Nigeria President Bola Tinubu
Nigerian officials are hoping that plans for a nationwide August 1 protest over the country’s soaring living costs will be jettisoned.
Nigerians, frustrated with the country’s crippling 34.2 per cent inflation, are calling for the demonstration on social media posts. The cost-of-living crisis was exacerbated last year when President Bola Tinubu cancelled a popular fuel subsidy and took steps that devalued the naira, hurting millions of Nigerians.
On Tuesday, the national assembly voted to more than double the monthly minimum wage of federal workers from 30,000 naira to 70,000 naira, about $43. That measure, which must still be approved by the president, has done little to dampen the calls for a nationwide demonstration.
“On the issue of the planned protest, Mr President does not see any need for that,” Information Minister Mohammed Idris said after a Cabinet meeting.
Idris said Tinubu wants the protesters to suspend their demonstration plans in order to give the president time to respond to the country’s economic hardships.
It is not immediately clear if Nigerians will heed the president’s call to avoid the demonstration, which some are calling the End Bad Governance in Nigeria protest.
“Some groups of people, self-appointed crusaders and influencers, have been strategizing and mobilizing potential protesters to unleash terror in the land under the guise of replicating the recent Kenya protests,” Kayode Egbetokun, Nigeria’s inspector general of police, warned.
Dozens of people have died in anti-government protests in Kenya in recent weeks. Nigerian officials are leery of a similar situation emerging in Nigeria.
“We must ensure that these protests do not snowball into violence or disorder,” Egbetokun said.
“This is a Nigerian family issue and all of us are looking at this issue very well,” Idris said. “We hope that peace will prevail at the end of the day.”
As in Kenya, organizers of the planned Nigerian protests have been faceless, calling for the protests using online platforms like Instagram and X. In Nigeria, the main complaint concerns the soaring cost of living, which many Nigerians blame on government economic policies.
Tinubu last year scrapped a popular fuel subsidy and sharply devalued the local currency, the naira, causing food and commodity prices to spiral upward.
Nigeria’s overall inflation is at its highest level in 28 years – more than 34 per cent. Food inflation is much higher. To make matters worse, widespread insecurity and climate change are affecting the ability of farmers to grow food.
Human rights activist Zariyi Yusuf says the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party has been making empty promises for years.
“What exactly would the government want time for, considering what they have done for the past decade?” Yusuf said. “They thrived primarily on protests, and they got into power from the streets, regardless [of] the flaws in the electoral process. I’ve never looked at Tinubu separately from the shadow of [former President Muhammadu] Buhari. I deal with them as the APC, and as far as that’s concerned, what time could the APC need?”
Earlier this month, authorities suspended taxes on certain food imports, including wheat, in an effort to lower prices. This week, the National Assembly passed a new national minimum wage into law after months of disputes with workers’ unions. Meanwhile, lawmakers pledged to slash their salaries by half and donate the rest for social intervention projects on food.
Yusuf said the main issues still need attention.
“The key things people are talking about – which is bad governance, which reflects in security, [and] very embarrassing economic policies – should be addressed,” he said. “The first step would be to reverse the pump price to where it was.”
In October 2020, Nigerian youths led massive protests against police brutality that ended in bloodshed after security forces opened fire on protesters.
Source: The Observer
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