The Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Hajiya Amina Mohammed, has advised youths demanding for social justice and good governance to pursue such legitimate requests in a peaceful manner.
Hajiya Mohammed, who gave the advice on Monday while fielding questions from State House reporters, said the UN was alarmed by the loss of lives and property amid the recent #EndSARS protests in some parts of Nigeria.
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The former Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, who visited President Muhammadu Buhari at State House, Abuja, was on a courtesy call with her team to flag interest on challenges that concern the UN, particularly COVID-19, climate change, security, and humanitarian responses to the diverse challenges.
Hajiya Mohammed, while speaking on #EndSARS, said: “We did raise while we were with Mr President the issue around the recent challenges of #EndSARS protests that happened in the country.
It was of course one that the Secretary General, we all are alarmed and of course, support the country in trying to get back on track.
Young people and their demands for social justice, good governance are all legitimate ones and must be done peacefully. But we were all disturbed by the damage level, loss of lives and we continue to condole with those families who suffer those loses.
“Today was one in which we encourage efforts that are being made by government to that, the process of engaging with the demands that have been made by the young people.
It’s a start on that journey of reforms that are needed in the security sector but also root causes to the issues that are happening today, which is about investing in development.
“We look forward to continuing our partnership with the government of Nigeria. We are happy today to launch the UN Plus Offer, which has to do again with supporting economic sustainability plan over the next two years so that we can respond a little bit better.”
She said COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the global protests because people were left hopeless in view of slow responses by governments.
Hajiya Mohammed, however, lauded the response of the Nigerian government to the COVID-19 pandemic.
When asked about the stand of the UN on the shooting in Lekki, she said: “The UN stance is clear, like the UN Secretary General had said in his speech, we believe everyone has a right to demonstrate peacefully for those issues they want to raise with their government. There is a social contract in place between the government and the people and it is important to have that freedom of speech provided it is done peacefully.
“I think in the case where we heard that lives and property were lost, it was unfortunate and we believe that in addressing the demands that were made by young people, this is perhaps a lesson we can take into the future and how we engage in such issues.
“I have to say that there are lot of protests around this world that has been exacerbated by COVID because, COVID has left people out of work, left people hopeless because of the socio-economic impact. And in many of those protests, we have not seen governments turn around in response as quickly as this government did.
“So, the UN response to this is that, we must make sure that what happened in this protest, we are able to address those issues, those gaps and begin the reform.
In fact, I will say the transformations that are needed to address many of these outstanding issues and for that, we need to engage youths, we need to engage government.
“I think what has been put in place are those building blocs and the support of the UN has been asked to make sure that those convenience can happen. And that we can build back trust and have confidence building measures in order to get to where we need, to where the social contract between government and the people is firm, trustworthy and working for the benefits of the Nigerian people.”
