The Joint Action Front (JAF) has called on Nigerians – home and abroad – to come out in large numbers to protest against the high cost of living in the country.
The call was contained in a statement jointly signed and issued to newsmen on Wednesday by JAF Chairperson and Secretary, DR. Dipo Fashina and Comrade Abiodun Aremu respectively.
According to the statement, JAF welcomes the issuance of a two-week ultimatum by the organized Labour (NLC & TUC) to the Government over its failure to fulfill a previous agreement reached with Labour. It also proposed a 48-hour general strike and mass protest as the next step.
Below is the full text of the press release;
The Joint Action Front (JAF) once more, wishes to reiterate to Nigerians – home and abroad – that in just less than 10 months into power, the Bola Tinubu government has proved to be unapologetically anti-people and a monumental failure.
The preexisting cost of living crisis has become much worse as a result of its poisonous policies of both the criminal hikes in petrol prices under the guise of subsidy removal and the devastating devaluation of the naira.
These two evil policies, which are in line with the dictate of the IMF and World Bank institutions, have made the prices of goods and services go beyond the capacity of the vast majority of the population. Also, the deepening economic crisis has compounded the rising state of insecurity in the country.
2. JAF notes and commends Nigerians in a few states in the country – Niger, Kano, Kogi, etc, where the people in the past 10-days, have hit the streets to protest against the mass hunger and deprivation that the insensitive and inept Tinubu paddy-paddy and deeply corrupt regime, has imposed on the working people, traders, the unemployed, poor masses, school children, farmers, etc.
The situation, if not resisted, can only worsen and degenerate into full-blown anarchy in the not-too-distant future, hence the imperative necessity to prepare for mass resistance and popular action.
3. Therefore, we call on the working people, youth, and the poor across the country to join forces with the bold steps, already undertaken in Niger, Kano, and Kogi States by organizing mass meetings, neighbourhood rallies, protests, and setting up of democratic action committees in the workplaces, markets, consumers and community associations, schools, etc, to coordinate the imminent struggles that would soon break out.
4. For us in JAF, we remain committed to the task of popular education, organizing mass mobilization towards building a mass movement to reject these various callous and obnoxious policies of the Tinubu government and demand their immediate reversal.
We in the JAF are resolved, in working with other pro-masses organizations, to provide leadership and link up the different centers of action across the country, for joint actions of continuous resistance at all levels.
5. Once again, it is important as JAF to stress that what the working masses, the poor, the women, and the youth should demand at all times, in the immediate struggle, is the reversal of the anti-people neoliberal policies and not the so-called palliatives, which have always proved from experience, to be deceptive, a scam and another means of looting public fund.
We should learn from both our immediate past and present experiences, that the more fund every deceptive looters’ regime accrued from the withdrawal of petrol subsidies and the naira devaluation, the worse has been the deepening state of the nation’s economy!
That explains why the so-called policies cannot translate into any meaningful benefit to the workers and the poor masses, because they are anchored on the neo-liberal capitalist agenda of Tinubu and the preceding looters’ regimes.
For instance, let’s ask: why should public universities obnoxiously increase fees beyond the reach of students from poor and working-class families, despite the higher revenues in the coffers of the government?
The fact is that Tinubu and the looters’ regime that preceded have unleashed the same economic hardship with the same pernicious policies on the people to preserve more money for the brazen looting of the corrupt ruling cabals and their cronies and their imperialist masters.
6. Furthermore, JAF welcomes the issuance of a two-week ultimatum by the organized Labour (NLC & TUC) to the Government over its failure to fulfill a previous agreement reached with Labour.
We urge the leaders of Labour not to make this ultimatum another mere hot-air ritual, but a serious warning of an impending resistance action.
This arrangee Tinubu Government should be taken for what it is. It may on the eve of the expiration of the ultimatum begin another pseudo-jumbo award to feign seriousness, just as in the illusory release of whatever is the national food reserves!
7. JAF would, instead, specifically propose to the NLC and TUC a 48-hour general strike and mass protest as the next step. The demands should be, in addition to the implementation of a “16-point agreement” with the Government, the reversal of the neo-liberal policies of deregulation and devaluation, which are the immediate cause of the current crisis.
8. In addition, the current struggle must equally put on the agenda, a figure for a living national minimum living wage for workers. Equally, the current wave of hike in fees at public tertiary institutions should be given attention by the organized Labour.
Adequate funding and democratic management of public education and health care at all levels are key demands of Labour since the 1978 restructuring of the NLC that must be restated and reaffirmed in the current struggle!
Reasserting such core demands by the NLC and TUC will expose why students and working masses cannot accept student loan schemes as an alternative to the demands for adequate funding of public education. For us, the scheme is a scam and machination to deprive children of poor access to tertiary education.
The fact is that children of the vast majority of working people and the poor will never benefit because of its fraudulent requirements for qualification. Besides, it entraps the future of those who can get it in debt burden.
9. By and large, we call on working people and youth to join us in the struggle for a System Change which means an END to the unjust system of capitalism and its failed policies of Privatisation, Deregulation, etc, and its reign of looting and exploitation by the corrupt capitalist ruling cabals to bring forth a new POLITICAL and ECONOMIC ORDER under a JUST SYSTEM!
JOIN OTHERS ANYWHERE YOU ARE TO ORGANISE & MOBILISE FOR MASS ACTIONS AGAINST HIGH COST IN THE COST OF LIVING AND ANTI-POOR POLICIES NOW!
DARE TO STRUGGLE, DARE TO WIN!
