#EndSARS Protest Tip Of Iceberg, This Regime Is Setting Stage For Revolution – Buhari’s Former Ally, Buba Galadima
Buba Galadima, a former ally of President Muhammadu Buhari, has said the current regime is setting the stage for a revolution, that would be birthed through recent demonstrations against police brutality and extra-judicial killings.
In an interview with PUNCH, Galadima expressed that the youth protest had made the regime “jittery’’ and that it’s “feeling of invincibility disappeared; they melted like oil on fire”.
In October, many Nigerians took to the streets across the country for two weeks, calling for the reformation of the police and disbandment of the special anti-robbery squad (SARS) of the police.
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Galadima, who is a member of the Board of Trustees of the All Progressives Congress, stressed that Nigerian youths were demanding an end to the systemic corruption in public service and the exclusion of qualified Nigerians from access to existing opportunities.
He said Nigeria needs a leader who has a large heart and would carry everyone along, stressing;
When #EndSARS started, they didn’t know that the sons and daughters of average Nigerians, who could not get food to eat, (could) make them lose sleep. And they’ve just seen a tip of the iceberg.
They are leading this country into a revolution that they don’t want to accept. They are the people causing the revolution by excluding, disenfranchising people not on the basis of competence but on the basis of ‘they don’t belong’.
That is why we need a leader that is a large-hearted Nigerian who will carry us all along, not because he is an Idoma man or a Barde man.
Speaking further, Galadima alleged that promotion in the civil service has become ‘cash and carry’, arguing that it could cost up to N5m to move from deputy director to director; N2m to rise from assistant director to deputy director and between N500,000 to N1m to move from level 15 to 16.
He also accused some civil servants of taking vacancies to National Assembly members, making it difficult for anyone not connected to the NASS members to get the job.
Reacting to allegations by northern governors that the protest was an attempt to force a regime change, Galadima said it was a “shameful” declaration from them, saying that the protest was engineered by injustices meted out to them by the regime and its enablers.
The APC board member expressed;
It is shameful of them that when their kith and kin are being killed in Borno, Zamfara, Kano, Yobe, Adamawa, Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi and Niger, they had no guts to come out or allow their people to protest, because the primary responsibility of every government is to protect the lives and property of citizens.
Galadima, who is the former National Secretary of the defunct Congress for Progressives Change, further said;
For me, the governors should be ashamed of themselves. Why couldn’t they protest to the president, because he is one of their own? Why can’t they encourage their people?
That is why they prefer to keep their people in ignorance and abject poverty so that they can continue to appeal to their sentiments. We also know that some clergy men were commissioned and paid humongous amounts of money to be preaching in mosques about this. Hunger, deprivation, poverty and disease do not know tribe or religion.
