Nwapa, who said this in a statement he personally signed and made available to journalists on Wednesday, said that he highly condemned the promoters of such narrative, stressing that Nigerians across all ethnic group and religion have been subjected to hunger, misery and pain due to what he described as the government’s neoliberal policies.
A social revolution and human rights activist, Francis Nwapa, has berated leaders of the South-East region, asking the people of the region not to join the nationwide hunger protest against the high cost of living and hardship in the country as a malicious brainwash.
Nwapa, who said this in a statement he personally signed and made available to journalists on Wednesday, said that he highly condemned the promoters of such narrative, stressing that Nigerians across all ethnic group and religion have been subjected to hunger, misery and pain due to what he described as the government’s neoliberal policies.
He said that “After religion, this narrative is the most widely spread brainwash by ethnic divisive agents of the Nigeria ruling elites from the East in the past one week.
“As an Igbo man who is a Socialist Revolutionary, I highly condemn promoters of this malicious narrative.
“In a period of revolutionary agitation by the working class of Nigeria across all ethnic group and religion who have been subjected to hunger, misery and pain due to Government Neoliberal policies, it's expected that there's a unity of all oppressed class in demanding total reversal of such policies and not a loophole to be maliciously explored by a section of the Nigeria political class from the Igbo ethnic group.
“There's massive poverty in the East, poor healthcare services, underfunded education system, bad roads, poor power supply etc, just as it is across Nigeria, majorly attributed to long years of capitalist exploitation of the economy. Just a few individuals can brag about wealth while the vast majority are in poverty.
“The Igbo working class are not immune to the current hunger and continuous increasing cost of food, goods and services. They do not operate a different market where things are sold at a cheaper rate, so why then shouldn't the Igbo worker join the #Endhungerprotest?
“Those pushing this narrative says the "Yorubas voted for Tinubu”, yet according to INEC published results at the 2023 general election Tinubu got 127,605 votes in the South-East while he got 799,957 votes in the South-South, are this people not Igbos and other tribes different from Yoruba? Are they not entitled to their democratic right of choosing who to vote for? Were the over 6 million votes gotten by Peter Obi all Igbo voters?”
According to him, there are six Labour Party (LP) candidates in the Senate and 34 House of Representatives members in National Assembly, “Yet, Jeeps were shared, emoluments, jumbo pay, huge allowances are shared on monthly bases and they remain silent and simply join this brazen waste of public funds by political office holders without rejecting it.
“The truth is that the ruling elites are united in their interest of looting and exploiting the working class irrespective of tribe, religion or gender and so the workers irrespective of tribes and religion must be united to defeat them based on their collective interest and take political power.
“The working class Igbo must reject these narratives and join the protest to boot out all members of the ruling elites irrespective of their tribe and religion. We are united in our hunger.”