Former Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose has criticised a planned #EndBadGovernance protest against President Bola Tinubu’s administration, stating that the rally’s organisers had dark intentions.
Fayose, who appeared on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Monday, stated that the planned August hardship demonstration has political implications.
He stated that Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, was in power for eight years and there was no hunger strike despite the country’s hardship at the time.
Buhari, a former military head of state from Katsina State in North-West Nigeria, served as Nigeria’s democratically elected President from May 2015 until May 2023. He ceded power to Tinubu, the former Lagos governor from the South-West geographical zone.
Fayose said, “Hunger didn’t start one day. This hunger started a long time ago. That was why they had a rally at a time and said: ‘Jonathan must go’. (President Goodluck) Jonathan left. That hunger did not stop. Buhari came. I spoke to power. Buhari spent eight years, nobody said anything. I didn’t remember any rally.
“There is no government that is 100%,” he said, adding that the economic issues confronting Nigeria were from the past administrations.
“Nigeria is a very difficult country to govern. We all know that. If a man is to spend four years, give him a mid-term.
“The little they cannot be sufficient right now for anybody to say we must bring down the government. Because there must be a motive,” the ex-governor stated.
The Buhari administration witnessed several large protests, including the #EndSARS protest against police brutality, demonstrations by university teachers, and pro-Labour rallies, among others.