ADC : Kachikwu Appeals To Protesters To End Protests

Former presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Mr. Dumebi Kachikwu has appealed to protesters to sheath their swords following the blood shed of innocent citizens.

A statement signed by him in Abuja pleads with those aggrieved to wait for the next presidential election to end bad governance.

“We can’t continue killing ourselves. Our streets flow with the blood of innocent citizens. Over 19 killed in this scam of a protest, all for what? No child of any politician or big man was killed. Just the poor, average Nigerian. Only their family members will cry and mourn for them quietly while those who have made billions from this scam laugh to the bank” he adds.

According to the statement, Kachikwu advises President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to be broadminded and consult widely instead of running the affairs of the nation alone stressing that it was time to stop the blame game.

“It is not Tinubu’s problem alone. He must show leadership and reach out across party lines to get the best and the brightest to a solution roundtable. God himself reconciled all men to him through his son Jesus Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation”.

“We are witnessing unprecedented hardship right now. The poor can barely eat a meal in two days. Most of us can no longer afford the necessities. The population of the poor is increasing by the minute. We as leaders need to come to a table of equity, justice and fairness to address the plight of the downtrodden immediately” Kachiukwu stresses.

“If God knows to reconcile us to him, who are you not to reconcile the aggrieved to you? Our nation needs healing and for this to happen, all Nigerians must come to equity with clean hands and sincerity of purpose” he notes.

“We don’t burn our houses because we want to kill rats and cockroaches: sometimes we just need to make our houses clean so that rats and cockroaches will leave on their own. My earnest prayer is that Nigeria will soon work for every one of us.”

According to the statement, Kachikwu, known for his daily NUGGETS on the state of the nation, faults the opposition for indulging in abusing Tinubu instead of proffering solutions to the nation’s problems.

The statement warns against attempting to remove a democratically elected government through the back door.

“What of those who lost elections but like President Trump they won’t accept the result and move on? This is not a progressive attitude. We can’t burn down our country over elections that have been won and lost”.

“The job of the opposition now is to oppose and propose but what we are doing is only opposing without providing any solutions to our problems. Watch any advanced democracy and see how the opposition behaves. They have their stand and solution on all issues, and they will debate you night and day but here all we want to do is abuse Tinubu without offering any concrete solutions, This is not leadership”.

“Nigerians lost a golden opportunity by not insisting on credible debates. Joe Biden has pulled out of the race because a single debate spotlighted his deficiencies but here in Nigeria we don’t care. President Buhari fumbled in all the debates, but he won two elections. His government set us back three decades, but yet we didn’t protest bad governance when he was president.”

“We protested SARS arresting so called Yahoo boys and our youths on trumped up charges. Who are we deceiving? For how long will we keep on being mediocre about our civic duties? If you hate Tinubu so much, then pressure the National Assembly to remove him or wait till the next elections but heating up the polity for the last one year and attempting to remove a democratically elected government through the back door is no different from a coup”, he states.

On the way forward, he said Nigerians should return to God to reverse the course in the country. My dear Nigerians we must reverse the course. For too long we have followed politicians, men of God, entertainers or anything that is the latest fad but never have we as a people agreed to follow God. Who then is our role model of leadership? We can’t continue this blame and hate game,” he stresses.

On Subsidy removal the statement urges President Tinubu to have a rethink of the policy of his administration on it adding that the problem of subsidy was the fraud associated with the scheme.

It asks the government to prosecute all those who abused the scheme no matter how highly placed in society and recommended that the government should rejig the scheme and make it fraud proof.

“Look at the vexatious issue of subsidy removal. Some sections of the media are now saying all the Presidential candidates agreed that subsidy had to go. This is not true” God did not make a mistake by depositing oil in our land. The problem of subsidy was the fraud associated with the scheme. I said that we should prosecute all those who abused the scheme no matter how highly placed in society and at the same time rejig the scheme and make it fraud proof. I also said we should suspend it for a few months while all these takes place”.

“Why should over 200 million Nigerians suffer because of the crime of less than a thousand people? This doesn’t make sense. The President believes that with subsidy gone there is more money for capital projects, but he forgets that in a corrupt society like ours that a lot of that money will be looted. We are all also calling on Tinubu, the States and Local Governments have been getting much more money and they are closer to the people. What are they doing? We don’t want to hear the truth”, he notes.

According to the statement, Kachikwu urged Tinubu to give a broader perspective to all appointments in national interest adding that the President should live up to his rating that he is different from ex-President Muhammadu Buhari.

“Tinubu won because most of those who voted believed in what he had to offer them. This is the simple truth. The funniest thing is that I believe that he could actually succeed”.

“The President must understand that he is not President Buhari. If President Buhari was appointing only Northerners into office, you can say he had 20 northern states he was sharing the offices to but President Tinubu has just six southwest states”.

By Georgina Humphrey