The former Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra State, Dan Ulasi, has said he thinks the Nigerian government is, through the upcoming planned protests against bad governance in Nigeria, trying to demonise a group of people to incite them to terrorism that can create a chaotic situation in which the government can survive.
The former PDP chairman said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Tuesday, where he also urged the government to channel the energy which they are using to resist the upcoming planned protests in the country to attempt to solve the problems that have brought about the protests in the first place.
Ulasi warned of potential ulterior motives behind the protests, suggesting that there might be a deliberate attempt to create chaos or demonise certain groups. “I hope they have not also demonised people, because part of the problem is that there are so many forms of anticipated terrorism, what I call stalkerstic terrorism, where you demonise people or a group of persons to incite them to terrorism, I think that’s part of what this government is doing. Why they are doing it, I don’t know. Maybe they want to create a chaotic situation that might enable them survive. Tinubu is a very clever person, people underrate him, but he’s a very clever person and I don’t underrate him. So, they must have a purpose,” he said.
Speaking of what led to the planned protests, which is supposed to begin on Thursday, August 1, Ulasi said, “This is a lot more serious problem that, rather surprisingly. Almost unanimously across the country, people are talking of protests, and there has to be fundamental reasons for that. So, it’s not just enough. If the energy the government at the federal level and the state governors have put in the past four days trying to make sure the protest does not come out, if they have put 10% of that same energy to try to resolve- because everybody knows what the problems are, at the zonal level, let the five or six governors every zone, say how do we protect our farmers to successfully go to their farms, even using vigilantes for them to produce so that problem will not- this is the first serious time Nigerians are talking about being hungry.
“People are much younger, but I haven’t heard of a Nigerian said he’s- you know, hunger is a universal term, that you might not be able to eat three times a day, but if you eat two times a day, that’s beautiful. And Nigerians have prided in eating at least two times a day. But now, I have seen people who don’t eat once in two days, and they walk about and still manage to survive. So, there is genuineness in the desire for people to make noise, making noise is part of telling government we are not feeling good.
“Even though government as father/mother of the country is supposed to know, when your children are not happy, you’re supposed to know. You should have anticipated this, you should have developed devices for which you would make things not degenerate to where they are now, and that’s what you call bad governance, because the leader of this government is a chief protester himself, and he protested against us.”
Ulasi also questioned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s resistance to the protests as he said, “It’s difficult to really explain properly what informs Tinubu.”
He continued by saying concerning Tinubu, “I’m not unmindful of his courage, he’s a very courageous person, but I doubt if the same courage applies now. You know, there are forms of courage- thinking courage, physical courage. Are they really thinking? Because this is a man who has gone through the process, he just didn’t fly in from the moon, he’s passed through the process, he’s seen all manner of persons in Lagos State… so he’s not just coming from an innocuous state from somewhere. So, why they’re not able to anticipate, to begin to adjudicate, to talk to people until it gets to this point, and now you can see the serious efforts being made to stop the protests.
“And for me, protest is expression of views, unresolved grievance. If you haven’t resolved the grievance, somebody has the right to say it, either spoken word or moving about saying something. But maybe they have information which we don’t have, I anticipate something is going to happen, I don’t know what. That is why they’re in government and we are not in government.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
Follow us on:
