Subsidy: Protesters Pull Down National Assembly Gate To Gain Entrance

Organised Labour protesters on Wednesday, August 2, 2023 that were denied entry into the National Assembly eventually forced their way through after using their weight to pull down the gates leading into the prescient of the federal legislature.

The protesters, who started their protests in a peaceful manner from the Unity Fountain in Maitama through the Federal Secretariat to the National Assembly suddenly met a barricade at the outer entrance gate to the National Assembly complex and changed the form of the protests.

On getting to the main entrance of the Assembly complex, the protesters met it shut against them, a development that forced them to start shaking the gate that eventually gave way and enabled them to gain access to the main arcade of the National Assembly where crowds are usually addressed.

The immediate past President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ayuba Wabba, while addressing the protesters insisted that the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led Federal Government has clearly showed lack of sincerity in tackling the so called subsidy issue frontally but merely interested in concentrating on importation of petroleum products at the expense of Nigerians.

Wabba questioned the rationale why the government is refusing to fix the nation’s refineries that would create jobs and add value to Nigerians as against importation that would always be priced at the international market rate without commensurate local production.

While berating successive Nigerian governments for the deliberate failure to fix the nation’s four refineries in spite of the humongous amount of public funds spent, the former NLC President noted that Nigeria is the only Oil producing country in the world without refineries, stressing that the nation cannot afford to continue in that line.

In the words of Wabba; “The political elite and their clique of elite consensus called businessmen collaborators are stripping the country of her wealth. The rich few are holding Nigeria by the throat. They are milking the poor dry,” he said.