Omoyele Sowore
Omoyele Sowore, a human rights campaigner and Amnesty International-designated Prisoner of Conscience, has urged all Nigerians to take part in the planned statewide protest on October 1 – Nigeria's Independence Day.
The organizers of the #RevolutionNow demonstration, the Coalition for Revolution (CORE), had announced preparations for a mass action against bad governance in Nigeria on October 1.
Sowore, Omoyele
According to a statement by CORE's co-conveners Baba Aye and Gbenga Komolafe, the demonstration is required by nine demands.
Their requests include an official national apology for the deaths that occurred during the #EndSARS protests, as well as acknowledgment of those who died as national heroes.
They alleged that the Muhammadu Buhari administration had "taken the country's ruling class' incompetence, corruption, and authoritarian tendencies to the height of infamy."
They also bemoaned the fact that tens of thousands of people had been laid off, while still others had seen their pay cut.
"Farmers are unable to obtain seeds and other agricultural inputs. Traders and other members of the informal economy do not have easy access to finance.
Medical and educational institutions in the country are a disgrace. Doctors are now on strike, and other members of the healthcare industry are preparing for one as well. In addition, university professors are expected to go on strike at some point in the near future. All of this has occurred as a result of the regime's refusal to honor collective bargaining agreements signed with the country's labor unions.
"Our very lives are now in peril. Increasing levels of physical insecurity have emerged as well. This year alone, more than 4,000 people have died and at least 3,100 have been kidnapped. It's been reported that several families have gone bankrupt in an effort to pay off kidnappers.
In a Saturday Facebook post, Sowore added his voice to the October 1 protest.
He apologized, saying, "We are very sorry." It is because of oppression, corruption, nepotism, the return of SARS, terrorism, and the extrajudicial killings of #IPOB members that we will not be celebrating Independence Day this year. Other reasons include insufficient government funding, inability to pay salaries and wages, insecurity, high school fees, and food prices, the rise of electricity tariffs, and the detention of dissenting voices. Other reasons include environmental pollution and medical tourism by Nigerian rulers in the Niger Delta.
the killing of our soldiers due to embezzlement of money meant for fighting equipment, oppression by landlords against tenants, police brutality, terrible foreign policies that allow Ghana and South Africa to oppress our people, incompetence at all levels by the Muhammadu Buhari regime, round-tripping of dollars, suppression of self-determination activists, disobedience of court orders by lawless DSS, kidnapping of school children, rewarding banditry, currency manipulation by corruption cases being killed in the name of 'political advantages'; widespread bribery and corruption; and encouragement of debilitating strike action by workers.
Nigeria's Independence Day, which falls on October 1st, is a recognized national holiday.
On this day in 1960, Nigeria declared its independence from British domination.
