The Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr Femi Adesina has described yesterday’s RevolutionNow protesters as an irritation and a bunch of unserious minded youth.
He said that only a small number of young people attended the rallies organised on the 5th of August describing the event as “child’s play.”
Speaking to Tope Akinyode on Sunrise Daily program on Thursday morning, he said that even if the protests were marked in many cities, the total number of participants was too small compared to Nigeria’s population of over 200 million people.
When Akinyode asked him if he was not downplaying the intentions of the protesters, the Presidents media aide responded that, “well, was it really a protest ? By my estimation, it just seemed like a child’s play because protests by their very nature are spontaneous things, mass things.
“These are just a sprinkle of people trying to be funny. As far as I am concerned, it is nothing to worry about.
“A revolution is always a mass thing, not a sprinkling of young boys and girls you saw yesterday in different parts of the country. I think it was just a funny thing to call it a revolution protest.
When asked why he appeared to be talking down on the RevolutionNow participants and if the seriousness of a protested is determined by the number of participants, Adesina said he was entitled to his own opinion.
He added “a revolution is something that turns the normal order. What happened yesterday, would you call it a revolution ? It was just an irritation, just an irritation and some people want to cause irritation in the county and what I will say is things will boil over. They boil over because you continue to heat them.
“When you see pockets of heating up in the country, eventually they culminate in boiling over. So Nigeria;s need to know that the country we get is what we use our hands to build.
Femi Adesina added that the protests were misguided as some of the things the protesters are agitating against were not peculiar to Nigeria.
He enumerated the things to include rights abuse, security, poverty and corruption saying that “the government will do whatever it takes to safeguard the country.”
Related story:
#RevolutionNow Protests: Army Police, DSS Clamp Down on Protesters