Economic Pains May ‘Trigger Nationwide Agitation’, PDP Warns

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), yesterday, cautioned the All Progressives Congress (APC) against pushing Nigerians into nationwide restiveness worse than the 2020 #EndSARS crisis.

It said the government’s “unrelenting culture of arrogance, impunity and criminal pillaging of our national resources is akin to kneeling on the necks of Nigerians.”

In a statement by its national publicity secretary, Debo Ologunagba, PDP warned that there is a limit to what people can bear, especially when the country is in turmoil and agonising under a collapsed electricity grid, protracted fuel crisis, distressed aviation sector, plummeting currency and crippled production and commercial activities.

“Our party fears that the situation is getting to a boiling point and can trigger a nationwide agitation that might be worse than the October 2020 #EndSARS (protest) if not addressed immediately,” PDP said.

The party expressed shock at President Muhammadu Buhari’s “aloofness and absentee attitude.”

It said: “The failure by President Buhari, who also doubles as Minister of Petroleum Resources, to take immediate action, other than the snobbish stance by his Presidency that ‘heavens will not fall’ because of fuel scarcity amounts to daring Nigerians to do their worse.

“It is often said that when a government abdicates its responsibility to the citizens at whose pleasure it should serve, then that government is complicit in the suffering of its people and a beneficiary of their woes.”

It noted: “Thousands of small and medium scale enterprises – the drivers of the economy – are folding up daily. Industries are relocating to neighbouring countries, universities are on strike, the aviation sector is on the brink of collapse, our railway is tottering to a halt due to lack of diesel, police are threatening to go on strike, insecurity is on the rise due to the collapse of the informal economic sector.

“If President Buhari could personally communicate on issues that concern his fizzling party, the APC, while in England, it is inconceivable that he failed and neglected, as always, to attend to life discounting experiences and pains encountered by Nigerians daily by the thoughtless and inhumane policies of his government.”