Soyinka faults Tinubu's address as police take over Lagos protest venue – Newstrends
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Soyinka faults Tinubu’s address as police take over Lagos protest venue

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Soyinka faults Tinubu’s address as police take over Lagos protest venue

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Sunday faulted President Bola Tinubu’s national broadcast.

He said the speech did not address the violent crackdown by security forces on #EndBadGovernance protesters.

He gave the position in a statement issued on Sunday just as police took over the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park at Ojota, the Lagos venue of the mass protest by the aggrieved youth.

The action of the police came after a clash by the protesters and hoodlums who came to chase away a group of protesting youths that gathered at the place.

Soyinka expressed concern over the President’s omission of the critical issue of violent attack of peaceful protesters by the police.

He said, “I set my alarm clock for this morning to ensure that I did not miss President Bola Tinubu’s impatiently awaited address to the nation on the current unrest across the nation.

“His outline of government’s remedial action since inception, aimed at warding off just such an outbreak, will undoubtedly receive expert and sustained attention both for effectiveness and in content analysis. My primary concern, quite predictably, is the continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management, an area in which the presidential address fell conspicuously short.

“Such short-changing of civic deserving, regrettably, goes to arm the security forces in the exercise of impunity and condemns the nation to a seemingly unbreakable cycle of resentment and reprisals.

“Live bullets as state response to civic protest – that becomes the core issue. Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances, certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest.

“Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S, not peculiar to the Nigerian nation. They belong indeed in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters.

“They serve as summons to governance that a breaking point has been reached and thus, a testing ground for governance awareness of public desperation.

“The tragic response to the ongoing hunger marches in parts of the nation, and for which notice was served, constitutes a retrogression that takes the nation even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed ENDSARS protests.

“It evokes pre-independence – that is, colonial – acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late stage pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera BREAD AND BULLETS, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government.

“The nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention.

“Need we recall the nationwide 2022/23 editions of what is generally known as the YELLOW VEST movement in France?

“Perhaps it is time to make such scenarios compulsory viewing in policing curriculum.

“In all of the coverage that I watched, I did not catch one single instance of a gun leveled at protesters, much less fired at them even during direct physical confrontations.

“The serving of bullets where bread is pleaded is ominous retrogression, and we know what that eventually proves – a prelude to far more desperate upheavals, not excluding revolutions.

“The time is long overdue, surely, to abandon, permanently, the anachronistic resort to lethal means by the security agencies of governance. “No nation is so under-developed, materially impoverished, or simply internally insecure as to lack the will to set an example.

 

 

Police take over after Lagos protesters, hoodlums clash

Meanwhile, hoodlums on Sunday disrupted the fourth day of a peaceful protest at Gani Fawehinmi Park in Ojota, Lagos State.

According to an account by Vanguard, the demonstration, which began without incident, saw a significant escalation around 10:30 a.m.

The situation became tense when a lawyer identified only as JP urged protesters to leave the site, citing President Bola Tinubu’s recent national address.

However, a faction led by 70-year-old Adegboyega Adeniji of Peace Action Transformation insisted on continuing the protest.

The police intervened, attempting to persuade the remaining protesters to disperse.

Moments later, a group of individuals, whom the protesters alleged were hired to disrupt the event, emerged from across the street and began chasing them away.

By 11:30am, the situation had deteriorated as the group of hoodlums returned and forced all protesters out of the area.

The police later stormed the place and took over the park.

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Abuja-Kaduna road: Infiouest not Infoquest awarded contract, active, says Minister Umahi

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Abuja-Kaduna road: Infiouest not Infoquest awarded contract, active, says Minister Umahi

Minister of Works, David Umahi, has clarified that the contract for Section 2 of the Abuja-Kaduna highway was awarded to Infiouest International Limited, not Infoquest Nigeria Limited as stated in a Daily Trust report of Tuesday.

The minister stated this at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, stressing that the contractor given the project had the capacity to deliver.

Daily Trust had published the status of Infoquest generated at 22:21 (Monday, January 20, 2025) as showing inactive.

The firm was reported to have got “No objection” from the
Bureau of Public Procurement ( BPP)
for the rehabilitation of a section of the
road at N252.89 billion.

It reported a source familiar with the procedures and operations of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, as well as extant laws governing awards of contracts, as saying Infoquest had never paid tax and hurriedly registered as a tax-paying entity in the early hours of Tuesday.

“As of yesterday (Monday), there was no record. It was registered today (Tuesday) with all the details,” the source said.

But the minister also in a statement issued by his media aide, Orji Kalu Orji, said the ministry had no business relationship with Infoquest Nigeria Ltd, but has a contractual relationship with Infiouest International Limited.

He said Infiouest International Limited was “corporately active and is absolutely in compliance with all legal requirements and regulations set by the Companies and Allied Matters Act.”

The statement described the Daily Trust report of Tuesday as “mischievous”.

It said it was a deliberate orchestration to malign the ministry and undermine the efforts of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the administration in revolutionising road infrastructure development, and to “demarket the company that has proven capacity in road construction.”

It demanded a public apology to be published in at least five national dailies “for unjustifiably publishing falsehoods against the Ministry of Works.”

The statement said that the ministry was facing a coordinated onslaught of “falsehood, blackmail, and gang-up by adversaries to the policy of the government because of the ministry’s insistence on a new order of value for money, quality assurance, and best practices in project pricing and execution.”

He urged the public and the media to join in what he called “a desirable fight against national sabotage by some contractors”.

During his press conference, the minister described Infiouest International Limited as capable of completing the Abuja-Kaduna highway as the company had conducted several projects in the country.

“Some of its equipment is leased to Julius Berger Construction Company,” Umahi added.

“We want the public to know that we are facing a backlash. Corruption is fighting back.

“ut I want the public to know that our hands are very clean and those who are demarketing us, we have not collected any kobo from anybody, we are insisting that the taxpayers should have value for their money,” he said.

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Avoid confrontation with Trump, Bolaji Akinyemi tells Tinubu

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Avoid confrontation with Trump, Bolaji Akinyemi tells Tinubu

 

A former Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, has advised President Bola Tinubu to avoid confrontation with Donald Trump, the newly inaugurated 47th president of the United States.

He also said Nigeria is not part of the focus of the 78-year-old most powerful president and that the country should not expect anything extraordinary from the Trump presidency.

Akinyemi spoke Monday night on a Channels Television programme, Politics Today, on how to relate with the US president.

The former minister said Tinubu should devise means of dealing with Trump “even if he does things that annoy or step on the interests of Nigeria”.

“If I were President Tinubu, I would try to steer clear of antagonising him because there is nothing a bully likes better than taking on people who are not strong enough to resist him,” Akinyemi said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Monday.

“You know there is that African proverb that if you are not strong enough to take on a bully and you take him on, you are just even going to suffer more for it.

“That’s the advice I will give President Tinubu: try and avoid having a confrontation with him even if that means that he does things that annoy or does things that step on the interests of Nigeria. There are ways in which you could address his reaction without confrontation,” he said.

Prof Akinyemi faulted the inaugural speech of Trump as uninspiring, “shocking and depressing”.

The octogenarian said rather than rallying the world for peace, Trump took time to threaten the rest of the world with a bouquet of hostile policies including tacking back Panama Canal, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, tariff wars, and others.

Akinyemi said the US president would “soon learn that there are repercussions to policies, to jingoism”, adding that the world is “in for a rough ride for four years” of the Trump presidency.

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DHQ: Foreign fighters influx responsible for recent terrorists attacks 

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DHQ: Foreign fighters influx responsible for recent terrorists attacks 

 

The military on Thursday reacted to the recent frequent terrorist activities in North-East and North-West states.

Defence Headquarters (DHQ) attributed the spike in the attacks to influx of foreign agents coming to strengthen the local terrorists.

The Director of Defence Media Operations, Major General Edward Buba, disclosed this during a press conference in Abuja.

Some 40 farmers were brutally murdered last Saturday in Borno State by the terrorists.

Over 50 people including soldiers that went to retrieve the corpses of the farmers on Tuesday were yet to return home after terrorists ambushed them.

Buba said the new foreign agents served as reinforcements for their local colleagues.

He said the situation was made worse by local collaborators disclosing troops’ movement.

He said, “The resurgence in terror attacks can be attributable to the influx of foreign fighters that come in as reinforcement for these terrorists. These foreign fighters are from the Sahelian Region.

“The other contributing factor are the local collaborators that form a support base for these terrorists. They serve as informants to the terrorists reporting on troop movement.”

Buba however declared the troops remained “profoundly conscious of their role and responsibility in ending insurgency and terrorism in the nation.”

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