Minister of Interior Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo has appealed to displeased Nigerians to give President Bola Tinubu more time to address the country’s economic woes.
The minister, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, appealed to intending participants of the August protest to be patriotic.
He said Tinubu should not be judged with the expectation to solve a 100-year-old problem in one year.
He said an economy is not built overnight. “What you see today is an accumulated mismanagement over the last 100, 60, 30 years,” he said.
Tunji-Ojo said, “Mr President, to the best of my knowledge, never campaigned to be a magician; he campaigned as a statesman, he campaigned on the basis of ‘Renewed Hope’. Before hope could be renewed, it had dwindled.
“When you want to reboot hope that has been down, you need a bit of time, and we are on the right step.”
Tunji-Ojo said all the avenues of engagement and dialogue should be explored before a nationwide protest.
The minister insisted that the President means well for the nation and he has taken bold decisions including the removal of petrol subsidy which he described as a cancer.
He said Nigeria is going through a surgical process and will emerge healthy and strong. “We are pleading for time,” Tunji-Ojo said.
The protest against economic hardship, which is gaining traction on social media, has been scheduled to be held across all states of the Federation as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), 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.
