontations.
“The serving of bullets where bread is pleaded is ominous retrogression, and we know what that eventually proves – a prelude to far more desperate upheavals, not excluding revolutions.
“The time is long overdue, surely, to abandon, permanently, the anachronistic resort to lethal means by the security agencies of governance. No nation is so under-developed, materially impoverished, or simply internally insecure as to lack the will to set an example.’’
