A group of youths on Friday staged a peaceful protest in Osogbo, Osun State, decrying the rising cost of living, with a call on the government to immediately intervene.
The protesters, who displayed placards with inscriptions such as ‘change the unfavourable policies’, ‘Nigerians are suffering, we can’t cope again’, and ‘We are humans, stop mistreating the citizens’, among others, assembled along MDS Road, Osogbo very early.
Despite the large presence of police operatives near the scene of the protest, the youth kept singing songs expressing the frustration of many Nigerians occasioned by the harsh economy.
Addressing the protesters, the chairman, Osun Civil Societies Coalition, Mr. Waheed Lawal, said the protest would continue until the Federal Government finds solutions to the current economic hardship ravaging the country.
He said, “Government must ameliorate the suffering of the people. They must do whatever they need to do to make sure that the people live in better conditions.
“Nigerians deserve the best. They promised us renewed hope but what they are giving us now is renewed hardship. We reject renewed hardship in our lives, and in our economy because Nigerians deserve the best.
“What Nigerians want is a peaceful atmosphere. We don’t want insecurity in our land again. We can’t travel from Osogbo to Ibadan without panicking. You will be thinking that they will kidnap you.
Earlier in the week, youths and women took to the streets of Minna and Kano to protest what they described as the rising cost of living in the country.
In Niger, a group of women blocked the ever-busy Minna-Bida Road at the popular Kpakungu Roundabout and called on Tinubu to address the problem of ‘hunger in the land.’
Also on Thursday, as a temporary response to the nation’s growing food crisis and the rising cost of commodities, President Bola Tinubu ordered the immediate release of more than 102,000 metric tons of various grain types from the National Food Reserve and the Rice Millers Association of Nigeria.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, disclosed this to State House correspondents after the last leg of a series of three meetings of the Special Presidential Committee on Emergency Food Intervention at the Aso Rock Villa on Thursday.
