By Abiola Olawale
As the widely reported day for the commencement of a nationwide protest approaches, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has cautioned against any attempt to suppress Nigerians from exercising their fundamental rights.
The union called on the Federal Government to allow peaceful protesters to express their grievances.
The NLC urged the government to engage the protesters constructively, rather than resorting to measures that could undermine citizens’ rights to voice their grievances.
This was contained in a statement issued by the NLC President, Joe Ajaero.
The statement reads in part: “As the date for the widely reported national protest looms, the Nigeria Labour Congress urges President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to invite the leadership of the protest movement for discussions on their grievances.
“The truth is that millions of Nigerians are angry about the state of the national economy. A situation where most Nigerian families are forced to eat one miserable meal a day and eating from the dustbin beckons for serious intervention by the government.”
Ajaero also pointed out that recent data about the country’s living standards index assessment by the National Bureau of Statistics, which established that about 133 million Nigerians live below the extreme poverty line is very appalling and unacceptable.
He continued: “When this statistics is added to the millions that are being recruited into the armies of the unemployed and under-employed Nigerians, one can easily situate the hardship, pain, frustrations and despair that many Nigerians are going through right now.
“The truth is that Nigerians have been hard pushed and super-pressed right against the walls of deep deprivation and acute want.
“It is, therefore, condescending and dismissive to describe the daily brutish ordeal that Nigerians are going through as a sponsored political dissent.”
It would be recalled that some individuals in the country have been mobilising to embark on a nationwide protest on August 1.
The individuals claim that the protest is aimed at expressing their grievances to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu about the economic hardship in the country.
The Presidency, however, described such calls as treasonable, as it also accused the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and his supporters of spreading the hashtags.
In a lengthy tweet published on his X account on Saturday, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, alleged that the sponsors of the protests were not democrats but people bent on causing trouble in the country.
