Cardinal Onaiyekan backs #EndBadGovernance protests, says they’re not after Tinubu’s administration

In response to the just concluded #EndBadGovernance protests in Nigeria, His Eminence, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, the Emeritus Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja, has defended the organisers and participants of the nationwide rallies.

The top Christian leader in the West African country argued that it was never the intention of the protesters to end President Bola Tinubu’s administration but to see Nigeria carefully governed productively.

Onaiyeka disclosed this while speaking at an event organised by the Christian Youth for Peace and Development Initiative in Abuja on Tuesday.

According to Onaiyekan: “The 10 days of #EndBadGovernance protests saw the young people coming out in large numbers. From my own opinion, they were not coming out to insult anybody.

“They didn’t say that they were ending Tinubu’s government. They simply said they want to end bad governance. Is there anything wrong with that? We all must be seen to be trying to end bad governance.

“But what has come up is that we all seem to agree that we can do better than what we are doing as far as governance and management of Nigeria is concerned.”

He critisised the response of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who called for patience among demonstrators. He said, “I’m not sure whether he was very patient when he was 30 years old. He wasn’t patient.

“The young people cannot be patient, but they should not be patient. Because if they are patient, they will just sit down and do nothing,” he added.