By Afolabi Aribigbola

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The 10-day nationwide hardship protests proposed for between August 1 to 10, 2024 commenced on the first day of the month as envisaged by their planners and organisers. Prior to the start of the protest, Nigerians were informed by its proponents that it was designed to protests the economic hardships in the country so as to demand for economic and political reforms to improve the  unprecedented level of hardships in the country.

Consequently, since the first day of the new month, youths and others concerned Nigerians have been on the streets of major cities in Nigeria to press home their demands to governments to find solutions to the precarious and harsh living conditions that had made living in the country extreme difficult and occasioned much sufferings by the citizens.

Unfortunately, the protests which those behind it promised to be peaceful have turned violet in some cities or states resulting in looting by some miscreants and loss of some precious people’s lives. It has also motivated the security forces to use arms against civilized acceptable practice and imposition of curfews by some state governments stem the degeneration in the crisis.

 The initially governments and her agencies response was a discussion about the legality of the proposed protests as well as the fear in certain quarters that the protests will be hijacked by hoodlums and touts to loot and cause havoc in the country. Therefore, the federal government held series of meetings with opinion leaders including State Governors and other efforts to stop the protests without success and consequently the protests commence as envisaged by the organisers.

 This was hinged on the realization that the people have the inalienable rights to air their opinion on national issues including embarking on protests like the current one to press home their demand on the government. Since it became obvious that the citizens have the rights to protest but such exercise must be executed in accordance with the procedures established by the law of the country. One will recall that since the present administration took over the affairs of the country, it has imposed a number of policy reforms that involve the removal of petroleum subsidy resulting in escalation of its pump price and the merging of the official and parallel foreign markets which resulted in drastic fall in the value of naira. The overall consequences have been high cost of living in the country producing serious hardships.   

Of course, our interest here is to look at the responses of governments at all levels to the crisis and assess their handling of the national crisis. And if they have not done the needful so far, what are the missing link and what they need to do to avoid the type of destruction and looting occurring in some parts of the country.

Many people have commended the police for their good handling of the protests especially in Lagos and Abuja but one find it difficult to explain the killings of some unarmed protesters in some parts of the country against acceptable practice. Indeed, the President of Nigeria, Ahmed Bola Tinubu that have been accused of not responding to the demands of the protesters came on air early in the fourth day to address the protesters and all Nigerians.

In his addressed that was beamed life by all media stations, he appealed to the protesters to stop the demonstration to give room for dialogue the modalities to which he did not indicate as well as the timelines for finding solutions to the issues and demands of the protesters. Thus many have criticised the President address for his inability to succinctly address the problem of hunger that seemed to be the most outstanding issue in the list of the demands of the poor demonstrators.

Suffice to say that the President’s address appeared unsatisfactory to some because he did not outline how to address the core hunger problem in the immediate and the future. He did not indicate the government plans to solve the high cost and persistent fuel scarcity in the country. The falling naira and the high level of corruption driving the country into debt was not also discussed.

These are critical issues that require cogent actions that could bring prosperity to the country but unfortunately were largely ignored. Some have argued that they were albeit tacitly addressed which I considered unsatisfactory. Of course, the high cost of living in the country was instigated by the twin policies of fuel subsidy removal and devaluation of the national currency.

Indeed, one must acknowledge that the President made some attempts to respond to the prevalent crisis but it is a sad commentary that most state governments that should be the prime agents or in the forefront addressing the problems have been largely missing in action. Some of them were up and doing but they were few and far in between the kind of policy response and drastic actions that should come from them.

They ordinarily being closer to the people with more imbued local functions that directly impinge of the life of the people should have come up with their plans and proposals to address the issues that instigated the crisis. Unfortunately, many of them are less concern leaving in some cases only the federal government with the crisis, some of them are more preoccupied with other issue such as entrenching in power, local government autonomy, control of their parties and resources to amass wealth for next election. Also the local governments have not feature generally in addressing the nagging problems at hand in the country.

For instance while everyone is busy addressing the crisis associated with the protests it was the issue of Local government chairman withdrawing from ALGON to form another association that is paramount in Oyo state and election in some others. This has been the pattern of action at the state levels by state and local governments in the country. Most of the time they have not being showing genuine interest in the welfare and living conditions of their people. Moat have been accused of diverting palliatives meant to provide succour for people. On what to do to get off the quagmire, the government at all levels must begin to come up with socio economic plans and programmes that will favour and support the down trodden in the country.

The pro capitalist tendencies and reforms imposed by the IMF and World Bank will not only continue to impoverish Nigerians but will continue to cause economic hardships among the poor. The state and local governments especially in the north should not continue to leave all activities of development to the federal government as most of them are doing at the moment with the endbadgovernance protests. They don’t exist only to receive and expend state resources on salaries and phony projects that do not translate into improving the living conditions of the citizens under their jurisdictions. In times like this, they should be seen to be working with the federal government to articulate and implement roadmaps and actions to solving the problems at hand and not to look away.

The citizens need to demand more from the state and local governments in the country because they receive resources on their behalf and such should be expended on them judicious. The government need to address the hydra-headed corruption problem with more seriousness and vigour and must quickly look for ways to provide for the hungry jobless people in the country.