President Bola Tinubu has been urged to move around in the daytime and not at night to witness mass suffering of Nigerians.
This charge was issued on Sunday by the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) in a statement issued by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko.
HURIWA said the President would do well to move around disguised in the daytime when millions of suffering Nigerians are awake and grumbling from the devastating impact of bad governance and unworkable economic policies of his administration instead of moving around at night when everyone would have gone to bed.
The group was responding to the statement credited to Abia Senator, Orji Uzor Kalu, who said, “The President himself knows that Nigerians are suffering and hungry. He is a street person; he knows the street very well. The president some nights uses his car to go around and know what is happening in Abuja here.”
At the time Kalu made the statement, the president was in France in continuation of his annual leave. He returned to the country on Saturday.
HURIWA expressed disappointment that the government is doing nothing to ameliorate the harsh economic conditions of millions of Nigerians.
The group challenged the President to actually move around in the day time in some states of the federation and Abuja, go to the markets and ascertain the costs of food commodities as against what they were just before he was sworn in last May 29th.
HURIWA said a government that can not guarantee price stability of essential items including provisions, food items and medications, is not worth being called a functional administration.
“If those in the Villa haven’t told the President, then let us have the honour to let Mr. President know that a few days ago, the Senator representing Abia North in the National Assembly, Orji Uzor Kalu, said President Bola Tinubu moves around the Federal Capital Territory most nights to feel the pulse of the citizens.
HURIWA, which expressed strong doubts about the veracity of that claim by Senator Kalu, then urged the President that if indeed the claim was correct, then let him not move around at night since no poor person goes to any market at night.
It suggested to the President that the best way to get the accurate gauge of the situation of most Nigerians from the economic perspective is for him to move around in the daytime by which time virtually every Nigerian who is working must be at work in their different places.
HURIWA said the best place to get an accurate record of what Nigerians go through is in the market place which operates only in daytime whereby the rich, the poor and the wretched go to, for buying and selling of goods and services.
“We suggest that President Tinubu visits Ariaria international market Aba, Dugbe market Ibadan, Calabar central market, Port Harcourt market, Onitsha main market, Kano central market and Oshodi market in Lagos to obtain first hand information about the existential conditions of Nigerians at this moment.
“It is such a crying shame that even the World Bank which forces down the throat of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and directs his administration to continue to unleash painful economic policies that have led to the intolerable costs of living crises in Nigeria, has recently issued a warning that about 40.7 percent of Nigerians are estimated to live below the international poverty line by the end of 2024, yet this same toxic world bank is advocating that the Tinubu’s administration continues to churn out the harshest genres of the so-called economic reforms.
“We condemned the World Bank’s suffocating recommendations for the badly implemented economic reform that lacks human face to continue for 15 more years.
HURIWA recalled that previously, the World Bank stated that despite having the largest economy and population in Africa, Nigeria offers limited opportunities to most of its citizens just as an estimated 87 million Nigerians live below the poverty line — the world’s second-largest poor population after India.
The group therefore wondered how the World Bank expects the pathetic economic conditions of millions to be improved if the same sets of economic reforms that have unleashed massive hunger, starvation and deaths, should be continued for another fifteen years.