Lawmaker urges Tinubu to address hardship amid ongoing protest

Member of the House of Representatives representing Idemili North and South Federal Constituency of Anambra State, Honourable Uchenna Harris Okonkwo, has enjoined President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to double down speedily with creative solutions that heal and restore if Nigeria must pull through this current hardship pervading the land, which had occasioned the ongoing nationwide #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protests.

Okonkwo made this call on Wednesday in a statement from his Consultant Media Office, a copy of which was made available to newsmen by Mr Collins Steve Ugwu, even as he appreciated President Tinubu for acknowledging that he had heard Nigerians loud and clear and that the buck stops at his table.

The lawmaker, while urging for a peaceful protest devoid of violence, even as he noted the level of pains Nigerians were passing through “as a representative of one of the largest and most populated Federal Constituencies in this country,” said the president “should proceed now to persuade the citizens better by tested actions that will mitigate these afflictions decisively and sustainably.”

In particular, he urged President Tinubu “to clean the stains of nepotism, reset the optics of palace grandeur, cut the costs of governance, and rein in the hordes of hate spinners pretending to love him more,” noting that Nigeria is his beat and every Nigerian is his employer.

Besides, he equally called on everyone in government or leadership positions to get more real in his or her zeal to serve the people responsibly and sensitively, based on democratic tenets the country had preferred as her choice of governance.

“It’s been personally agonising to reconcile how a once ‘happiest people in Africa’ cascaded into this yoke we have been, simply on account of leadership failures and vision paralysis, over the last decade mostly.

“Such systemic leadership embarrassment, which brought us this low, remains the president’s biggest nut to crack by taking the hints of these protests to address, solve and reverse.

“I, therefore, sincerely urge and appeal to every one of us, either in government or in leadership, to get more real in our zeal to serve our citizens responsibly and sensitively, aware that since democracy is our deliberate choice of governance,
it grows and thrives from the people and for the people. We must then adjust to the reality that our citizens are getting impatient with increasing resolve to tell us point blank when we misgovern or misrepresent them,” he said.

“As tested and tolerant as Nigerians have endured in this decade of misery, it should not happen nor be contemplated by any act of arrogance or standard aloofness of the past to suppress or deny them a let-off for such high agony.

“I also call upon all security agencies and personnel mobilised to suppress and contain already depressed people, but rather to protect and treat them with empathy, respect, and love.

“It is a critical challenge to their call of duty and capacity for intelligence to skilfully sieve out the criminals and deal with them promptly while protecting the legitimacy of citizens to show dissent or approval. They should note that these people protest for them too, since they are barred by law from expressing their own frustrations publicly.

“We know that the crown of every leader worthy of the name comes with thorns, yet these thorns are the necessary tests for real praise when overcome, not before,” the lawmaker stated.

“Now that the president has spoken and confirmed his awareness of the dire situation, perhaps the urgency of now will be accelerated to truly make the people feel and see good governance louder and clearer. The hard truth is significant: actions are the only wheels that bring results.

“He must absorb the heat as renewed strength to take actions to clean the stains of nepotism, reset the optics of palace grandeur, cut the costs of governance, and rein in the hordes of hate spinners pretending to love him more. Nigeria is his beat, and every Nigerian is his employer,” he added.

On desperate efforts by some faceless group to instigate ethnic attacks, especially against the people of the South East, Okonkwo condemned the act, cautioning that no sane person should romance, whether by mischief or poor sense.

“It’s a grave spectacle of history that no sane person should romance, whether by mischief or poor sense,” he said.

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