Following nationwide protests against rising living costs and government failings, Catholic bishops in Nigeria urged President Bola Tinubu’s administration to reform its agenda.
The protests saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets over major cities over August in response to austerity measures implemented by Tinubu’s government, including cutting petrol and electricity subsidies and devaluing the national currency.
These triggered severe inflation, with food prices surging by 40 per cent, petrol costs doubling, and widespread banditry in Nigeria’s northern regions.
In a statement on 11 August, the bishops of the northern Kaduna Ecclesiastical Province (KEP) said Nigeria needed to reimagine its democracy.
“It is not time to look around at who to blame, yet, the greatest challenge for us is to chart a future, drawing lessons from our collective losses as a people,” said the statement, signed by Archbishop Matthew Ma-Oso Ndagoso of Kaduna as chairman of the KΕΡ.
The bishops said the protests exposed fault lines in national life and challenges related to politics, ethnicity, religion, and the understanding of democratic ideals.
These ideals, they emphasised, should include a willingness to fight for the common good by putting national interests above other personal, religious or regional interests.
Despite the unrest and violence involved, the protests could serve as a catalyst for Nigeria’s maturing democracy, the bishops said, calling on Tinubu to reverse policies that prompted them.
“[We] appeal to the president immediately to send out some signals that show concrete appreciation of the circumstances that have created the conditions for the protests,” the statement said.
“Policy reversals are not a sign of weakness but evidence of a listening, humane and caring government which appreciates the voices of its people.”
The bishops advocated a new sense of national cohesion, and called on the president to bring into government competent Nigerians from across party lines.
They recommended reducing the number of cars in the presidential fleet and reconsidering the purchase of a new private jet, besides other measures to tighten public expenditure. They also encouraged official collaboration with Nigerian industrialists to enhance employment opportunities and self-sufficiency and minimise the use of foreign-built cars by public officials.
In the first of a series of measures promised to protesters, President Tinubu announced the release of more than N573 billion (over $360 million) to the 36 states to provide livelihood support to vulnerable citizens.
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