{"id":608,"date":"2024-08-05T15:36:05","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T15:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/?p=608"},"modified":"2024-08-05T15:36:05","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T15:36:05","slug":"nationwide-protest-apgas-chieftain-begs-protesters-to-calm-down-suspend-protest-cautions-govt-functionaries-to-desist-from-flamboyant-lifestyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/2024\/08\/05\/nationwide-protest-apgas-chieftain-begs-protesters-to-calm-down-suspend-protest-cautions-govt-functionaries-to-desist-from-flamboyant-lifestyle\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationwide Protest: APGA’s Chieftain begs Protesters to calm down, suspend protest ….Cautions govt functionaries to desist from flamboyant lifestyle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ignatius Okorocha<\/div>\n
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Following, measures rolled out by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu\u00a0 to address\u00a0 some of the complaints by protesters at the ongoing nationwide protest, a chieftain of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie has pleaded with the Nigerian youths to shield their sword and allow government to act on it’s promises.<\/div>\n
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This is as he has condemned the flamboyant lifestyle of public functionaries at a time most Nigerians are wallowing in abject poverty and hunger.<\/div>\n
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Chief Okorie who doubles as Chairman board of Trustees of APGA in an interview with our Correspondent at the weekend noted that though the grievances being expressed by the youths through protest was their constitutional right, the protesters should listen to the president’s appeal for suspension of the protest to enable him act on their demands<\/div>\n
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“Protest is the constitutional right of citizens provided it is done within the confines of the law but in Nigeria’s special circumstances there are so many flash points across the country. Flash points as a result of hunger, insecurity and all sorts of set backs on the individuals and families that have made so many people very very upset with the government and with the system and it is generally said that a hungry man is an angry man and it is also said that an angry man is irrational.<\/div>\n
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“Again being irrational he could also be violent, you have had people say somebody is taking out his anger on another person. Nigeria is sitting on a kerg of gun powder.<\/div>\n
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“What you may regard as a normal protest as it happens in so many countries and nothing will go wrong, if it happens in Nigeria at this critical time my fear is that it will go out of control. Nigeria is in a situation that a little ignition can trigger off a conflagration of uncontrollable proportion.”<\/div>\n
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Continuing he said,”And so, my advise therefore is that this protest for now should be shelved.At the same time government should look at the reasons for the protest. Yes, I have heard from government officials, and the president himself assured that some\u00a0 measures\u00a0 are being taken to address some of these complaints.<\/div>\n
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” Everybody knows that staple\u00a0 food, that you used to call the ordinary man or poor man’s food is now big man’s food, is it garri, yam etc are no longer available, all of these things make people feel that government is no longer taking care of them.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Chief Okorie however, blamed government functionaries of contributing to the grievances being expressed by the youths based on the unnecessary display of affluence at a time Nigerians are wallowing in poverty and penury.<\/div>\n
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“Beyond that, those who are asking us to be patient with them are not behaving in a manner that will encourage that patience The life style of those in government whether in the Executive or legislature at both state and federal levels is very provocative.<\/div>\n
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“Their display of indecent affluence bothering on valgarity is provocative. And for all I know, all great leaders whether in the past or present wherever they may be in the world, one common denominator is that they lead by example.<\/div>\n
When a leader is leaving as if he belongs to a different world and the people he is leading are on the other extreme of poverty, it becomes a matter of us versus them and there\u00a0 is no way you can engender in your citizens that spirit of patriotism to be able to give their best for their country.<\/div>\n
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But that not withstanding, the answer does\u00a0 not\u00a0 lie with this protest now.<\/div>\n
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“This protest now may trigger off something that we may not be able to handle.<\/div>\n
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“My advice is that we should shelve the protest. I am aware that you can’t order people who are already angry not to let it out through protest but since our president has called for suspension of the protest to enable him implement his plans to make life ease for the citizenry let’s give him a chance to do that.<\/div>\n
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On the request of the protesters for the restoration of subsidy on oil, he said,” because the issue of petroleum subsidy has been contentious for several years and many people had advocated it’s withdrawal because it was more of an avenue or conduit pipe for stealing our common patrimony.<\/div>\n
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Even during the 2023\u00a0 campaign leading to the presidential election, the three foremost presidential candidates and others that were not prominent all said if they had the opportunity to rule this country, the first thing they would do would be to remove subsidy on fuel and nobody in Nigeria then argued against that.<\/div>\n
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“The only problem is that our president didn’t seem to have thought through the impact before removing the subsidy but something that Nigerians need to appreciate is that President Muhammad Buhari’s administration did not include any Kobe for subsidy in the 2023 budget starting from June 2023 even when knew that he would leave office in May 2023. And that was the budget that was passed by those we sent to represent us in the National Assembly.<\/div>\n
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“It is not something to be blamed on\u00a0 President Bola Tinubu because we had our representatives at the Senate and House of Representatives who had insight into the budget and kept quiet. They passed the budget in which there was no provision for subsidy.<\/div>\n
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“So, if the President didn’t say he has withdrawn subsidy on fuel, we would have been borrowing money to pay for subsidy. The answer is not to go back to Egypt but how do we manage this situation to come out of it and still maintain no subsidy”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ignatius Okorocha Following, measures rolled out by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu\u00a0 to address\u00a0 some of the complaints by protesters at the ongoing nationwide protest, a chieftain of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie has pleaded with the Nigerian youths to shield their sword and allow government to act on it’s promises. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[326,334,20,230],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-nationwide-protest","tag-peace","tag-tinubu","tag-youths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}