Pat Utomi, renowned professor of political economics, has announced a mass mobilisation effort tagged “Freedom Converge”, aimed at bringing over 7.2 million Nigerians into Abuja in a bold move to “occupy it until freedom returns to the people.” Speaking during his latest weekly Tuesday Tonic broadcast, Utomi painted a dire picture of Nigeria’s political and socio-economic landscape, blaming the nation’s failures on a “deep crisis of elite” and an entrenched system of state capture, weak institutions, and self-serving leadership.
“We’re planning to bring 7.2 million Nigerians into Abuja to occupy it until freedom goes back to the Nigerian people,” he declared. “The crisis is deeper and much worse. And if we don’t halt it, there’ll be no future, I can assure you.” Utomi referenced Pastor Tunde Bakare’s recent public comments highlighting symptoms of national dysfunction such as state capture, a weakened judiciary, and what he described as “the completely useless 10th National Assembly.”
While acknowledging these as symptoms, Utomi insisted the core issue lies deeper. “There’s such a much deeper crisis of elite,”
he said, lamenting that since Nigeria’s formative years, the nation’s leadership has drifted from a vision of collective progress to one of personal gain “The long-term good of Nigerian people doesn’t seem to quite strike them when they get this opportunity to take care of themselves. And this is really the Nigerian tragedy,” he said.
Utomi called for a nationwide grassroots education campaign to precede the Abuja march, focusing on enlightening citizens about good governance, inclusive leadership, and economic transformation. “It will take one or two weeks of educating people where they live about how a country can care for everybody,” he explained.
He also condemned the role of the media in enabling Nigeria’s decline,
accusing it of being compromised by poverty and elite influence. “Let’s not pretend, Nigerian media has been a terrible failure. They make an effort, some of them, but they’re captured easily,” he said. Utomi criticised current economic policies, describing them as obsessed with “stabilisation ” rather than genuine development.
“Those who stabilise give impressions that things have turned around, but in the end, you’re all dressed up with nowhere to go,” he noted.
