By Cross Udo, Abuja
A foremost human rights activist, Femi Falana (SAN), yesterday warned the Federal Government and the political class not to provoke citizens to mutiny.

Falana gave the warning in Abuja while speaking at the National Symposium organised by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), with the theme: “Nigeria Economy and the Crisis of Survival: Robbing the Poor to Pay the Rich.”

The warning came on the heels of the forceful removal of a democratically elected government through a coup d’état in Africa by the soldiers.

The vocal right activist lamented that while the government has told the poor to tighten their belts and suffer the burden of the economic issues in the nation, public officials keep spending lavishly.

The legal luminary also attributed the recent trend of military juntas in Africa, particularly the most recent one that occurred in Gabon, to several factors, including the ruthless exploitation of African countries’ mineral resources by the West, third-term syndrome, political manipulation of the constitution, and the establishment of foreign military bases in African nations.

He warned that as long as figures of extravagant spending by the National Assembly continue to be churned out, Nigerians will be irritated and so will be enemies of democracy.

According to him, “They must be careful not to provoke Nigerians to mutiny. Some of the things going on in the National Assembly show that we are in trouble. N70bn for palliatives for 469 people and when we said no they claimed it was for the facelift of the National Assembly.

“Three years ago, N37bn was earmarked for the facelift of the National Assembly. That contract has not been fully executed and there is no renewal of the contract so you cannot talk about N70bn for facelift.

“Secondly, N40bn to buy exotic cars now for the leadership of the National Assembly is not going to be allowed.

“The latest provocative news from the National Assembly is that N54bn has been earmarked for constituency projects for 360 members of the House of Representatives. It has come to N150m per person. Under this austere condition of the country.

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“So, when these figures are oozing out of the National Assembly, Nigerians are being provoked and enemies of democracy are being provoked.

“The military has been honest to say that they are under pressure to dismantle this rickety political system but someone told them to go and deny it and they came out and denied it. But we can read between the lines. We can’t gather here to talk about democracy that is under threat.

“The immediate causes of coups in Africa today are third term syndromes, manipulation of constitution, military bases.

“Today, America has 29 military bases in Africa. France has 15. Soldiers are protesting because a number of these foreign bases are receiving salaries as if they are in their countries. So the soldiers are protesting the preferential treatment between them and these foreign troops, so we must look at that.

“The remote causes are the ruthless exploitation of the mineral resources of our country by Western countries. The people are getting poorer. The poor are asked to tighten their belts even when they are dying. We may be there discussing democracy, democracy is under threat in Africa.”

*Tells NLC to monitor rehabilitation of refineries to avert looting

He advised the Nigeria Labour Congress to circulate his paper presentation so that every union can debate the content of the paper in preparation for a major showdown with “this colonial peripheral capitalist system that is pauperising our country and increasing poverty at a very dangerous level.”

He further said, “Now Comrade has started by referring to Section 16. A subsection there says, the economic system is not operated in such a way as to concentrate the wealth of the country in the hands of the few or a group.

“When Dangote was said to be building a refinery, and I said it publicly, the government of Nigeria gave him land free, they call it a free economic zone, for themselves, all the machinery imported at the official rate which is illegal no duty was paid for the machine and the government went to the bank to take a loan of $2.7bn to invest in a private sector and they then said, we cannot fix our refineries.

“At that stage we challenged them, and they said government has no business in business why are you funding a private enterprise? It was at that stage that they allocated $15bn to fix the Port Harcourt Refinery and $1.4bn to fix the Kaduna and Warri refineries.

“Comrade President of Nigeria Labour Congress, please I beg you, second assignment, you must get the relevant genius to monitor the ongoing rehabilitation of the refineries otherwise these guys will divert the money criminally as they have always done in the past 35 years.

“Secondly those refineries are no longer enough for us, refineries are being sold in Europe and America, and the government must buy some of them and assemble them here so that we can earn revenue from our natural resource.

“Talking about solid minerals, labour must also take cognisance of what is going on. They give licences to individuals to go and mine and pay a pittance to the government, sometimes you don’t pay anything.”