“Imagine the person who dug the foundation. If you did this 200,000 to 300,000 houses in the 36 states of the federation including Abuja, you would have put money in the hands of people in such a manner that if you removed oil subsidy, they would not know because they would have money to pay for the fuel. Now, that was not done. You took the money they had. You added money on top. Weekly, I pay one million Naira for power. For four weeks, four million, and I earn nothing.
“If it is my church and my priest preaches that (I don’t talk), I walk out of the church. They know. That is why in the Catholic Church, we have liberation theologists. Those are the people who have been speaking to President Bola Tinubu, saying he is not doing the right thing. And they say it every day in the church. Listen to the bishop of Nsukka On Sundays. He calls all politicians thieves.”
On his student unionism and activism days with NANS
Concerning the role of students in resisting bad governance and terrible policies, through bodies like the National Association of Nigerian Students joining actions of organized Labour, Mr. Amaechi, “Those in their 60s will recall that in 1983, we (students) were on the streets everyday, even though they were shooting. We were taught in the university that there is no revolution without blood. Any revolution without blood is a rebellion.
“I am not telling you to rebel against government before they say I am inciting people. I am telling you about what we did when we were students. And I was between 18, 19 and 20 years old. Let me give an example, the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, had ideological leanings. There were capitalists in NANS and the Marxists. I was a member of the Marxist Movement of Nigeria. We had lecturers like Professor Nzimiro, Professor Claude Ake, who would talk to power in the classroom and say it in public. Now, which lecturer is talking? Now you have NANS owning cars, with complimentary cards and police.
“Take the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, for instance, is there any NLC now? When we were in university, for Christ’s sake, we (NANS) used to meet with NLC. If the NLC had a problem with the federal government and they wanted to declare a strike, we would hold a meeting. We would meet with the Academic Staff Unions of University, ASUU, we would meet with the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions, NASU, in one room, somewhere in Benin or Lagos or Kaduna or Sokoto. We would all agree and the NLC would declare a strike.
“As soon as the NLC did that, we would send a warning, saying if government didn’t listen, we were coming. And if that day, the NLC gave them had expired, NANS would declare student’s protest. At the time, government knew what we were capable of, so it would respond.”
