Mayor of Urhoboland, His Excellency Eshanekpe Israel a.k.a Akpodoro, has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to address Nigerians to end the ongoing hunger protest in the country.
Akpodoro argued that a national broadcast by the President “will douse the tension and the reign of criminalities across the nation… talking to Nigerians could placate the protesters to stop the ’embarrassing rampage against the current administration and restore normalcy in the country.'”
Akpodoro described the protest as a distraction to the President, saying: “Fifth columnists should allow the president to deliver the dividends of democracy to the good people of Nigeria who overwhelmingly voted for him on February 25, 2023.”
He also called on the President to immediately arrest the sponsors of the protest, saying: “The fears of the government and well-meaning Nigerians who appealed against the ‘tendentious and premeditated reign of terror’ innocent by hoodlums have been confirmed in the ugly incidences recorded across the states save for few.”
Akpodoro stated that the sponsors of the protest have “sinister motives including but not limited to throwing Nigeria into anarchy for them to achieve their aims tucked in the protest.”
He described them as “unpatriotic elements who are hell-bent on undermining democracy in the country.”
He noted that “nations all over the world are experiencing economic meltdown… the hardship arising from the reformative administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not peculiar to Nigeria.”
Akpodoro reiterated his earlier position that “politicians who are bad losers are the enablers of the riotous situations in the country… they want a full-blown anarchy to enable them gloat and blackmail the current administration.”
He said: “President Tinubu’s administration has set the nation on the path to economic recovery… the protest is an ill wind that will blow no one any good.”
Akpodoro condemned the killings in Niger State, Kano, and other states, saying: “Criminal elements took advantage of the protest to visit mayhem on innocent citizens who also have the right to peace.”
He described the protesters as “hoodlums, street urchins” who “loot government and private properties needlessly.”
He gave examples of the destruction caused by the protesters, saying: “A secretariat in one of the states in the North was broken into, and the iron fence was scattered and ferried away by the so-called hungry protesters… How would an iron quench the so much taunted hunger that is used as a plank to launch out their arsenals for crimes?”
Akpodoro concluded by saying: “The President must stop it lest it will escalate. My surprise is, where is the mouthpiece of the criminals, the Counsels of the rule of law and those whose joy it is to see Nigeria bleed, the hypocritical activists who go on national televisions arrogating to themselves the monopoly of the understanding of our laws/constitutions? The enablers of the raging criminalities must be apprehended immediately.”
