Tinubu’s speech unrealistically academic far from realities – HURIWA

Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), on Tuesday, faulted Monday night’s speech of President Bola Tinubu to Nigerians suffering the crushing economic effect of the abrupt removal of petrol subsidy.

HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, described the President’s speech as academic, highfalutin and totally detached from the realities of the 130 million Nigerian masses who have been further mired in the bog of poverty and lack with the President’s assumption of office on May 29, 2023.

The group said the President failed to tell Nigerians his plans to resuscitate public refineries after the previous All Progressives Congress (APC) government of Muhammadu Buhari spent billions of naira renovating the four public refineries.

HURIWA dismissed most of the proposed palliative measures as empty rhetoric for as long as the government decided to punish poor Nigerians but has no strategy to catch and prosecute crude oil thieves who according to the Rights ensured that even as a broke nation, Nigeria lost $10 billion to crude oil theft in seven months.

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HURIWA said the presidential broadcast was grossly deficient in details regarding the strategies already in place to confront economic saboteurs in the upstream and Downstream sectors of the petroleum industry but rather President Tinubu concentrates all his initial economic policies on inflicting existential pains on millions of Nigerians with costs of living still ballooning out of control even Twenty four hours after the Presidential broadcast.

HURIWA also asked that politicians lead by example and cut their excessive spendings even as they told Nigerians to persevere.

Tinubu had removed subsidy on petrol during his epic inauguration speech on May 29, 2023, with a litre of petrol jumping from N184 to over N620 and food prices and general inflation galloping at an unprecedented rate.

In his address on Monday, Tinubu promised to review workers’ salaries and minimum wage.

He also announced a N75 billion palliative for the manufacturing sector, saying 75 businesses would benefit within a nine-month period spanning the third quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of next year.

The President also noted the administration’s recognition of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises and the informal sector as drivers of growth.

READ ALSO: Tinubu’s silence on economic crisis in South-east disturbing–HURIWA

HURIWA’s Onwubiko said, “These measures are very academic and logically slippery. Where are the farms? Are the farms in Southern Kaduna/ Benue, Enugu whereby armed Fulani terrorists are destroying farmlands and the counter insurgency war hasn’t succeeded?  So which farmlands will these foodstuffs be produced?

“The cost of living has ballooned out of control and these cosmetic, theoretical templates laid out in the speech such as supporting  1,300 Medium and small scale enterprises with paltry N50k each is like scratching at the problem because as Tinubu was reading his written academic speech, a small basket of tomato that was N5k on May 28th 2023 is N38k in Abuja and you can then imagine the cost in the South East with all the sit-at-home orders that traders are intermittently forced by armed gangs and terrorists to observe.

HURIWA also faulted the futuristic palliatives promised to Students as mere academic propositions and wondered why all these steps were not implemented before any of such far reaching economic austerity measures were adopted.