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FG prefers dialogue with armed
groups -UAD
By Victor Ebimomi
Reporter, Lagos
The United Action for Democracy (UAD) has criticised the
Federal Government for its alleged preference to dialogue only with people who
bear arms while neglecting those who resort to strike to protest government
policies.
Addressing a press conference on Thursday in Lagos, the
Convener of UAD, Mr Bamidele Aturu said the Obasanjo government has outlived
its usefulness and must quit to pave way for the convocation of a Sovereign
National Conference to address the myriad of problems confronting the nation.
Failure to do so he warned that the government would be
chased out by a chain of strikes.
“ Strike is the most potent and most lawful way to
confront a bad government. The alternative is to carry arms but UAD and its
alliance never believe in carrying arm but strike…Government is creating
the impression that it prefers to wine and dine with people that carry arms as
shown by its celebrated meeting with Asari Dokubo”, he said.
Though he refused to divulge the details of the of the next
phase of the strike, he however promised that it would be so packaged that the
government would have no alternative but to bow to the supreme will of the
people stressing that strikes and other lawful acts of civil disobedience where
they endure and are properly organised often culminate in disgraceful exit of
authoritarian regimes. He however, said one of the strategies might include the
change of the nomenclature of the Labour Civil Society Coalition (LASCO) to
weed out mushroom civil society organisations that are in the habit of
compromising the struggle and allowing themselves to be used by the government
against popular wishes of the masses.
“ The term civil society is nebulous, amorphous and
elastic. We have seen how government on its own chose some people with no mass following
as representatives of the civil society on its discredited and still- born
palliative committee a few days ago. This is precisely a problem” he
said, adding: “ The so called Civil Society Alliance of Nigeria (CISAN)
in Kaduna has called a press conference denouncing the strike, giving the
impression that the civil society is divided, which of course is untrue”.
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