The Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Dr. Dennis Otuaro, has joined the growing list of eminent Nigerians who have advised against the planned nationwide protest over economic hardship in the country on August 1.
Describing the planned protest as premature, counterproductive, distractive and dissuasive, Otuaro said a nationwide protest is the last thing the country needs right now.
While he admitted that the protesters have their constitutional rights to demonstrate over the socio-economic hardship in the country, the Amnesty boss questioned the timing of the planned demonstration.
Otuaro’s averment was contained in a statement made available to newsmen on Monday.
He hinted that President Bola Tinubu has put in place structures that will change the fortunes of the country in the near future.
Therefore giving reasons why the protests should be shelved, Otuaro said: “In the apparently challenging circumstances this nation finds itself as it tackles headlong the triggers left unattended to in its 25 years of democratic practices.
“You would agree with me, that it is only germane that the present structural reforms put in place by the federal government, together with its many cushioning interventions, are just the only way to get this nation out of the wood.
“When the mandate to govern this nation was given to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, you could recall he took it as a honour of a lifetime to serve in that capacity and immediately went to work to rebuild this county.
“We have as a result seen historic progress made in the area of clearing $16b about (18%) from the nation’s external debt, added $4b to the nations external reserves, cleared all backlogs owed to foreign airline operators, started the path to full local government autonomy to bring decision making closer to the people, the most essential victory of which was got at the Supreme Court, students loan to federal and state universities, and reliefs emergencies in liquidity and palliatives sent through the subnational governments in line with the federation principles.
“Closing these yawning gaps together with the emergencies declared on oil and gas sectors where this government continues to bear the cost of variations in the unsteady fluctuations in the price of crude and its refined components, are critical to address balance of trade deficits, low manufacturing and production, producing to meet domestic demands, and decentralised aggregation and production network of small medium enterprises, which could mean the nation would earn forex and tax to pay back FG loans to meet capital and recurrent expenditures.
“Given these strides and the almost visible signs of turning from the headwinds, I consider that the present attempt by the conveners of the August 1st protest to want to go ahead with their planned protest would be premature, counter productive, distractive and dissuasive.”
The PAP Administrator also drew attention to those he said are sadists, who always want to take advantage of the current gloomy situation of the country to spread hopelessness and despair.
“Let’s not lose sight of the fact that there are people who when they look at Nigeria in its present path to economic recovery, what they see is carnage, despair and darkness. They spread fears and lies for profit and power.
“They daily pray that this government fails to justify their misplaced idiosyncrasies and the concomitant effect is the avoidable gaps where they take advantage of the short term difficulties to create artificial scarcity, price gouging, food and double digit inflation.
“They only seek to use our people to fund their plot having failed in previous successive attempts to destabilise the federal government,” he said.
Otuaro, while maintaining that there is hope for Nigeria under the leadership of Tinubu, warned and reminded Nigerians of what transpired during the last nationwide protests where “demonstrations were hijacked and used to perpetrate unrest.”
According to him, “There is the hope however that governmental interventions would slice through the double digit and food inflation and provide more abundant life for the teeming number of our citizenry.
“Be that as it may, we can’t soon forget how previous unhealthy demonstrations were hijacked and used to perpetrate unrest, properties worth billions of naira were destroyed, prison breaks became normative and very dangerous criminals were let back into society who soon became rapists, car jackers, kidnappers and killers. They foist back on society the very issues the present protest hopes to achieve.
“It is in this regard that I use this medium, as the Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) to appeal to all ex-agitators not to be part of any protests, and not to allow themselves to be used to settle political scores or be used to unleash destruction of government infrastructure.”
