By Tina Amanda
Human rights advocate, Courage Nsirimvo, has accused President Ahmed Tinubu and lawmakers in the national assembly of mismanaging the nation’s resources, to the detriment of the populace, who are impoverished.
Nsirimvo, the Coordinator of Pilex Centre, made these remarks in an interview at the “End Bad Governance” protest ground. He lamented that the government’s policy of placing a debt burden on the people is not working.
According to him, the political leaders are living large with the people’s resources at the expense of the masses who barely afford one square meal a day.
“People are coming out to say, no! We need a change, this policy is not working. There was a burden on the federal government, the debt-to-revenue ratio moved up to ninety-something percent and the government placed the burden on the people which is the problem.
“The people are saying no we can not carry this burden, you caused this mess because of mismanagement.
“You are giving the people in power an exorbitant lifestyle and the people are hungry in the streets, you do not care, fix the problem, and let the people have their basic needs. That is why we are out, they can not stop this protest, whatever you do to the people they are hungry, they must cry out.
“The good thing is that it is an organic protest, people are in different places protesting in Port Harcourt. This seems to be the best form of protest.
“You can not say this is the leader of the protest. it is an incident that has affected every person, increase in fuel price, high cost of living, everybody is feeling it, the bankers, security personnel’s, civil servants amongst others”.
He calls for the amendment of section 61, subsection 5 of the electoral act, which will direct results to be transmitted at the polling units.
“The truth is that we want our vote to count there is a need to amend section 61, sub-section 5 of the electoral act. We do not want the section to read that transmission of results as prescribed by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC).
“The section should read; transmission of result should be mandatory from the polling unit so that result will count and any polling unit that does not transmit result, the vote in that polling unit should not count, that is what we want, if the votes of the people counted Tinubu would not be there as president”.
Speaking on the violent protest seen in the northern part of Nigeria, he blamed the Northern leaders for denying their people education and civilization.
“What the leaders are doing is what is affecting the North, they said do not go to school that they prefer “Alamajiri”, the people are giving it back to them. They said they should not go to school, they are illiterate, if you look at the other part of the country where people are educated they are more civilized in the protest.
“Give your people education and they will behave and they will behave like educated people. Why is Boko Haram sustained there? That is what you get in a place where the people are not civilized, it is like a backlash to the government”.
Nsirimvo further demands government as a matter of urgency fix the nation’s refineries which are the major cause of hardship in the country.
“The question is; is there any solution to this problem? We all know, the major problem is because we are importing fuel.
“Why is it that we can not fix our refinery, we are telling the president of Nigeria to fix the refineries, stop playing games with us”.
