The storm is gathering for another nerve-wracking round of hunger protest, beginning from October 1, 2024. And it promises to be a tinderbox because if past experiences are anything to go by, even well-intentioned protests have always almost spewed out of control in this clime.
Like a rudderless ship, the original leaders, whose motives may be altruistic, usually lose control of their own organized protests, precipitating unpredictable, anarchical order.
If the October 1 protest happens, it will be coming exactly two months after the first protest almost upended the fragile polity. In spite of the assurances from the known leaders of the August protest, who interfaced with the police for protection, the scale of things tripped, upsetting the apple cart. The protest was hijacked at a point by agents of fifth columnists and miscreants. Anarchy upstaged order and everything became unruly.
It was a completely stupefied Ebun Adegboruwa (SAN), the coordinator of the Lagos end of the protest, who literally raised his hands in utter helplessness, lamenting that the protesters were no longer obeying him. He simply lost control and the surging protesters transmuted into a mob.
The situation was worse in the North where fifth columnists held and surreptitiously manipulated the lever of mob action right from the beginning. Up North, anarchy bore rule and the rioters went on a despoiling, pillaging and razing binge.
Organizers of the August protest, the Coalition of Concerned Nigerian Citizens, on August 28, 2024, threatened to resume the nationwide demonstrations against hunger and bad governance, starting from October1, if the government continues to ignore their demands.
The coordinator of the group, Ajala Adetunji, lamented that the federal and state governments have abandoned their demands since they suspended their protest in August. Instead of rolling out policies that will directly address their demands, Adetunji alleged, President Bola Tinubu and the governors “have worsened the woes of the Nigerian population.”
Omoyele Sowore, the Action Alliance Congress(AAC) presidential candidate in the 2023 election and one of the organizers of the August protest, reiterated the position that they would resume the hunger protest by October 1 should the government fail to address their demands. He added that the organizers were already getting together and meeting to plan the modalities for the next protest.
If the latest protest holds, the government is largely to blame. First, as we posited in our post-mortem of the August protest, President Tinubu somehow squandered a great opportunity to thaw out the protesters with his state-of-the-nation broadcast and failed to trade tact fo more time, which he really needs.”
We had observed in our post-mortem that throughout the broadcast, made on the fourth day of the protest, “the speech projected the president as a cavalier leader who appeared to be oblivious of the level of hardship and misery in the land.”
We added: “Yet, from his public conduct in the past, the president cannot be described as petulant and unfeeling because he has proved to be a listening and responsive leader … Not only did he fail to address any of the protesters’ demands, he kept reeling off long-term measures his administration was taking to beat the nation’s tottering economy back to reckoning.”
Second, with the manner the turnaround maintenance(TAM) of the Port Harcourt was mucked up, as it has become convoluted and interminable, and the impetuous hike in fuel price, Dangote Refinery’s petrol appeared to be the only window of succour that Nigerians were holding unto.
No matter the politics-cum- economics of crude oil supply into which the $20 billion behemoth had been mired, the general expectation was that the petrol rolled out from it was bound to be far cheaper than the imported fuel.
However, a cloud of morass soon overtook the process. First, the national oil giant was supposed to be the domestic offtaker of Dangote’s fuel, with the expectation that it would buy from Dangote Refinery and sell to Nigerians at a subsidized rate if Dangote’s price is higher than the one prevailing in the market. That way, Nigerians were expecting Dangote’s roll out with bated breath expecting that his fuel would come cheaper and succour them.
However, along the line, something snapped and NNPCL changed the beat. It came out with a statement that it was no longer going to offtake Dangote’s fuel, that it(Dangote) was free to sell to any concern on a willing- buyer, willing-seller basis.
The imponderables surrounding the quagmire were, however, eventually resolved and Dangote’s much anticipated fuel was officially rolled out penultimate Sunday. And no matter the implausible and impolitic rigmarole that had assailed the process leading to the roll out, it was historic by all standards because it marked the first time in decades that the nation’s finished fuel would glug out in such a large scale from a local behemoth!
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, who led the Federal Government’s team to the historic roll out enthused that much. However, the price template released by the NNPCL for the stock it received from Dangote Refinery came as a serious morale dampener. It was an anti-climax, dashing the hope of a cheaper price regime from Dangote.
According to the price template for September, Dangote’s fuel now sells for N950:22 per liter in Lagos; N992:22 per liter in Abuja; N980:22 in Rivers; N999:22 in Kaduna, Kano and Sokoto. It is N1,019 in Borno. By implication, Dangote’s fuel price is N100 costlier than the prevailing market price from NNPCL’s retail outlets and other major stations.
However, an NNPCL official, explaining the rationale behind the price template, said neither NNPCL nor Dangote Refinery fixed the prices; that they(prices) are now being determined by market forces.
Besides, the official explained: “For the immediate take-off, from September 15(when Dangote’s fuel was rolled out) till the end of this month, we(NNPCL) would be paying Dangote in dollars. Why? That is because the crude that Dangote used in refining the petrol that would be taken now was paid for in dollars. But from October1, crude supplied to Dangote and products taken up by us would be paid in Naira.”
In effect, a new price template would be released in October after the NNPCL replenishes its stock and the price then may be relatively cheaper, depending on the vagaries of marketing forces.
Now, the beat goes on. Because of the multiplier effects of fuel on other strata of national life, the costs of living, instead of abating, going by the headline inflation for August, continue to spiral. Hardships are heightening by the day and hunger now stalks on all fours.
Yet, Nigeria’s headline inflation rate dropped to 32:15 per cent for the month of August, 2024, according to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS). This represents 1.25 per cent point decrease from 33.4 per cent recorded in July, 2024 and the second consecutive monthly slowdown in inflation after easing in the previous month.
This, however, has no effect on ground. The level of misery is tending towards breaking point. Keen observers would easily decipher many people now go about wearing glum looks that blaze with hunger and anger.
This is the grim situation as protesters organizers serve the notice to resume their protest from October1. The outcome of the latest protest, if it happens, may also be unpredictable because of diametrically opposed interests involved. So, while protesters are planning with genuine intentions for a good order, some other elements are lurking in the shadows, hatching a destabilization plot.
A former British diplomat, Mr David Roberts, confirmed that the fears of fifth columnists’ involvement in the rash of protests were no fluke when he warned that foreign interests are likely to be behind the planned October 1 protest.
He warned on Friday in a statement that foreign interests may use Nigerians’ genuine concern over the hardship in the land to destabilize the country.
The US Secretary of State, Mr Anthony Blinken, had squealed penultimate week that African Stream, a media outlet associated with David Hundeyin, one of the supporters of the August protest, is an alleged undercover agent to the Russian intelligence psychological operation aimed at destabilizing Nigeria.
Roberts warned seriously: “In the light of the wide use of Russian flags in the last days of August protests and taking this new revelation by the US Secretary of State, Nigeria ought to be very careful about the proposed October1 protest… Nigeria should take more care and alert its citizenry to the truth about such platforms and their agents.”
Blinken had at a press conference in Washington, US, penultimate week squealed that African Stream was working for Russia contrary to its claim of mainstreaming Africa’s interest.
The ex-British envoy warned further: “As many of those behind the protests are linked to Mr Hundeyin and others from African Stream network, Nigeria only needs to look at what is happening in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to understand the peril they face.”
Hundeyin, however, denied the destabilization allegation against him, describing it as a typical American tendency to label perceived opposing viewpoints.
The onus is now on the government to take the warnings seriously and strive to prevent the October 1 protest, not by coercive instruments of state, but by constructive engagement. Let top government agents reach out to the genuine leaders of the protesters and conciliate them. They(government) should genuinely feed them in on how their grievances or demands are being addressed or would be addressed .
Government should stop ignoring the protesters’ demands because it is not all of them that are outlandish. Let the authorities show genuine propitiatory gestures to convince the organizers to give them more time to address their demands.
The security agencies should also hone their intelligence binoculars to pick every stealthy manoeuvre to destabilize the polity and ward it off. Genuine protesters too should be wary of shadowy figures with base instincts around them and fence them off.
In the final analysis, government should frontally confront and tame the implacable ghosts of hunger before things go out of hand. Like former Head of State, Gen. Abdulasalami Abubakar, rightly posited recently, doling out palliatives is hardly the answer to the prohibitive costs of food and other items. Rather, he admonished, government should regularly flood or saturate communities with foodstuffs and sell to Nigerians at affordable prices. We cannot agree more!
