The National President of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide, Mazi Okwu Nnabuike, has dissuaded Nigerian youths from participating in the planned protests set to begin on August 1, saying that youths are the victims of protests in Nigeria.
Nnabuike said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, where he also asserted that the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide cannot support or push for the protests because the body was not consulted.
Calling for a stop to the planned protests, Nnabuike said, “I am calling on my people Ndigbo and mostly the youth under my constituency to stay away from the protests. We’ve been victims of the last EndSars protests, it was nothing to write home about. So, we can’t fold our hands and watch the same scenario take place again. The youths are the victim, and by mere looking at the way and the mood and the utterances and the body language of the organisers, the faceless organisers, we cannot encourage our youths, Nigerian youths, to join.
“One journalist called me yesterday and was asking me, what do you think will be the outcome of the protest? I said the outcome as always- the atmosphere is not conducive because I learnt some countries in Africa, that there were protests, and some people are trying to copy those things that were happening maybe somewhere in Kenya or other, to bring it here so that they can shut our nation down, they can set the country ablaze.”
The Ndigbo Youth President also mentioned that the organisation cannot push for said protests as they were not consulted, emphasising, “We as critical stakeholders, we cannot join to do that, we can’t push it because we were not consulted. As the apex ethnic youth organisation in Nigeria, we should be consulted. We should sit down and talk and dialogue. Go to President Bola Tinubu, he is a listening president. He watches, he cares.”
Nnabuike then said that while he was not downplaying the rights of Nigerians to protests or the responsibility of the government to protect citizens who want to protest, the possibility of the protest being hijacked is very high due to the country’s economic situation, and the fact that, according to him, the protest has no known organisers.
He said, “We didn’t say maybe that Nigerians should not protest maybe because the federal government cannot protect their citizens, but what we’re saying is a scenario whereby someone, at the cost of protecting the protesters, you see people coming to attack the police. You see people coming to snatch AK47 from a soldier or from a policeman or one of the security organisations. So what I’m saying is that some youths are on drugs, we know that very quite well. And such incident happened during the EndSars whereby some hoodlums came to attack the police, the police had to shoot to get defence. So, what if such thing occurs again? And again, who is coordinating?… Nobody, it’s faceless.”
He went on to say, “There are many hoodlums everywhere, there is hunger. So, somebody can even attack the police having AK47. Some of them can come to attack a soldier having AK47. And in defence of himself, he might pull the trigger. The next thing you will hear is that the same thing that happened during the EndSars has happened again- they will mess every place up, demolish government properties. During the EndSars, for one month, we couldn’t go to bank in Enugu, there was no ATM, there was no bank, nowhere to get money, everywhere was damaged, all the roads- blocked. So please, I’m begging our fellow youths, because we are the ones to be used.”
“Please, I’m addressing Nigerians, please, let all of us give the government a chance. They inherited a very bad economy, they inherited a very dead economy,” he said.
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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