Banner Online News

@SundayDareSD wrote:
Right of Reply to Bolaji Abdullahi,ADC :

“There is a peculiar contempt in your letter, the kind that mistakes sophistry for insight, and grandstanding for substance.
But this type of quackery only elevates the author into the realms of pseudo intellectualism.”

“You write as though Nigeria began yesterday. As though decades of fiscal vandalism, subsidy rackets, institutional decay, and security neglect simply materialized under one administration. It is a convenient fiction one that absolves yesterday’s actors while condemning today’s reformer”.

And Bolaji Abdullahi wrote @BolajiADC :
“Right of Reply: Questions the Presidency Must Answer

We have noted, with some amusement, the rebuttal published by @SundayDareSD, one of the President’s many media aides, in response to the ADC’s birthday message to the President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces. But beyond the tone of that response, there is something more concerning: how easily the Presidency avoids the real, everyday reality Nigerians are living through.

Inflation is not an abstract concept. It is the mother who can no longer afford food the way she did a year ago. It is the young worker whose salary has stayed the same while transport fares have doubled under this government. It is the small business owner watching costs rise faster than their sales.

These are not theories. They are the direct consequences of decisions taken under the Bola Tinubu-led APC administration, particularly the abrupt removal of fuel subsidy without any immediate or credible cushioning for over 200 million Nigerians. Today, fuel prices have risen by nearly 500%, and everything else has followed.

And so Nigerians are left with a few simple questions that deserve direct answers, not a carefully worded article at a time like this.

On the price of fuel, is the Tinubu government telling Nigerians that there is nothing they can do to bring down the price of fuel? Since the war on Iran started, governments all over the world have taken different emergency measures to keep the price of fuel down. But all we hear from the Tinubu government is that Nigerians should continue to endure.
But there are measures the government can take, which it has either failed to consider or chosen to ignore. To start with, and this is what the ADC would do, suspend the 5% fuel tax and remove import and regulatory charges that drive up the pump price of petrol. This would immediately lower fuel costs, and with it, transport and food prices.

On security, the conversation is even more painful, because it is about lives.

Under this presidency, Nigeria now ranks 4th on the Global Terrorism Index. But beyond rankings are real people, families who have lost loved ones, communities that no longer sleep with both eyes closed. Daughters raped in front of their fathers and wives raped in front of their children. And in the short time between our birthday message and this rebuttal, at least 12 Nigerians were killed in Plateau State. Twelve people. Twelve families. In just a few hours. This is why Nigerians expect urgency, not explanations.

If defence spending has increased, as the government often points out, then Nigerians are right to ask why they still feel unsafe in their homes, on their roads, and in their farms. And sometimes, it even feels like this government’s policies are harsher on Nigerians than the government is on terrorists and bandits, who, disturbingly, have at times been referred to as “sons” and “brothers.”

If the government is truly firm in its resolve, Nigerians deserve to see that firmness reflected first in the protection of innocent lives.

What Nigerians expect is accountability. What we receive instead are lectures. Nigerians are often infantilised, told we complain only because we do not understand what the government is doing. They speak as if governance is a mystery. We are told that the hardship is necessary. That this is reform. But Nigerians really want to know: when will this “necessary pain” begin to produce relief that people can actually feel?

Because right now, what people feel is pain. What they see is struggle. And what we all hear from the government often does not match these daily realities.