Amid the #EndBadGovernance protests across the country occasioned by massive hardships, the lawmaker representing Idemili North and South Federal Constituency of Anambra State, Uchenna Harris Okonkwo, has advised President Bola Tinubu to double down speedily with creative solutions that heal and restore if Nigeria must pull through its current despair.
He spoke in reaction to the nationwide broadcast by President Tinubu to protesting Nigerians, wherein he said he was aware of the challenges they were going through and appealed for more time.
“I appreciate his acknowledgement that he has heard Nigerians loud and clear. I reckon with his assertion that the buck stops at his table because it should actually. He should proceed now to persuade Nigerians better by tested actions that will mitigate these afflictions decisively and sustainably.”
In the statement from his media office, the lawmaker added: “I endorse the irrepressible liberty of Nigerians to protest loudly but decently, just as I note with pride our youths’ restraints to act more maturely, especially in our southern landscape. This is because, as a representative of one of the largest and most populated federal constituencies in this country, I know first hand how deep the pains are, and how severe the traumas are becoming.
“It’s been personally agonising to reconcile how a once ‘happiest people in Africa’ cascaded into this yoke we have been, simply on account of leadership failures and vision paralysis, over the last decade mostly. Such systemic leadership embarrassment which brought us this low remains the president’s biggest nut to crack by taking the hints of these protests to address, solve and reverse.
“I, therefore, sincerely urge and appeal to everyone of us, either in government or in leadership, to get more real in our zeal to serve our citizens responsibly and sensitively, aware that since democracy is our deliberate choice of governance, it grows and thrives from the people and for the people.
We must then adjust to the reality that our citizens are getting impatient with increasing resolve to tell us point blank, when we mis-govern or misrepresent them.”
He noted that as tested and tolerant as Nigerians have endured in this decade of misery, it should not happen or be contemplated by any act of arrogance or standard aloofness of the past, to suppress or deny them a let off for such high agony.
Okonkwo enjoined all security agencies and personnels mobilised to suppress and contain an already depressed people, to rather protect and treat them with empathy, respect and love.
“It is a critical challenge to their call of duty and capacity for intelligence to skilfully sieve out the criminals and deal with them promptly, while they protect the legitimacy of citizens to show dissent or approval. They should note that these people protest for them too, since they are barred by law from expressing their own frustrations publicly.
“We know that the crown of every leader worthy of the name, comes with thorns, yet these thorns are the necessary tests for real praise when overcome, not before.
“Now that the President has spoken and confirmed his awareness of the dire situation, perhaps, the urgency of now will be accelerated to truly make the people feel and see good governance louder and clearer. The hard truth is that actions are the only wheels that bring results. He must absorb the heat as renewed strength to take actions to clean the stains of nepotism, reset the optics of palace grandeur and cut the costs of governance, and rein in the hordes of hate spinners pretending to love him more. Nigeria is his beat and every Nigerian is his employer.
“I salute all decent voices of dissent to bad governance, be it in local, state or Federal Government, especially those that maintained law and order, because they are the true sanitisers for creative hope that must evolve as a compelling scrutiny for collective prosperity and development to endure.”
Commenting on the media’s exploitation by desperate malcontents to instigate ethnic attacks, especially against the people of the South East, he cautioned everyone to pause and reflect that if development has eluded us this much in peace time, prosperity will commit unfortunate suicide if that peace disappear. “It’s a grave spectacle of history no sane person should romance, whether by mischief or poor sense,” he stated.