Planned Protest: Silencing Organisers With Loud Propaganda

Planned Protest: Silencing Organisers With Loud Propaganda

If there will be a nationwide protest as planned on August 1, it may not be loud like the propaganda this government has rolled out to demonise it.

The news about the protest has gone viral than the planned protest itself and in a way provided the shield that the present government is looking for in the face of economic downturn.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has just shown he is the master of the game with his government steady propaganda to kill the spirit of those behind the protest.

There is sympathy for this administration now as many impending protesters are gradually withdrawing from the rally and dissociating themselves from the faceless organisers.

As the human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana put it, “protest is a fundamental rights of the citizens and there is nothing wrong in staging a nationwide protest.”

However, Falana said that he would not be participating in the protest because no one had contacted him and that he did not know the organisers.

To Professor Pat Utomi, a political economist, the protest is good of it will be peaceful but then he added that he would not be participating in a protest he did not know the organisers.

To Utomi, the protest can be hijacked by hoodlums, “I will not be joining the protesters. As a matter of fact, no one has contacted me.”

The National Association of Nigerian Students, NAN had kicked out of the protests, the pan Yoruba sociopolitical group, Afenifere, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo do not support any violent protest.

It seems the government’s propaganda is working and had succeeded in painting the protest as evil that should not be allowed to take place no matter how peaceful it may turn out to be.

In Lagos the body of chairmen of the 57 local government and local council development areas , Conference 57, are mobilising against the planned protest everyday.

According to the faceless organisers via social media platforms, the rally is tagged “Protest Against Bad Government” and described as Day of Rage by a few of them.

Some of their request is the release of the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, return of fuel subsidy, N250,000 minimum salary, review of the country’s constitution among other things.

The government is scared and since the call for the protest, President Bola Tinubu had been meeting with various stakeholders on why the rally should not hold.

With the propaganda, it is no longer fanciful for any individual or group to take to the street again just to draw attention to the prevalence of bad governance in Nigeria.

The massive response and propaganda of the Tinubu Government to the threat of protest has drawn more attention to the inefficacy of Government response to the economic hardships faced by Nigerians than any protest would have done.

According to the former president of the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, JB Daisy, the response of government had drawn attention to the stark and present ills afflicting our poor nation.

Starting with the declaration by the majority of the Ulama (religious clerics) that protests is haram, to the capitulation by youth groups, NANS, Up National, Real Transport’ Local, State and Federal Government employees and various pockets of the organised private sector that they would not be participating in any planned protests, the event is dead and only alive in name and the orchestrators of its demise.

He said the NSA and other key Tinubu loyalists must be preening with pride and a sense of fulfillment that they have achieved the impossible.

However, after all is said and done, Daudu said that all what the protests sought to draw attention to is still staring at us in the face.

“Although, we are mindful and indeed aware that the present travails of a crashed economy did not start in the past 12 months but came upon us in my view as a cumulation of General Buhari’s visionless 8 years in power, we must still hold the present Government as being vicariously liable for the hardships imposed on Nigerians by the Buhari Government, since the process of governance is a continuum.

Having disengaged all these groups from protesting at a massive financial cost, at least, if the cost of publicity is taken into consideration, although we know that all these groups did not back down or out because they were persuaded by Government’s contrary arguments or out of the goodness of their hearts. What is left unsaid must have induced this collective lethargy and reluctance to protest and draw attention to the present political and economic travails of Nigeria today.

Government handlers should therefore not be too quick to pat themselves on the back for having at great financial cost quashed a legitimate move to draw attention to our present hardships and by so doing jolt government into taking the right good governance measures so as to arrest the present slide into anarchy. A planned protest is the least of the problems, what government should be wary about is the protests that may come without warning and probably from within government itself. That is where the danger lies.

However, in all this rhetoric to halt or ground the people’s right to express dissent or protest bad governance, since FGN has not told us how it will take Nigeria out of the present travails of crippling insecurity, economic hardships, unabashed corruption, injustice, etc it means then that the principles of the protest are in place and indeed, the protest has achieved its objective. What remains is for us to continue to call Government to account by demanding at all times for a solution to the present problems as opposed to the window dressing that is going on. A word they say is enough for the wise.”