Gani’s Widow To Lead Protest

Wife of the late foremost human rights activist, Mrs. Ganiat Fawehinmi will lead a protest rally against the proposed removal of fuel subsidy by the Federal Government on Saturday.

Fawehinmi, at a news conference lamented that the masses would seriously be impoverished by the removal, saying that it was all a grand deception by the government to increase the prices of fuel as there had never been fuel subsidy anywhere.

“We are opposed to the fraud perpetrated by the Federal Government. On the 31 December, 2011 there shall be a rally to drive home our point. The protest is against the removal of the alleged subsidy; the abrupt increase in the price of fuel is baseless.

“The protest is against the effect of increase in the price of consumer goods; general reduction in the standard of living; the rise in the cost of living is punitive for no just cause. The Nigerian masses would bear 80% of the brunt,” said Fawehinmi at a news conference in Lagos, southwest Nigeria on Wednesday.

According to her, it was clear that at whatever price the Federal Government of Nigeria sells petrol, “it makes approximately 49% as profit therefore less than half of N65.00 constitutes profit for the Federal Government. So far what has the Federal Government spent it on? There is no steady power supply, our universities and colleges are poorly funded and ill-equipped, the academic staff are grossly underpaid, school fees of university students are increased at an astronomical rate!

“It naturally indicates the amount of revenue generated by the Federal Government for the past 13 years has been wasted. The public funds of this great nation have been looted by elected and appointed officers whose activities have fallen below expectation. None of the ministries last year and even this year has achieved up to 40% budget implementation. So many projects have been left uncompleted; some of the projects have been abandoned.

“My question therefore is, where is all the money now? They have now decided to pull the wool over our eyes by insisting that they want to withdraw or remove a fictitious subsidy which never existed in a bid to increase prices and unleash untold hardship on the poor masses of Nigeria,” she lamented.

“The Nigerian masses can barely afford the necessities of life now that the pump price of petrol is N65. What will now be the level of sustenance when the price is N137 per litre? It’s the masses that will suffer as a result of the increase in the pump price of petrol and the masses who would have to contend with the prices of necessities like food items, clothing, house rent which would go up astronomically,” she added.

She also said President Goodluck Jonathan and his Minister of Education had recorded the largest incidence of examination failures in history of Nigeria and the largest incidence of strike actions in the educational sector.

“The so-called educational reform currently embarked upon by the Federal Government, is one of the most expensive and unbelievably most inconvenient to our students and teaching staff ever experienced in the history of Nigeria.

“We expected more from a democratic system of government, but we are constantly being disappointed every day of our lives by the Goodluck Jonathan administration. The facilities in the universities in the country are outdated and deplorable.

“The ASUU agreement was signed two years ago when President Goodluck Jonathan was vice president to late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who was a party to that agreement. Now the President pretends as if he does not know anything concerning the agreement,” she stated.

—Kazeem Ugbodaga