By Richard Inoyo
3rd September, 2024
The Nigerian Police Force has spent the last 34days spreading all sort of disinformation out there into the mainstream media as regards a Briton whom they accused of trying to topple the Tinubu Regime. The spokesman of the Force, Mr. Olumuyiwa Adejobi had made much ado about nothing, just to create this public misinformation that some British national whom they wrongly accused had anything to do with the allegations they made against him as regards wanting to remove Tinubu from office.
The British citizen whom they identified as Andrew Martin Wynne, happened to be my friend. Drew Povey as he was fondly called by all comrades of conscience in the civic space is an honourable man with high level of integrity, far greater than those any intelligence report would love to admit. I say this with all force of sincerity. And now, here is the crux of the truth majority of Nigerians do not know about the issue, which the Nigerian Police Force is misrepresenting and hiding from the public.
The said network they claimed that Drew Povey set up, it was not him who set it up, in fact, he had no hand in it. I put the entire network up. I specifically created the WhatsApp and Telegram version of the Network online as far as May, 2024. For a start, I first named it *”Mass Protest Loading, 2024″*. Then I went ahead to create 37 of the said groups for each state of the Federation including that of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, which Drew Povey was made admin by me due to his genuine concern about the suffering Nigerians are going through. I made other comrades of conscience admin too in the group.
The primary aim of the group was to get Nigerians across the country to demand policy reversal on fuel price hike, energy tariff hike and naira devaluation to pre-May 29, 2023 levels; knowing clearly that the policy hikes that this regime launched on May 29th, 2023 has since created unprecedented levels of hardship, which has visibly led to astronomical hike and meteoric rise on the cost of production, transportation, food, medicines and livelihood_ breeding hopelessness in a country where the government is ironically and mischievously flying the kite of renewed hope agenda_ a misguided sarcasm that has been permanently lost in the same mantra of renewed hope. All of which has sent thousands of companies folding up, and plunging millions of Nigerians and households into unexpected and unbelievable poverty.
Truth be told, Drew Povey only joined just like thousands of Nigerians who joined the platforms to organize and let the government know that Nigerians are suffering and that things are hard. The group which seeks to offer pushback against evil and poverty-manufacturing policies of this regime, was informed and formed by me from an ethical and moral perspective with a single goal to achieve policy reversal and nothing more. To now see the Nigerian Police Force make much ado about nothing leaves me thinking, they are only using the sensationalism in the public that such claim of foreign involvement in some domestic protest for policy review and reversal would earn them. The government already knows that Nigerians are hungry and unhappy, and both social conditions are the reasons why the EndBadGovernance and Endhunger protest gained traction.
I put it to the Nigerian Police Force, beyond the sensationalism and disinformation they are peddling on the public information systems, if the Nigerian Police Force had any iota of intelligence in their gathering surveillance, they would have known that “I”, Richard Inoyo created all the groups, and Drew Povey and many humans of conscience only joined on the ground of their natural obligations to fighting against evil (irrespective of affiliations and skin tone) with the goal of pushing back on policies that have plunged millions of households and Nigerians into hardship and avoidable poverty while the ruling elites continue to cash out from the collective sufferings and hardship their policies have brought upon not just on Nigerian households alone but also on the private sector, where many businesses had to fold up due to high cost of production, transportation, doing business and buying imported goods that are foreign exchange dependent.
The Nigerian Police Force must come clean and tell the Nigerian public the honest truth that Drew Povey is innocent and created no network, I created the *The Mass Protest Loading, 2024 with its 37 sub WhatsApp and Telegram Platform*, which I later changed the name to *National Vigilance and Proactive Action Response Network (NVPARN)*_ a network dedicated to policy reversal on fuel, energy tariff and naira devaluation. We had no intention whatsoever to topple Tinubu Regime, we just want the government to listen and understand that no nation can survive when the political leadership live flamboyantly while actively creating more and more poverty, using harsh economic policies that shift the whole benefit system completely away from the masses and moved same to just a handful of persons who won elections or got political appointment cutting across the president, governors, senators, house of rep members, ministers, appointees, etc.
I wish to use this medium to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all Endhunger protesters currently been held under some flimsy charges in police cells and correctional facilities across the nation_ while demanding justice for those who were killed and injured by security operatives. It’s a national disgrace and a shame to abduct, beat up, shoot, and lock up citizens who came out openly to tell the nation and its political leadership that there is hunger in the land and they need affordable food. When the police force and the ruling elites of any nation chose to use the judiciary to abduct and lock up citizens behind bars who are saying openly that they are hungry, and decided to charge them with treason with the goal to hang and silence them when they ought to address the root and route of hunger in the nation, such political, judicial and policing leaderships do not only abuse their offices, powers and privileges, they make mockery of public expectations and trust, creating a situation where nobody would even want to trust any public institution, and such hopelessness that comes afterwards may become the starting point for all sort of radical democracies_ lest you forget, there are three types of democracy, we are currently on the second type being deliberate, we had long passed aggregative democracy.
It is important that the Nigerian Police Force end the misrepresentation of regime change allegation which they wrongfully charged Drew Povey with just to create foreign involvement sensationalism.
Let me seize this moment to urge the Nigerian Police Force to use their intelligence report if they have any to tell the president to understand that policy reversal on hikes would lead to better security outcome for all and not the current ostrich strategy of denialism the Federal Executive Council is using to evade the problem of inflation created by them which led to national outcry. Drew Povey is innocent, Obiyan is innocent, we all as humans have the constitutional rights to tell people in power that we are hungry and it makes no sense for any authority be it political or security to want to hang people or lock people up for saying they are hungry and want the price of fuel, energy and man-made inflation reversed. Address hikes.
Signed
Richard Inoyo,
Country Director,
*Citizens’ Solution Network*, and Convener, Citizens’ Assembly
