June 12: Groups Urge Nigerians to Join Protests

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• Against Anti-Poor Policies, Hardship, Rights’ Violations

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR) has urged Nigerians to take to the streets on June 12 to resist growing hardship, mass poverty, and what it describes as the steady collapse of democratic freedoms under the current administration.

The group, in a statement issued ahead of the planned nationwide protest and signed by Comrade Rufus Olusesan, National Chairperson, accused the ruling class of abandoning the majority of Nigerians in pursuit of selfish interests.

It said the working masses must rise and resist worsening living conditions, stagnant wages, and attacks on their rights.

It said, “The only beneficiary of this so-called democracy is the capitalist class, whose wealth has increased geometrically while most people are continually condemned to more poverty. Political office holders and other top government functionaries earn outrageous salaries and allowances while most workers earn poverty wages.

“In place of neglected and underfunded public education and healthcare, the capitalist class use looted public funds to patronise expensive private schools and hospitals in the country and abroad; in place of abandoned roads and basic community infrastructure, the wealthy capitalist class build their own enclaves, etc.”

CDWR likened the current regime’s response to criticism to the tactics used under military dictatorship, citing the ongoing trial of activists and bloggers as evidence of democratic backsliding.

“Expectedly, the capitalist ruling elite are responding to legitimate com- plaints of the pauperised masses in a brutal manner through clampdown and suppression of democratic rights,” it said.

The group said the so-called democracy currently in practice had become a civilian dictatorship that protects only the wealthy and continues to impoverish the masses.

“Therefore, the CDWR sees the so-called democracy as civil rule that has descended into civilian dictatorship. From all indications, the interest of the vast majority has been abandoned, poverty imposed on most Nigerians, public education and healthcare neglected, cost of living keeps rising while wages of workers and earnings.