The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, on Tuesday, appealed to aggrieved youths planning the forthcoming #EndBadGovernance protests slated for August to give the Federal Government more time to fix the wobbling economy.
The first-class monarch described the economic hardship being felt in Nigeria as a “global phenomenon” hence the President Bola Tinubu administration should be given time to correct the inflationary anomalies.
“The agitation is real, we have a lot of suffering in the country but not only in Nigeria; it is a global phenomenon,” Oba Ogunwusi said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme shortly after he met with traditional rulers in the Southern region of the country.
“We must ensure that we appeal (to protesters) so that they can give the Federal Government a little bit of time to correct since it is a global thing.”
He admitted the people’s right to protest but cautioned against the destruction of public and private assets during the planned rallies, saying the people would be the ones to suffer if such assets were burnt.
The planned protests against economic hardship, which is gaining traction on social media, have been scheduled to be held across all states of the Federation as well as the nation’s capital Abuja in August.
Prices of food and basic commodities have gone through the roof in the last months, as Nigerians battle one of the country’s worst inflation rates and economic crises sparked by the government’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of forex windows.
The police, military and the Department of State Services had warned against Kenya-styled protests. Politicians, who surmised that the planned rallies might end up like the EndSARS demonstrations of October 2020, have continued to appeal to youths to shelve the planned rallies but the young people remain unfazed, doggedly insisting that the protests will hold.
