you are right,i don't need to tell you that many Nigerians are always in denial,and they pretend a lot and their pretends have show even when their own people are being massacre in the north,it sucks,in this day and age you still don't have confidence in yourself,how do you think that you can survive this rough world we are living?U.K are now working on their own sovereign state,south Sudan are now free from genocide.Nigeria still remains the only fool that still practicing genocide killings, menn fk these guys, if u want to live like these in Nigeria and you think fuel subsidy is more important than wicked intention genocide killings we are facing today,u might as well get shot by the police cos you need it you are a coward
Time is coming for justice to be served in that bloody country
Officials in South Sudan say 57 people have been killed in renewed fighting between two rival tribes.
The officials said Friday the clashes broke out Wednesday when armed members of the Murle tribe attacked villages of the Lou Nuer tribe in Jonglei state.
About 6,000 men from the Lou Nuer attacked the town of Pibor and other areas controlled by the Murle last month.
One South Sudanese official said those attacks killed more than 3,000 villagers, including more than 2,000 women and children. U.N. officials were not able to confirm that figure but said at least several dozen people were killed.
ocelot2006: If the FG reverts back to previous price, then I'll know that we Nigerians are indeed very silly. Reason? Rather than close an avenue of corruption and open a possible business oppourtunity to attract investors to that sector, we wouldve gladly handed over trillions of Naira to the very same cabal we claim to fight, and everything goes back to square one. Boy, the cabal members will be heading to the banks with big smiles on their face while the country continues to suffer.
Ahead of today’s meeting among the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Federal Government, supporters of the ongoing strike and mass action have said that they would not back down unless the government reverts to N65 as price of a litre of petrol.
The anti-fuel subsidy removal protesters, including convener of Save Nigeria Group (SNG), Pastor Tunde Bakare, ex-minister of Petroleum, Prof Tam David-West and Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum, a pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, are speaking at a time when feelers indicate that the government has made an offer to labour for a little downward review of the current fuel price (N141) instead of reversal to N65. The government and representatives of labour are meeting again today, in continuation of a truce meeting brokered by Senate President, David Mark, as part of effort to solve the subsidy crisis.
Speaking in Lagos yesterday, while addressing a mammoth crowd at the Gani Fawehinmi Park, Ojota, Bakare said the protest would continue until government reverts to N65. “We will, by God’s grace, continue and sustain this protest until the government sees reason to revert to N65.00. No retreat, no re-think and no surrender. We are persuaded that we shall overcome because ‘the triumphing of the wicked is short and the joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment’ (job 20:5).” Bakare accused the Federal Government of excessive wastage, insisting that this must be addressed before the people are asked to make sacrifices.
Listing what he considered as wastage, Bakare said that 2012 budget earmarked N13 billion for local and international travels of ministers and others in government at the federal level, while stationery, magazines, newspapers, etc would gulp N4.5 billion. He said that the government budgeted N17 billion for maintenance of vehicles, furniture, etc; N5 billion for training; N4 billion for fuel and lubricants for cars an generators; N9 billion for welfare packages, refreshments, meals, etc; N2.5 billion acquisition of computer software and N27 billion for research and development.
The pastor said that the budgeted overhead for President Goodluck Jonathan and Vice President Namadi Sambo is about N7.2 billion or about N20 million per day. He said that Jonathan and Sambo would spend N724 million or N2 million per day, on local travel, while their international travel budget is N951 million or nearly N3 million per day.
Bakare revealed: “The president’s office has N285 million to hand out as ‘welfare package,’ N265 million to buy computers, N150 million to buy scanners, N161 million for buses, N295 million for new furniture, and N1.8 billion to ‘maintain existing furniture, office and residential quarters.’” He said that the government wants to spend N300, 000 each to buy desktops, while laptops would cost N314,000 each. According to him, scanners is budget to cost N190, 000, while the public address system in the President, VP’s office and Banquet Hall N150 million. “There is a lot of waste, and misplaced spending priorities in the budget, which can be reviewed to free more funds to finance subsidies, capital investment and improved governance,” he said.
On his part, Prof David-West, while praising the fighting spirits of Nigerians in sustaining the strike, said there was no going back until government reverts to N65. He asked President Jonathan to resign since, according to him, the problems of Nigeria are beyond him. [b]David-West noted, in a telephone chat with Saturday Sun, that the government had taken Nigerians for granted believing that after two days they would abandon the strike and continued with their normal duties. According to him, the issue has gone beyond fuel price. “We are talking about incompetence in government. There is no going back until petrol price goes back to N65. The N65 is even too much. [/b]The price should be reduced. Labour should not go back. Nigeria is protesting against bad government. Labour must not change ground or position,” he said.
Against the meeting between the labour union and the Federal Government that was deadlocked on Thursday and postponed today, David-West said the negotiation was not necessary, as more than 15 persons had died as a result of the protests. He asked The professor advised the labour union leaders no to negotiate or shift ground. “Labour should go there but not for negotiation to shift ground. About 15 Nigerians have died during the protest. Are they going there to negotiate their blood?” On the president’s insistence that the Federal Government was not going to yield any ground, David-West said that Jonathan is known to be stubborn but is being pushed about by some people.
[b]He said: “Jonathan is not stubborn but some people around him are making him to be stubborn. He should resign since the ship of the state is beyond him to steer. [/b]If the government says there is no going back, then Jonathan should resign. It is not Jonathan taking the position; it is the people behind him. Jonathan is acting on the people that are behind him.
“My advice to Jonathan is that he should resign since he can’t handle the issue, likewise the finance minister, Ngozi Oknojo-Iweala too. If we have a president that is very stubborn. We should give him stubbornness.” Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum, while speaking on the strike, asked labour not to disappoint the people, insisting that it must remain “resolute in its refusal to accept any increase on the price of petrol at 65 naira per litre.”
The group said that if labour chooses what it called “the devil’s alternative,” there would be consequences. In a statement by Akin Malaolu, secretary general, the group said that if labour backs down Nigerians, “having seen that they have gained strength in unity, most especially against blackmail and dirty tricks by the governors and President Jonathan, would march on to achieve their resolve through continuous struggle across the nation and we shall support them all the way.” It expressed fear that this could result into a “bloody revolt never anticipated and (may) snowball into open conflagration against political leaders, as witnessed by the four ACN senators along the Lagos/Ibadan expressway recently.” Yoruba Ronu appealed to labour leaders and civil society groups to ensure that they carry the people along, in their course of meetings with a government, adding: “Nevertheless, setting aside the N65 per litre is not likely to douse the present tension in the country, due to extreme poverty and miseries in the land.”
Ozin: I hope you are correct based on the statistics of the average memory of Nigerians.And what if the removal of subsidy bring about a 50% increase in the economy by 2015? and what if we achieve 80% power stability,guess PDP will stay for another 100 years.
I dey laugh. Not with Mr GEJ eating N3 million per day we wont
Abagworo: And may I add. The subsidy issue has crippled chances of PDP winning 2015 Presidential election. Nigerians will do anything they can to bring them down. Rigging will lead to disaster.
This is why i called it Fresh air 2012. 1st January will go down in history. Either revolution/split/bye PDP will occur by end of 2015 imo.
The Federal Government declared war on Nigerians on New Year day, with its 120% hike in fuel price. With heads held high, the people gallantly rose across the country in stiff resistance, immediately. The resistance snowballed into a General Strike and series of escalating Mass Protests of historic proportions, with over ten million Nigerians demonstrating in more than 50 cities and towns within the country and no less than a dozen cities across Africa, Europe and the Americas.
After nine days of this earth-shaking manifestation of the people’s power, in which over twenty citizens were brutally murdered by the police, particularly on the heels of four days of an indefinite General Strike, it seemed the state wanted peace and normalcy returned to the land as it summoned a meeting with organised labour and representatives of civil society. Alas, it only feigned concern for the people and the country. The meeting ended in a deadlock as the state refused to heed the legitimate demand of the masses that petrol pump price be reverted to N65, as it was on December 31, 2011. It rather “offered” a mere pittance of reducing the criminal N141 to N120.
This position of the FGN takes the struggle to another level. The ruling class with the Federal Government at its head now faces the people with the working class as its vanguard, in mortal battle of epic proportions. Popular resistance which has birthed a revolutionary situation now takes a tentative step towards leaping into revolution, where decisively we, the people, will rise to win our self-emancipation and overthrow the system which the state and ruling class of “cabals” represent.
[b]We are indeed at a precipitous juncture in the annals of our country’s history. It is not accidental that this is happening at a time of turbulence and change in the world. Regimes once thought to be unshakeable in North Africa have been brought down by people’s power on the streets and Mass Strikes that shut down their economies. [/b]In each of these, the state had confronted the people as a power beyond their might, which could treat the people’s demands with disdain, and sought to crush their uprisings in blood. In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the people triumphed with arrogant governments humiliated and overthrown by united and determined people.
It is instructive to note that in none of these countries did the initial demands of the people include bringing down the governments they defeated. Their grievances were against economic hardships such as unemployment and poor minimum wages and on political/legal issues such as police brutality and for free speech. As the momentum built up, mass anger burst across the banks of resistance into the seas of revolution. We are at such a juncture.
The primary demand of the working people and youths was on reversal to N65 per litre we stand! There is no justifiable reason for the fuel hike, as Nigerians have shown with facts and figure. In the course of the last ten days, the demands of the people have come to include: no to corruption in high places & for drastically pruning down the high cost of governance.
This is not surprising as Nigerians know just how genuine the need of the FGN to raise money for national development by hiking prices is, from the 2012 budget proposal before the National Assembly! With N1b meant for the feeding of the president’s family; N530m for new cars & SUVs in the presidency; N512.4m to overhaul power generating sets; N101.67m to rehabilitate the transformer sub-station in the villa; N512.4m to refurbish the family wing of the main residence in Aso Rock; N357.7 to renovate the administrative building in the villa (which N302.3 had been spent on refurbishing last year) & so on and so forth, that near makes me want to puke, we are definitely being only reasonable to consider President Jonathan’s tales by moonlight about using monies from removal of the “subsidy” for the betterment of our lives, as just simply bedtime stories that can only result in ghoulish nightmares.
We equally know that less than 17,000 political public servants are to gulp N1.125 trillion and security (plus defence & office of the National Security Adviser) would corner some N1.8 trillion of our national wealth, out of a budget of N4.749 trillion. This is while N400.15b, N282.77b & N31b only are allocated to education, health and science & technology respectively.
It is obvious enough that the FGN does not have its priority right & would not require the N1.3t it claims it is necessary to raise by making us groan under the burden of the dire consequences of its fuel price hike. Democracy is meant to be the rule of the people, by the people, for the people. But what we see here is the intent of the rule of and over Nigerians by Jonathan (and his ruling class of cabals) for Jonathan (and his ruling class of cabals).
Nigerians from all walks of life spoke with one voice against this nonsense and what do we get? Rather than heed the voice of the people and the call of reason, Jonathan ordered the killings of youths in the land. Muyideen Mustafa killed at Ilorin last week Wednesday was the first martyr of this struggle, in the war waged by the state in Nigeria against the Nigerian people. That was barely nine days ago. Since then, Ademola Aderinto, in Lagos; Raheem Mojeed in Osun; Olurin Olateju in Ibadan; Abdulgafar Mohammed Hadis, in Kaduna; Yahaya Abubakar Adamu, in Lambata; Rabiu Abubakar, in Suleja & at least fifteen other citizens in Lokoja, Jalingo, Kano, Maiduguri, Ibafo, etc have been made to pay the supreme sacrifice by a degenerate state which gives citizens bullets for bread.
These killings have been roundly condemned at home and abroad. Amnesty International, has demanded that police stop “firing indiscriminately at protesters”. The state has however not tired of violence against the people. Apart from its use of the police, it has recruited no less than 5,000 armed thugs, which it intended to use in dispersing the rallies called by NLC & TUC in Abuja, just as it had mobilised similar paid thugs that had marched on Labour house on January 6. The sheer mass of the rallies which kept rising from 20,000 on the first day to about 100,000 by day 4 was much more than the thugs and their pay master in Aso rock had envisaged.
The situation in Abuja is replicated across the country. In virtually every city where the people reclaimed the streets, our numbers kept swelling! In cities such as Kano, Ibadan, & Benin, the state declared curfews, ostensibly to curb “hooliganism” but really with the hope of curtailing the spread of people’s power. These have been futile. The draconian step by Governor Sullivan Chime in Enugu to ban protests has equally not quelled the revolutionary fervour of working people and youths. As if we were in the military era, this governor who is a lawyer constituted a special mobile tribunal with its base at the State CID office, with which he tried and summarily jailed Comrade Festus Ozoeze for mobilising the people for a mass protest. The state however remains grounded by a mass strike.
The General Strike has been total, with businesses and offices shut down, even in those few states where mass protests could not continue due to the antics of the state or based on the decisions of organised labour to avoid playing into the state’s hands and witnessing more loss of lives. In the past four days, the Federal Government estimates that N1.28t has been lost. Is this not being penny wise pound foolish when this war it unleashed is to cut-off a “subsidy” worth N1.3t for the whole year?
This is however in acting true to character for the class of the 1% across the world. We the masses, the 99% whose labour creates the wealth they appropriate are not meant to benefit from the sweat of our brow, in their view. They have led the world to an economic crisis from which we are still reeling. But we must pay the price for their greed, corruption and the inefficiency of the capitalist system.
We have however chosen to seize our destiny in our hands and fight unto victory. We are more than them and with our unity and determination, we will win. The belligerence of the state and its continued contempt and war against we the people can only spur us to even more determined strides of struggle and solidarity. Indeed, the cry across the country as labour leaders and representatives of civil society met with the state was that even N65.10k would not be accepted. That organised labour held the forte for the people has sent adrenaline shooting through our blood as men, women and youths cry out boldly: to the barricades tomorrow!
We are very aware that our struggle is part of the broader struggle of working people and youths across the world. The 99% of toilers in every land equally realise the singularity of our different struggles as being for the self-emancipation of we who have been exploited, alienated, marginalised and oppressed for just too long and now rise to break the chains. As Nigerians in the diaspora “occupied” spaces in several cities across the world, our brothers and sisters, comrades and colleagues from other climes have marched with us. The World Federation of Trade Unions, National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and the Communist Party of Swaziland amongst others, have equally expressed their solidarity with us as we fight.
We call for more of such support, even as the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress prepare to take President Jonathan and Hafiz Ringim the Inspector General of Police to the International Criminal Court for prosecution, in the light of their continued murders of unarmed protesters. As our struggle gathers momentum, moving from resistance to revolution, such solidarity could greatly help us to minimise the loss of lives, as each martyr that falls fills our hearts with pain.
Making the leap from resistance to revolution involves broadening our demands. It also entails moving from fighting against power, to fighting for power. It is the moment of occupying what we have been alienated from, the freedom to be the masters of our own destiny. Our movement is that popular, because it is one of people’s power. Our movement is one of revolution from below! The power we shall win can not be from top down. This is the power oppressors covert for such power being over and above the heads of the 99%, can only be the power of the 1%.
We have to build mass power now and in earnest, from below. We must expand the social and political spaces we occupy as much as the physical space of the streets where we manifest this. In our different “Tahrir Squares”, from Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Square at Ojota to Liberation Square at Kano and Freedom Square in Abuja, as well as in our different neighbourhoods, we must create structures of popular power NOW. Form General Assemblies of People’s Power constitute Action Committees in defence of the unfolding Nigerian Revolution. Occupy power from the Local Governments and the states and together we will bring the Federal state to naught and build on it one which is ours, for the construction of a new society based on cooperation and solidarity.
Together with the 99% seeking to realise the possibility of another, better world, we shall overcome and establish an order in which the fullest development of each and every one is the essence of the development of society as a whole.
A luta Continua! Victoria Ascerta!! FORWARD TO VICTORY!!!
Pharoh: This is the best time to fight corruption, the new budget has not been passed but my fear is what happens after NLC calls of the strike. This is the time to fix the country to the very foundation and we should not miss it or else the future will be bleak for us.
There no leaders apart from NLC. That the problem o,
Ibime: There is no difference between an Igbo man in Onitsha and an Igbo man in Lagos.
Igbos in Onitsha would protest if they felt they had the freedom to, or if they had the civil society structures to organise those protests.
If the Igbo felt no need to protest, the Igbo Governors would not display overeager totalitarianism in imposing curfews. We have feudal overlords in the South East and less freedom of expression.
The reason protest runs wild in the West and North is that (a.) ACN have no interest in stopping protests and (b.) the anger in the North (over a Christian stealing their slot) cannot be contained.
South Easterners are not used to gathering to protest. Even in the days of MASSOB, any gathering of more than ten MASSOB members would be swiftly dealt with.
Also we have a lot of killers, Osiskankwus and ex-militants running around in the South East. Guys who would be let loose on the population by the feudal overlords. . . . and the population know it.
Put an Igbo man in Lagos and he will happily join the protest. Transfer the same Igbo man to Owerri or PortHarcourt and he will not even look outside his window. We got Government-hired killers out here man!
Ive heard this as well smh, The leaders are always the problem o, they have no intention of solving anything.
TRUTHTELA: People have to stop all these ILLUSIONS that anything about their tribe or society is better than an Igbo's & their society. Igbo's are protesting all over Lagos, Abuja etc. You and I knows that Govt have inflicted a terrible amount of POVERTY on Hausa's Yourba's Igbo's Efik's Ijaw's Nupe's Gwari's etc. Nobody can boast of 24 hrs electricty or infrastructre, or any form of development in his society, whatever ills you found in the EASTERN part of Naija, is 100% in the SW, SS, NE, NW,NC, hence the ANGRY STREET PROTEST. People should grow up. A lot of Igbo's are BIG TIME PLAYERS in the Oil & GAS industry ( subsidy money). Igbo's have key post in this administration, so what's the FUSS? Igbo's run all the commerce business in the WEST COAST OF AFRICA, do your research. To all ya haters, be OBJECTIVE, you can only be wishing it. Igbos will be Igbos!!! Be yourself. Who has benefitted from the Nigerian project? No tribe, but your ROGUE RULERS. Wake up.
Stop Lying our leaders are righteous. [size=14pt]Its only Hausa/Fulani and Boko Haram and Almajari.[/size] They are the parasites taking our free oil
Secondly Northeners can overthrow the leadership there very easily o. The problem is the rest of the country. If we overthrow what will that do if others havent?
Thats why this subsidy crisis needs to be take advantage of becuase it unites people to demand real change.
RT @flakkyBanky: BREAKINGNEWS CHANNELS:Ondo state protesters have shunned NLC/TUC telln dem 2suspend d protest til monday.Dey said dey wil cont Protestn 2mow
KANO (AFP) – A mob killed two people and burnt mosques and homes in an overnight raid on a mainly Muslim village in Adamawa state in the latest such violence residents said Friday. “It was around 11:30 pm (2230 GMT) when a crowd from Imbur attacked Gwalam village, setting fire on homes and mosques,” resident Abubakar Hussaini said, with Imbur a largely Christian area and Gwalam mainly Muslim. “So far, we have two deaths, and we still don’t know the fate of some residents who fled into the bush to escape the attack.” The attack occurred in Adamawa state, which is to hold a governorship election on January 21. Such ethnic and religious violence often occurs around election periods in Nigeria, though some residents believed the attack was in retaliation for the recent killings of Christians in the state claimed by Islamist group Boko Haram. Gamo Jika, an official in the state for one of Nigeria’s main Islamic organisation, Jama’atu Nasri Islam, confirmed two were killed. “We have two dead from the attack on Gwalam by some Christians. We are taking inventory of houses burnt in the attack,” he said. Adamawa state police spokeswoman Altine Daniel confirmed the attack but gave no details. Imbur and Gwalam villages are located in Numan, a flashpoint of sectarian violence. Nigeria has seen spiralling violence mostly blamed on Boko Haram, whose recent attacks targeting Christians have sparked fears of a civil conflict in a country roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and mostly Christian south.
Politics › Re: Mass Evacuation Of Igbos In Maidugri! Guo Offers 20 Buses To Stranded Passagers by DanKan0: 9:54pm On Jan 14, 2012
