By Luminous Jannamike

SOME activists, including Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, human rights lawyer, have called for mass protest across the nation to call to order the Federal Government, over what they describe as “the pitiable plight of Nigerians.”

Nigerians

They spoke against the backdrop of fuel scarcity in several parts of the country and persistent blackout, which according to them, worsened the hardship of the people.

In a statement, yesterday, Adegboruwa alleged a grand conspiracy by the government to impose hardship on the people, in order to force them to accept a ridiculous price regime of basic amenities and infrastructure.

He said: “The fuel queues have refused to abate and in many parts of the country, the price of petrol is way beyond the official N145 per litre. At a time when salaries are not paid, when the purchasing power of the average Nigerian has dwindled, it is certainly not the time to impose hardship.

“The Constitution makes it mandatory that the welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. Thus, it is callous and inhuman, to contrive an artificial scarcity of fuel by the government, in making the NNPC the major importer of fuel and to then use that organ to withhold adequate supply of the product, in order to achieve a self induced scarcity.

He called on President Muhammadu Buhari “to urgently suspend all his political activities, in order to concentrate on alleviating the sufferings that the masses of our people are currently going through”

He also urged “the Nigerian Labour Congress, the Nigerian Bar Association, activists and “civil society organisations, the media, the clergy and all people of good conscience, to rise up on behalf of the people of Nigeria and call this government to order, to end the pitiable plight of Nigerians.

“I call on all Nigerians in their various locations to organize mass protests in all the major towns and villages. It is better to sit at home than to be suffocating and enduring avoidable hardship,” he added.

In a similar vein, the former New Media Director of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, Deji Adeyanju, urged well-meaning Nigerians to remain steadfast in calling the Federal Government to order.

Lamenting the arrest of online publisher, Adeyanju, said “We cannot allow these kinds of things go unabated in 2018. We know that as elections draw near, this government will be more vicious to critics and journalist but our duty is to make sure Nigerians remain free to express their views and opinions at all times. “

Also speaking, the Co-Convener of ‘Say No Campaign’, Ezenwa Nwagwu, noted, in a telephone interview with Vanguard that it’s high time the citizens kicked against the measures so far put in place by the government which had plunged the people into unprecedented economic quagmire.

“Since the government has refused to heed other subtle means deployed by the people to draw its attention to their plight, it’s absolutely in order to embark on mass action to get the government to make positive change,” he said.