•Sule Lamido
Former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, has asked the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration of President Bola Tinubu to take preventive measures against the general discontent in the country arising from poverty, high cost of living and the insecurity currently bedevilling the nation to avert a likely disaster.
Lamido, who was Foreign Affairs minister under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on his verified Facebook wall used two analogies by two famous persons to capture the near disaster waiting to happen if the government failed to take preemptive measures, reports The Guardian.
“The first of the two famous people is Fidel Castro. He narrated a story of a rich man on a holiday in his luxurious yacht. While indulging in the upper deck of the yacht with all the comfort money can buy, his workers were groaning in the heat of the engine room.
“The commotion coming from the engine room arising from the unbearable heat started shaking the yacht violently! It was a signal to the rich man and his friends on the upper deck to either respond to the commotion from the engine room or risk the yacht overturning.
“The other famous man is our very own Bishop Kukah. During the era of our blessed PDP, there were cries of hardship arising from the increase of the pump price of fuel and the then serious insecurity from Boko Haram culminating in the abduction of Chibok girls in Yobe State.”
“There was general outcry all over the country from the then opposition APC, organising protests against the PDP government. I vividly recall when Buhari, Tinubu and other bigwigs of the APC poured out and filled the streets of Abuja chanting and condemning our government for allegedly failing to secure Nigeria and unleashing hardship on the citizens!
“That was when my good friend Bishop Kukah presented his paper alerting to the impending danger should the government fail to take urgent action!”
He said that in Nigeria today, the hardship is so unbearable that signs of ‘early warnings’ are manifesting all over the country citing Lagos and Minna, where women had demonstrated over high cost of living.”
According to him, the two analogies quoted above and the manifestation of the seeming tension arising from these local protests and demonstrations and the likely spread of these nationwide are enough to make the government take urgent action.
Lamido spoke just as a human rights activist and convener of Concerned Nigerians, Deji Adeyanju, told Tinubu that it was imperative to recognise that Nigeria is sitting on a time bomb of hardships, banditry, insecurity, and kidnapping.
He said: “The cumulative effect of these challenges has pushed our nation to the brink. If urgent measures are not taken to cushion the effects of this hardship, we fear that mass protests may erupt across the country, potentially leading to a serious revolution.”
