Elder statesman Bode George says President Bola Tinubu’s Monday media chat lacks empathy and humanity, stressing that the President, through his statements, is unfeeling to the plight of suffering Nigerians.
Drawing inferences from three food queue stampedes that claimed 67 lives in Nigeria last week, George said “there is hunger and anger in the land” yet the President continues to insist that his reforms are working while many Nigerians are becoming poorer by the day and businesses collapsing.
“We are not feeling it, it is going worse by the day,” George said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday. “Hunger doesn’t believe in your talk, you gotta be real.”
The member of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said Tinubu’s media chat was not a good way to end the year. “I’m surprised that there is no iota of somberness and humanity in the discussion. Why do you have a discussion in the first instance?” he quipped.
George, who insisted that the price of petrol be reduced, charged the Tinubu administration to offer immediate palliatives to hungry Nigerians whom he claimed have been impoverished by the policies of the current administration.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, faces energy challenges, with all its state-owned refineries non-operational. The country is heavily reliant on imported refined petroleum products, with the state-run NNPC being the major importer of the essential commodities.
Fuel queues are commonplace in the country. Prices of petrol soared since the removal of subsidy in May 2023, from around N200/litre to over N1,000/litre, compounding the woes of the citizens who power their vehicles, and generating sets with petrol, no thanks to decades-long epileptic electricity supply.
The government simultaneously unified forex windows, with the value of the naira nosediving terribly from $1/N700 to over $1/1600 at the parallel market. Prices of food and basic commodities immediately climbed through the roof as Nigerians battled attendant inflation.
There have been pressure for Tinubu to reconsider his policies but during a media chat on Monday, Tinubu insisted that he has no regrets about removing petrol subsidy in May 2023, maintaining that Nigeria cannot continue to be Father Christmas to neighbouring countries.
