President Bola Tinubu has been urged by the pan-Yoruba sociopolitical group Afenifere to seek debt relief for the nation and reduce government remuneration.

This recommendation was made in a statement by Comrade Jare Ajayi, the organization's national publicity secretary.

The group bemoaned the nation's debt load while citing a number of sources, warning that if it wasn't handled "very soon there may be no more funds for the provision of social services and infrastructure."

“To prevent attendant possible social chaos in this respect, President Tinubu needs to embark on diplomatic shuttles to get debt forgiveness from our creditors,” the statement read in part.

“Doing so would certainly be herculean in view of a similar benefit we enjoyed under former President Olusegun Obasanjo circa 2005 but which we later mismanaged. But given the potential of Nigeria and the possibility of President Tinubu to convince everyone that his own administration is going to be different, it is possible that the creditors may listen to the plea.”

However, it made note that one approach to achieve this is by lowering the remuneration received by public officers.

“For such a plea to succeed however, there is an urgent need to drastically cut down on the emolument of public officials, especially political office holders, block the holes through which public funds leak and wage a serious war against corrupt officers – presently in or out of office,” the group added.

“It is only by doing these three things that those we approach for debt forgiveness would listen to us.

“For instance, the National Assembly cornering N70 billion out of the N500 billion announced for palliatives is not only uncalled for, it demonstrated clearly how insensitive our elected officers are to the plight of average Nigerians. The President should prevail on them to rescind their decision in this regard."

Afenifere also requested that Tinubu persuade energy distribution firms to temporarily halt their efforts to raise tariffs.

It said that "the improvement in the supply of electricity has not been adequate to support a pricing increase. But more crucially, the average citizen of Nigeria is currently overtaxed due to a variety of taxes and excessive prices for goods and services.

“Similarly, recent hikes in school fees across the country should be rescinded so as to prevent more hardship for the people and higher number of school drop-outs,” Afenifere added.