“We have a list of demands,” Mr Effiong said. “And everything
borders around good governance.”
The protesters said the demand had been broken down
into three phases, each of which contains a laundry of critical issues that
must be addressed — failure over which the protest would not cease.
* First Bundle: End anti-people economic policies
* Second Bundle: End special privileges for the
ruling class
* Third Bundle: Return political power and national
wealth to the working people
The details of these bundles include:
First Bundle: End Anti-People Economic Policies:
* Return of fuel prices and electricity tariffs to
their levels in 1999, the immediate repair of all the refineries, pipelines and
fuel depots in Nigeria and, an end to the importation of fuel.
* End to estimated and inflated billing by the electricity
distribution companies and to their extortion of money from consumers for
transformers, poles, cables, etc.
* No devaluation of the Naira.
* End to the insecurity and constant bloodletting in
the country but by methods that respect human rights and justice and the sack
of the current set of service chiefs for their self-evident incompetence in
their duties.
* Abolition of tuition fees and inflated service
charges in all public universities and secondary schools.
* Immediate payment of the N30,000 minimum wage,
with annual increases pegged to the rate of inflation and to the national
average rate of profit of multinational corporations operating in Nigeria and
of all local private companies employing more than 100 workers (irrespective of
the contract status of such workers).
* The immediate release of all political prisoners,
including Shi’ite leader Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife, and an immediate stop
to the persecution of people based on their political or religious beliefs or
their ethnicity.
* The immediate payment of all outstanding salaries
of workers and pensions of retirees.
* The immediate implementation of all agreements the
government and private sector employers have signed with the trade unions at
all levels and in all sectors.
* A massive public works and services program in
every sector and level of the economy as well as in the urban and rural areas
to provide employment for unemployed youths.
Second Bundle: End Special Privileges for the Ruling
Class:
* All public officials in elective, appointive, or
senior administrative positions must be banned from educating their children or
dependants in private schools in Nigeria or in schools in foreign countries.
* These officials, their immediate family, and their
dependants must be banned also from obtaining healthcare in private hospitals
in Nigeria or in hospitals in foreign countries.
* These officials must also receive basic salaries
and allowances not higher than those received by the highest paid professors in
public Nigerian universities.
* An immediate end to the use of police or military
personnel as private security guards for these officials.
* Except for the president and governors, these
officials and their immediate family must not live in class-exclusive estates
or other similar places of residence but among the working people who they
serve.
Third Bundle: Return Political Power and National
Wealth to the Working People:
* The complete and uncompensated repossession by the
working people of all national resources stolen by the ruling class and their
foreign masters through the fraudulent privatisation of public resources since
1986.
* The complete and uncompensated seizure by the
working people of all private wealth accumulated by public officials (as
defined above) during and after their tenure of service whose value exceeds
their total lawful and demonstrable income during and after that tenure.
* The complete socialisation of all land in the
country and declaration of access to land as a basic right, by this means to
break the monopoly of the ruling class on ownership and access to land in the
country and thus make land available to the poor who live by farming and those
who need to build their own houses.
* To break the stranglehold of the ruling class on
political power by banning from politics all who have stolen the people’s money
and property since 1960 and those who have been in elective or appointive
political office for more at any time before and since 1999, ending the
influence of money and god-fathers in politics, imposing term-limits for
national and state lawmakers, completely liberating local governments from
state government control, returning power from the national and state levels to
governing councils controlled by citizens at the town, city, and village
levels, etc.
* To reduce the cost of governance by abolishing the
Senate, thus establishing a uni-cameral legislature with only the House of
Representatives; and by abolishing constituency projects to end the theft of
public money through such projects.
* Abolishing the death penalty except for the
embezzling or privatisation of the public wealth.
* Producing a new constitution for Nigeria by a
democratic and people-led process involving open discussion, debate, and
determination of proposals and suggestions by the working people in towns and
villages, in factories, on farms, in the Diaspora, on school campuses, in
neighbourhoods, market places, workplaces, mass media, social media, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment