Abacha days are here, if not careful — Afenifere

Yoruba socio-cultural and political organ­isation, Afenifere, has expressed concern over the arrest of #EndBadGovernence protesters as well as the recent arrest of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Pres­ident, Comrade Joe Ajaero, stressing that Nigeria is moving back to the late General Sanni Abacha days if care is not taken.

Afenifere National Publicity Secre­tary, Prince Justice Faloye, disclosed this yesterday when he spoke on Arise TV.

The Afenifre leader also berat­ed President Bola Tinubu govern­ment for allegedly undertaking economic sabotage rather than economic reforms.

Faloye said, “We’re worried the way this country is going. It’s not only the NLC president that is being harassed. We have hundreds of people who are being prosecuted for treason for under­taking in the hunger protest. How do you charge people for treason for protesting against the destruc­tion of their economic livelihood? The time they went for Ajaero, they also went for SERAP.

“You can see that there was a journalist called Soyinka who was arrested. So, we’re moving back to Abacha days if we’re not careful, that is why we’re asking for the release of those arrested during protest.”

He added, “Even if you’re violent during protest, you’ll be charged for willful destruction of properties and others, not treason. The question we should ask is who is even treasonable here? What Nigerians are facing is economic sabotage because when you cut the real wages by over half. They keep telling us economic reforms, we call it economic sabotage.

“The main problem we have is import of petrol. We have spent humongous amount on impor­tation of fuel. Within 100 days we would have expected that 55 percent of that import bills could have been taken care of by reduc­ing the import bill by making all government officials buy locally produced vehicles. Our refineries have gulped over N20 billion and nothing has been achieved.

“Logic has shown that there are ways the government should have resolved this economic prob­lems. In Tinubu’s manifesto on page 34 or 36, he said categorically that he wouldn’t remove subsidies until the refineries come up, now you’re coming with this foreign institutions pushing free mar­ket principles which don’t apply because in the first place you’re a monopolist supplier of foreign exchange in Nigeria. You supply over 80 percent, so, the value of Nigeria indirectly is tied to you.

“If you increase the price today by 300 percent definitely the dollar will fall at least by 200 percent. In the case of petrol, you’re a monopolist, you’re the only one supplying it.”

On whether Afenifere sup­ported the protest, he said, “We supported the protest and were concerned that the government spent millions of naira to organ­ise protest against the protesters.

Speaking further he said, “We know that in 2014 Jonathan came out and said that the protesters were being supported by foreign institutions and we know that millions of naira were paid to sponsor the corruption aware­ness programme, nobody arrest­ed them for treason. So how can you come back and claim they committed treasonable offence?

“Even if you have foreign sponsorship which happens all over, there were no weapons ex­changed, it was just a matter of ideology, people are hungry. How can you keep nearly 1,000 people in prison on charges of treason?” Faloye queried.