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03-10-2024
ABUJA: For the second time in two months, angry protesters in several cities across Nigeria are trooping out to denounce biting economic hardship in the West African country and to call for change.
In the capital Abuja on Tuesday, police fired tear gas canisters into crowds of demonstrators as they marched and screamed chants of “no more hunger” and “end bad governance”.
In the first wave of protests in August, several people were shot dead and hundreds more were arrested. Yet this time, despite fears of another crackdown as police deployed heavily to potential protest locations nationwide, demonstrators were determined to be heard.
“The ordinary people are suffering, but this government doesn’t care because they cannot feel the pulse of the ordinary people,” Juwon Sanyaolu, leader of the Take it Back movement, an advocacy organization at the forefront of the protests, told media from Abuja.
Organizers timed Tuesday’s demonstrations to coincide with the country’s 64th Independence Day celebrations, marking Nigeria’s freedom from former colonial ruler Britain in 1960. However, many say there’s very little to celebrate when large numbers of the 200 million population struggle to survive while government officials are living large.
Tagged #FearlessInOctober, the protests’ demands, Sanyaolu said, were for the government to end hunger by discarding fiscal measures recommended by the World Bank that have led to higher fuel prices measures the activist called “anti-poor”. “Why will they keep listening and dancing to the tune of these foreign interests while undermining Nigerians? We don’t consider government officials as gods and we don’t exist to serve their greediness. They should serve us and that’s why we’re going to keep marching,” Sanyaolu said.
Agitators are also demanding that higher electricity prices be reduced and that protesters arrested at past demonstrations be released.
Only small groups of protesters remained in Abuja after the police forcefully dispersed them. However, a larger number of people gathered in parts of Lagos, the economic capital, despite the presence of menacing, gun-toting security officials.
In Ilorin, a small city some 300km (186 miles) north of Lagos, a swarm of police and paramilitary officers stayed for hours in the city centre, where protests were meant to be held. Their presence appeared to deter congregating. One plainclothes security official told media he and his team were there to “monitor” any demonstrations.
People milled around and several clothing stores in the area opened as usual. Ahmad, a mobile point of sales (POS) operator who camped close to the planned protest point, said he would join the demonstrators only if enough people assembled.
“People are just too scared here,” he said in Yoruba, his face twisted in a scowl but “everything about Nigeria is painful,” he added, bemoaning the high cost of living in a country where the minimum monthly wage was only recently increased from 30,000 ($18) to 70,000 naira ($42).
“Every day I go home from work, I have to start thinking because it costs me about 1,000 naira ($0.60) when it used to cost me way less. This morning, I could not even buy bean cakes to eat with my bread because they were ridiculously expensive and tiny,” Ahmad said. In the past year, tottering inflation has sent food prices tripling, making it difficult for many people to afford three meals per day.
Garri, the Nigerian staple made from cassava, which is traditionally the cheapest of raw foods, has become a luxury, many say. A bag of rice, another major staple, cost around 26,000 naira ($15) in September 2022 but now costs nearly 100,000 naira ($60). (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
