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A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa has urged participants in today’s hunger protests to be peaceful and orderly.
Adegboruwa, a lawyer to the Take It Back Movement, one of the key organisers of the protests, made the appeal in a statement on Wednesday.
The human rights lawyer also urged the protesters not to demonstrate beyond three days to prevent the protest’s hijack by nefarious elements.
He said, “No one can deny the fact of hunger, occasioned by galloping food inflation, in which we now buy a tuber of yam for N10,000, with the other staple foods such as Gaari, Rice, Egg, Bread, Beans now out of reach of the common people.
“The economic policies of the Tinubu administration are suffocating the people out of their existence and I’m very happy that the propaganda machinery of government has failed in these past days, in the face of the biting hunger and mass suffering,” Adegboruwa said.
He appealed to President Bola Tinubu and his team to rise up to the occasion and “stop chasing shadows”.
“The twin policies of oil subsidy removal and currency devaluation have worked to cripple the economy and throw Nigeria into its worst economic crisis.
“They should be reversed immediately,” he stated.
He also demanded an urgent end to wastage by government functionaries, arising from their lavish and luxurious lifestyles.
“President Tinubu must end all forms of bad governance, of dolling out billions in religious pilgrimages while handing out pittance to students as loans?”
He equally called on security agencies not to fire any single bullet or arbitrarily arrest citizens exercising their right to protest.
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Adegboruwa warned against deploying the military to tackle civilian engagements.
“My final appeal is to the protesters. Even our forefathers in their graveyards have heard your voices loud and clear.
“The way and manner in which government has been running helter-skelter since the announcement of the protests show the moral victory of your campaigns and your struggles.
“What we have done in the past few days is to facilitate dialogue with the law enforcement and security agencies.
“The insistence by the Inspector-General of Police of ‘credible intelligence’ with plans for violence is a confirmation of the desperation of government to abort the protests by sponsoring hooligans and thugs to disrupt the protests.
“This is currently ongoing in many parts of Lagos State.
“I therefore appeal that the protests be orderly and peaceful and conducted in the locations that you have already sent to the police.
“Also, let the days of the protests be reduced to one day or in the maximum three days and thereafter be suspended.
“Let your demands be made known to the government and then give time to address them.
“I have no doubt that you have the capacity to prosecute the protests as intended and that you have the support and prayers of majority of our people, in all your actions. But let us give room for more dialogue. I offer to join you in this, anytime,” Adegboruwa said.
