No one can deny Nigerians the right to protest

The presidency said on Sunday that Nigerians retain the right to protest peacefully.

It was also said that the government of President Bola Tinubu is focused on serving Nigerians, not ‘dominating’ them.

Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, spoke during the TV interview program Politics on Sunday with Femi Akande about concerns over the government’s position on the peaceful protests scheduled for August 1-10.

He said, “Let me be clear: we are not here to dominate our people; we are here to serve them.”

He stressed that no organ of government has “the authority” to stop Nigerians from protesting.

“No one in our government has the authority to deny Nigerians their right to peaceful protest,” Ngelale said, acknowledging fears of a possible hijacking of the protests, similar to the #EndSARS movement of 2020.

He also assured the people of Tinubu’s commitment to putting Nigeria on a sound economic footing despite the burdens he inherited from the previous administration.

Ngelale reasoned that while Nigerians are facing enormous economic pressures, the government is working to improve living standards in the short, medium and long term.

However, he pleaded for patience, saying that development takes time and there is no magic bullet that can solve the country’s problems overnight.

The president’s spokesman highlighted the Federal Reserve’s efforts, including sub-10% lending facilities for more than a million small- and medium-sized businesses, the rebuilding of seaports and roads across the country, the student loan program, the consumer credit program, and the increase in the national minimum wage. He stressed that some of these efforts may take time to produce tangible results.

“At the moment, over 300 roads are being rebuilt in all the states of the Federation and that is without even mentioning the Lagos-Calabar superhighway that is under construction, the Badagry-Sokoto expressway and many others. And that is without even mentioning the $1 billion that is now being spent on the reconstruction of the seaports in the Eastern and Western seaports.

“There are several things happening now that are creating direct jobs and preparing us for a prosperous future where our infrastructure actually supports the foreign direct investment push that this president is aggressively pursuing.

“But it is also the responsibility of our governance, not only at the federal level but obviously at the state and local level, to ensure that whatever policies are implemented to create financial space for households, that these things are actually done, that we do not have any form of administrative incompetence, that we do not have any unnecessary bureaucratic delays,” he explained.

Referring to several social investment programmes already underway, Ngelale argued: “There is no doubt that there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of work is being done, some of which will not be done with the bells and whistles of TV cameras and no one will be sitting in the office of, say, the CBN governor, doing his paperwork leading to the full repayment of $7 billion in foreign exchange arrears.

“It has a huge impact on investor confidence, it has a huge impact on the medium-term monetary space in the country, but that is not something that people are necessarily going to dance and celebrate about. So there is a lot going on.”

He described a recent Supreme Court judgment granting financial autonomy to local government councils as “a restructuring in practice”, adding: “That is the kind of thing that Nigerians need to spend some time on to see what the difference will actually be in terms of the impact on their livelihoods.”