Protests: FG happy to have Nigerians express their views –Bagudu 

Chidimma Uchegbu – Abuja.

The federal government is happy that Nigerians expressed their views on the ongoing nationwide protest against hunger and misgovernance in the country.

The government takes responsibility over the hardship in the land and understands that the situation was exacerbated by the fact that past governments underinvested in the certain sectors of the economy.

Minister of budget and economic planning, Atiku Bagudu made the remarks in an interview with journalists on the sidelines of the just concluded African Caucus ’24 in Abuja.

Senator Bagudu said “we will never get angry. We should think carefully what can we calibrate, how can it be done differently.” He said the Bola Tinubu-led administration is a listening one that has taken unpopular decisions that would be ultimately be beneficiary to Nigerians in the long run.

He said the policy decisions of the government that have created hardship, especially the removal of subsidy on gasoline and floating of the Naira were taken to build a resilient economy that is no longer susceptible to external shocks. “Because we recognize that if we want to live the life of other countries with whom we are competing, we have to do things differently,” he stated.

Bagudu said the administration expects the various tiers of government to do better. He said there is nothing wrong for the young Nigerians to demand good leadership from their leaders. He said such demands should be well challenged and time given to the authorities to fix the already bad situation. “There is nothing wrong for our younger ones and other Nigerians to tell us that, look, even if you think you are doing well, we heard you, but we can do better. That’s important in a democracy, especially for me, who is the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning,” the minister stated.

He said the nation’s budget process allows people to come to his ministry to make impute on better ways to make things work through usually organised town hall meetings that allow participation in the budget process to make imputes. “This is how you should do this, or why can’t we try this.”

“Some sacrifices are necessary, but like I repeatedly said, yes, even at that, you have to listen to your constituents.

“You have to listen to yourself and engage and generate consensus. And we are doing that. We are willing to do that?

“You can’t even put an estimate to it because somebody has lost his life. How can you quantify that? That is why sometimes, even those who have a noble intention of doing something are always encouraged to be hesitant because there are people who do not have such noble intention that can always hide behind the desire for people to express themselves to create havoc, to harm others, to even go beyond that and even create greater social disruptions,” he stated.

Asked if he could quantify the damage done by the protests that have turned violent, Bagudu said “I don’t have an estimate about the damage, but one life lost is big enough.”

He said the government took measures that it believed will yield a greater tomorrow but sometimes those measures come with costs, short-term costs and understandably some segment of society feels that maybe we should have done things differently or it has taken too long.

“We have listened. We are mindful. What it shows is that Nigeria is a mature democracy where people can come out and say this is what we believe.
We have seen different shades of opinion. Some say reverse the policies. Some say what we can do.
We haven’t seen the gains as quickly as we thought we could,” he stated.