Abeokuta – Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s nationwide address on Sunday failed to address the attacks on #EndBadGovernance protesters by security agencies.

Soyinka made the observation in a statement on Sunday following Tinubu’s address to the nation.

The nationwide protests continued on Sunday, marking their fourth day, as demonstrators voiced their frustrations over the country’s deepening economic hardship, escalating poverty, and corrupt government.
“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,” Soyinka said.

“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 state response to civic protest – that becomes the core issue. Even tear gas remains 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 Nobel Laureate noted that 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. All it takes is to recall its own history, then exercise the will to commence a lasting transformation, inserting a break in the chain of lethal responses against civic society.

“Today’s marchers may wish to consider adopting the key songs of Hubert Ogunde’s BREAD AND BULLETS, if only to inculcate a sense of shame in the continuing failure to transcend the lure of colonial inheritance where we all were at the receiving end. One way or the other, this vicious cycle must be broken.”

Millions of Nigerians took to the streets on Thursday, 1 August, to protest the prevailing hunger and abuse of power in the country.

Demonstrations continued on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Lagos, Ogun, Abuja, Oyo, Ogun, Rivers and other states.

More than 14 people have been killed across Nigeria since the #EndBadGovernance protest commenced, according to Amnesty International. At least 13 people were shot dead by police across the country on the first day.

Police dismissed the information.

Amnesty International asked the government to probe the killings and “highhandedness” of security operatives.

On Friday, 2 August, the Nigerian military asked both international and local media to stop covering nationwide protests over hunger and prevailing hardship under President Bola Tinubu’s government.

The military chief, Christopher Musa had announced that the military may step in if the protest escalates.

Mr Musa’s call for a media blackout on the protests mirrors the actions taken during the EndSARS protests on October 20, 2020, when electricity was disconnected, and telecom networks were down at the Lekki Toll Gate before soldiers opened live rounds on protesters.

Both local and international media have reported developments on the protests, which have seen thousands of Nigerians take to the streets over the worsening cost of living crisis.

On Thursday, poor telecom network coverage hampered the dissemination of information as protesters marched on the streets.

The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) and the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) slowed down internet speed across the country to suppress the flow of information from the protesters to other Nigerians and the outside world, according to an exclusive report by Peoples Gazette.

The network issue continued on Friday.

Nigeria is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, with skyrocketing inflation, a national currency in free-fall and millions of people struggling to buy food. Only two years ago Africa’s biggest economy, Nigeria is projected to drop to fourth place this year.

The pain is widespread. Unions strike to protest salaries of around $20 a month. People die in stampedes, desperate for free sacks of rice. Hospitals are overrun with women wracked by spasms from calcium deficiencies.

Although President Bola Tinubu increased the minimum wage — after strike action and months-long negotiations with labour unions — from N30,000 to N70,000, his government has increased spending for officials at a time of nationwide starvation.

For workers earning the new N70,000, or $43, per month minimum wage, capricious inflation and naira value have inflicted too much damage for the changes to make any difference in their lives.

The crisis is largely believed to be rooted in two major changes implemented by Mr Tinubu, elected 14 months ago: the partial removal of fuel subsidies and the floating of the currency, which together have caused major price rises.

A nation of entrepreneurs, Nigeria’s more than 200 million citizens are skilled at managing in tough circumstances, without the services states usually provide. They generate their own electricity and source their own water. They take up arms and defend their communities when the armed forces cannot. They negotiate with armed kidnappers when family members are abducted.

But right now, their resourcefulness is being stretched to the limit.

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