President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Sunday morning broadcast in the wake of the ongoing nationwide hardship protests has attracted reactions, both negative and positive, from Nigerians, but with many dismissing it as empty and largely evasive.
The protests, which began August 1, and is billed to last for 10 days, have resulted in violence, in some parts of the country, and loss of lives.
However, former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, struck a patriotic note on Sunday, when he said the nation’s democracy had come to stay and everyone must do everything possible to safeguard it.
Babangida, who conceded that the country currently faced challenges, said, “We will eventually overcome these challenges and come out stronger more progressive nation.”
In a statement from his media office, signed by Alhaji Mahmood Abdullahi, Babangida reacted to a report that he thumbed down the country’s democracy and democratic practice.
The statement said Babangida believed, “The solution to our (Nigeria) problems, as he had said previously, is ‘more’ democracy, not less.
“General Babangida truly believes that the era of military intervention in Nigeria’s politics is long gone and he has said how proud he is that the Nigerian military has stood firmly behind multiple democratic governments in this country since 1999, thus, giving us the longest run of civilian administration since independence.”
Reacting to the former military president’s alleged rejection of democracy, the statement said, “Our attention has been drawn to a post on a parody account on X, formerly known as twitter, which carries the handle, @General_Ibbro, in which former President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, GCFR, was supposed to have endorsed the virtues of military rule over democratic governance.
“This dubious account carries our principal’s picture and name, and the coat of arms of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for added effect, but it does not belong to him, nor does the former president sanction any post appearing there.
“In the past, and more famously during the presidential election, last year, it posted a blatant falsehood that the former president had endorsed a particular presidential candidate and his party, thereby causing public confusion and some embarrassment to the elder statesman.
“We have just learnt that it has posted a similarly fake statement where the former president was supposed to have said that, ‘Nigeria has the best years under military, democracy made things worst (sic) – IBB.’
“We want to state, unequivocally, that neither the twitter or X account, which is essentially a parody or pretend account, nor the statement made therein, ever belonged to the retired General.
“For the avoidance of doubt, General Babangida (rtd) believes that Nigeria’s democracy is resilient and has come to stay, and that we must do everything we can to safeguard the process.
“As a nation, we are currently facing a number of challenges, but the former president has always expressed the view that we will eventually overcome these challenges and come out a stronger, more progressive nation.
The statement added, “The user of this unfortunate parody account, which we gather was traditionally supposed to be an account that imitates or at least mirror the sentiments of the original twitter or X account that it copies, has serially chosen to use the account to undermine democracy and spread stories capable of causing animosity.
“Sadly, there seems very little we can do to make the overseers of X or twitter to remove or sanction this tiresome account, so we are again obliged to advise the general public to ignore any post from this account that purportedly claims to represent my opinion.
“In future, we sincerely hope that our media practitioners and social media users will be more discerning and make the necessary efforts to get confirmation before sharing messages attributed to former President Babangida on X on any social media platform.”
However, Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, called on the security agents to be tactical in the handling of the protests to avoid fatalities.
Soyinka called on the security agents to be tactical in the handling of the protests to avoid fatalities.
Soyinka made the call in a statement on Sunday, while reacting to Tinubu’s address to the nation.
The global literature icon particularly cautioned against unprofessional conduct that could hurt protesters “who are merely asking for bread”.
According to him, a hard approach to the protests could lead to “more desperate upheavals. Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances; using it is certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest”.
He added, “Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S, not peculiar to the Nigerian nation. They belong, indeed, in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters.
“They serve as summons to governance that a breaking point has been reached and, thus, a testing ground for governance awareness of public desperation.”
Soyinka said the tragic response to the hunger marches in parts of the country constituted a retrogression that took the country backward.
He said, “It took us even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed ‘ENDSARS’ protests.
“It evokes pre-independence – that is, colonial – acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late stage pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera ‘Bread and Bullets’, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government.”
He urged that the security agencies should explore alternative models for security intervention, and added that time was long overdue to abandon, permanently, the “anachronistic resort to lethal means”.
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