Christian and Moslem in Kano State may have reached an agreement to work together to oppose the reckless decision by the Goodluck Jonathan government to impose oil subsidy removal on Nigeria. A carnival-like demonstration at the popular Jubilee Square went berserk on Wednesday night as the anti-riot policemen started breaking skulls and firing tear-gas canisters on defenseless and generally peaceful occupiers. More than forty protesters were hurt, with some ending up in the hospitals in the area.
Policemen and military personnel whose children often grow up to be dysfunctional violent players in the society have also stopped protectors in Kaduna, along Constitution Road and Lugard Roundabout.
Unlike elsewhere in the country, normal government businesses continued in Abuja, the seat of political power in Nigeria. An attempt by Singer Charlie Boy and other protesters to converge on the city was shut down, even as the government mis-information machinery roared into motion on Thursday.
Government propagandists lied that the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) were at a parley where negotiations were being concluded to put Monday’s proposed action off. Labor has decried and condemned such falsehood, saying that nothing would the change the decision to shut down activities in the country on Monday. It said the strike would ground air traffic and sea operations. And now Nigerians who are on holidays from wherever they live as sojourners overseas are in an understandable rush to exit the country, even to neighboring countries like Ghana , Togo and Benin.
The class of Nigerians who are exploring every creative talent to register their disapproval of the deeply unpopular subsidy removal regime are not just the poor, but the movement cuts across social strata. And the government is paying bloggers to divide the unity of the occupiers. For example, a government agent blogged on Thursday that “Six marketers were funding the protests”. But the money from these marketers, so called, has not yet found its way to the protests taking place at some Nigerian overseas embassies.
The world is suddenly paying attention to the demands of the Nigerian masses, especially western countries who have not compounded the hardships of their people with inhumane stoppage of palliatives for their citizens who bear the brunt of the global economic meltdown.
Joining the rank and file of bodies protesting the subsidy issue on Thursday, the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) lamented the failure of the government of the Jonathan Administration to understand the seriousness of what it is confronted by.
“It has failed to understand that all Governments, be they dictatorial or otherwise. enjoy power because the people allow it to remain in power,” the NBA said in a statement by its President, Mr. Joseph B. Daudu, noting that no government can outlast the will of the people.
The Muslim Congress (TMC), in a statement signed by Luqman AbdurRaheem, urged President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to listen to the voice of wisdom and rescind the punitive elimination of the subsidy on petroleum products unconditionally in the interest of the populace.
That position of the TMC is shared by the Conference of National Political Parties (CNPP) which also today called on Mr. Jonathan “to muster all sense of humility, listen to voice of reason and honour the demand” of Nigerians and reverse his subsidy removal decision.
The CNPP, rising from an extensive meeting on the State of the Nation on Wednesday night, resolved to support the mass action declared by the Labour Movement in Nigeria following their ultimatum to Mr. Jonathan to reverse the petrol price to N65, on or before 8 January 2012.
The NBA said it supported all the actions contained in the 4 January 2010 communiqué of the Labour Movement, and that all members of the NBA will participate in the nationwide strike commencing on the 9th of January 2012.
In the its strongly-worded statement, the NBA said: “It is clear that Nigerians do not and will not tolerate subsidy removal under the terms and conditions set out or laid down by Government. Any removal of subsidy based on the importation of petroleum products is unacceptable to Nigerians. Government must create the infrastructure for the refining 100% of petroleum products in Nigeria and by Nigerians. It had been done in the past, it was sabotaged, and it can and will be done again.”
TMC, aligning itself with well-meaning Nigerians, advocacy groups, labour unions and civil societies to condemn “the wicked, sudden, deceptive and heartless removal of the fuel subsidy,” described the new policy as a diabolical agenda orchestrated by the ruling elites in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deregulate the downstream oil sector for their self-fish ends.
It pointed out that the fuel subsidy removal conflicts with, and has rubbished the objectives of all the ongoing developmental programmes of the Nigerian government especially the Millennium Development Goal which seeks to reduce the number of people living in poverty by 2015; the Transformation Agenda of Mr. President; the poverty-reduction thrust of Vision 20: 2020 and worsened the Human Development Index In Nigeria.