Osita Okechukwu To Protesters: Don’t Take Agitation As Zero-Sum Game

Former Director General of the Voice of Nigeria, Osita Okechukwu has expressed his support for the grievances of the protesters against bad governance and the lamentable socio-economic conditions in the country, saying that he is “in league with the organisers of the protest.”

He made this known during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Thursday while speaking about the decision of Nigerians to swarm the streets to protest.

He said, “I am in league with the organisers of the protest. One, that there’s hunger in the land, there is poverty in the land, there is unemployment, that our standard of living needs to be upgraded to human level, that majority of Nigerians are suffering. I agree with those perspectives so I cannot come here and say that there is no hunger in the land.”

Okechukwu also emphasised the constitutional right of protesters to peaceful assembly, movement, and expression under Chapter 4, Sections 39, 40, and 41 of the 1999 Constitution.

“I also subscribe to the fact that the 1999 constitution of the federal republic under chapter 4, section 39,40, 41, gave them the right for freedom of peaceful assembly, movement and expression.”

As a veteran of numerous protests over the past 38 years, including those against fuel price increases, although he agreed with the grievances driving the current protests, he however urged the organisers of the protest to adopt a “non-zero-sum approach.”

He said, “The only disagreement I have with the organisers is that in agitation, don’t take it as a zero-sum game, that you will achieve all you intended to pursue. It is a non-zero-sum game. You have to calibrate. You have minimax strategy, you have maximax strategy.

“The organisers of the ‘End Bad Government’ had achieved a lot. I thought that by now, instead of being on the street, what they could have done, is to take the olive branch the government had offered for constructive engagement and say okay, we need a bipartisan committee to make sure that the 450,000 barrels per day being allocated to the refinery (Dangote refinery) is utilised to improve those conditions and bring down the price.

“Let us change strategy and now argue that if you are not paying for insurance, if you are not paying for demurrage to import the refined petroleum products from abroad, that there must be a drastic cut in the prices because you can’t tell us again that you are importing from Malta, or from Venezuela or from wherever. You are now between the oil field and Dangote refinery and whichever one that comes on stream, which is local. That should be the agitation today, not just sitting down and saying that they should return the price to pre existing level. How would that be done? Federal government is highly indebted.”

Melissa Enoch