Economic hardship sparks nationwide protest in Nigeria

First published at Socialist Workers League (Nigeria).

Tens of thousands of people have trooped out on the streets across Nigeria in nationwide #EndBadGovernance protests against hardship and hunger, since August 1. This phase of the protest movement is expected to last till August 10. Demonstrations have been held in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja as well as in 29 of the 36 states of the federation. In all the seven states where there were no protests on the streets, residents joined the nationwide protest by sitting at home, as was the case in Enugu.

According to the organised private sector, the Nigerian economy lost N500bn (US$305m) to the massquake on the first day alone.

At least 13 people were killed that day by security forces who confronted protesters in some states with live bullets, according to Amnesty International. And by August 3, the death toll, according to the Nigeria Labour Congress, might have risen to over 40. There have equally been massive arrests. More than 1200 people have been arrested. But all these have failed to douse the mass anger driving the protests.

There were calls for the president to speak to the people, although the organisers stressed that they were more concerned with their demands being met, than a mere presidential speech. Eventually, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu addressed the nation on Sunday. Not surprisingly, his speech was high on self-praise, but low in any serious content regarding how the hardship of people would be ameliorated, beyond empty promises that these hard times would lead to greater prosperity in an undefined future.

In the course of his speech he alluded to the protests being the design of “a few with a clear political agenda to tear this nation apart” with a barely veiled threat to “ensure public order”. At the same time, he urged those protesters “who desired a better and more progressive country” to call off the protests and embrace dialogue.

Some reformists in the ranks of protesters, as well as some that are clearly fifth columnists, have echoed the calling off of the protests, in the wake of the president’s speech. Indeed some, including a few ex-leftists, had asked the protesters to leave the streets after the first two days, saying their point had been made, and with violence that had been recorded in a number of states, there was no need to continue at the barricades.

But such positions do not represent the mood at the trenches of this movement. In Lagos, Abuja and across the country, the spirit of resistance has remained unbowed, despite increased attacks by the police and thugs aligned with the ruling party.

The road to #DaysOfRage

The main driver of this national protest is excruciating hardship and pangs of hunger driving millions of Nigerians to the edge of sanity and life itself, as a result of the economic policies of the current government. It has been the most thorough-going in implementing neoliberal policies. In fact, whilst speaking to business czars in Germany last November, President Tinubu declared that he deserved Guinness World Records recognition for economic reforms.

During his inauguration on 29 May 2023 he simply announced that the “petrol subsidy is gone” resulting in an immediate 240% increase in fuel pump price. The currency also lost 70% of its value against the dollar, having been devalued in June 2023, and as well at the beginning of 2024.An electricity tariff hike of upwards of 300% has also thrown homes, businesses, schools and hospitals into the throes of worries. Consumer price inflation which had averaged 13.0% between 2002 and 2022 now stands at 34.%. What this means in concrete terms to working people in the country is that scores of millions of people can barely feed themselves, pay their rents, or afford healthcare in a country where over 76% of health expenditure is out-of-pocket. People now die from easily treatable ailments.

Meanwhile, the working class demands for a living wage as the new national minimum wage was threatened with contempt. After much ado about nothing, organised labour settled for an increase of the national minimum wage from N30,000 to N70,000, which was signed into law in July. But real wages have actually declined and sharply so, once again. N30,000 when agreed upon in 2019 was US$83.50 (the 2011 minimum wage of N18,000 was US$115.68). But the new minimum wage of N70,000 is just US$46.35.Working people in the informal economy are in an even more terrible state. There is hardly anywhere to turn to for credit. And other working people can hardly find money to pay for things purchased from them.

The generalised state of hardship and hunger of working people in the country was a recipe for rebellion. The first wave burst out spontaneously at the beginning of February, in the North Central state of Niger, and Kano in the North West. Within two weeks it had spread to several states, including in other geopolitical zones in both the Northern and the Southern parts of the country. The entry of the Nigeria Labour Congress when it declared 27-28 February as nationwide workers protest days, further generalised the momentum, even though the unions mellowed after only the first day. The wave continued into March, under the atmosphere of an impending general strike which the trade unions had created, but failed to live up to. This contributed significantly to the petering out of that first act of an unfolding moment, of which the August #DaysOfRage is the second Act. But even at that time, it was clear to any discerning eye that the first round of protests was an herald to what could be a period of intense mass resistance to the state and its policies which is making life unbearable for the working masses.

Propositions for #DaysOfRage to protest hunger in the land, and #EndBadGovernance started circulating on several social media platforms, in the wake of the Kenyan youths revolt. It was initially inchoate. The Take It Back movement, which was part of this discursive emergence online, stepped in with Omoyele Sowore, its National Convener conducting an online poll to distil out a shared set of demands. As calls for the action became sharpened, and the set date of 1-10 August drew closer, liberal reformists like the Labour Party’s Peter Obi, as well as the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress made it clear that they were not going to be part of the protests, but urged the government to respect the protesters freedom of association and expression. Meanwhile, groups on the left with little if any traction in the emergent movement laid claim to being its “leaders”.

The Nigerian state, on its own part, brought out its whole bag of tricks to prevent the mass action from taking place. Several state officials issued threats that the government would smash any attempt to organise the #DaysOfRage protests. Blackmail and scaremongering were also thrown in for good measure. Pastors, bishops, imams, traditional rulers, academics and a host of such like well-respected people were brought in to echo the ruling class positions: the protests would lead to chaos, protests have never achieved anything, fifth columnists would hijack the protests even if it started as peaceful demonstrations, etc. The nefarious ethnic card was also shamelessly played, particularly in Lagos state, the metropolitan heart of Nigeria, A few days to the kick off date of the #DaysOfRage, Lagospedia, an X account with over 41,000 followers which claims to proclaim the virtues of Lagos launched an #IgboMustGo campaign.

All these did not work. The mood of a huge movement on the horizons was palpable. The state and its minions changed tactics. They started trending fake news that the protest had been postponed to 1 October, the Flag Independence Day. There were swift rebuttals from several quarters of people organising towards the protest movement. The final card of reaction before the movement was unfurled was an attempt to tame it. Several tactics were brought to bear in this regard. The most strategic was with a series of court orders on the eve of the protest, which limited demonstrations to designated venues where the state envisaged would curtail disruption of public activities. Security forces show of strength were made in several major cities. And by the dawn of 1 August, they were strategically positioned in every Abuja and every state capital, to nip the protests in the bud or at least kettle them into insignificance.

Dynamics, trajectories and prospects

There are peculiar dynamics to the demonstrations in different regions as well as different states in the same regions. These partly reflect the nature of the social forces and the elements of differences in the histories of their repertoires of resistance. A lot has been said about the protests degenerating into violence, including by President Tinubu. Even Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa who had stepped in as solicitor for the organisers of the protest a few days earlier issued an appeal to the protesters on 2 August to “withdraw themselves from the protest grounds” and “suspend the protests immediately and indefinitely” because “the protests were said to have been hijacked with sponsored agents”.

What these sorts of appeals failed to appreciate is not only the diverse nature of violence, but that the only consistent form, across virtually all states, was that unleashed by the state and its sponsored agents. In some instances, the police worked hand in hand with thugs to attack rallies. In most cases where the thugs acted alone, in the first few days, they were repulsed by the large numbers of demonstrators. Where the police acted solely in its name, it was bolder in firing tear gas, and even live bullets, resulting in fatal casualties. Violence was also unleashed by protesters in several Northern states, especially in response to police violence. A tragicomic case was that of a policeman who was killed by his colleague while firing at protesters in the North Western state of Katsina.

With the genie of violence let out of the bottle came burning and looting. The state governments stepped in to protect property, and reinstate order. Katsina state government declared 24-hour curfew in Dutsinma local government and 12-hour curfew in all other local government areas in the state. Five other states spread across the three geopolitical zones in the North have also put curfews in place. Organisers of the protests were arrested in their homes over the weekend, and police launched house-to-house searches to recover “looted properties”.

In the North East and North Central states affected, protesters defied the curfews after a few days of compliance. On 3 August protesters took to the streets again in Kano, the second largest city after Lagos. One of the protesters is reported to have said “we rather die of bullets than to die of hunger, we cannot stay at home and die of hunger”. Interestingly, several protesters in Kano marched with the Russian flag raised high. A similar situation played itself out in Katsina two days later, even though Russia has dissociated itself from this. Protesters were not only waving the Russian flag in these states, they were also calling for military takeover to save the poor masses, like what they assumed is the situation in the Sahelian states, particularly Niger which they share history, culture and even kith and kin with.

Violence in the southern states was largely one-sided; from the police and thugs. But this was not wholly so. In Delta state, a policeman shot and injured a protester on 2 August. The hitherto peaceful protest became violent. Youths and market women sought to lynch the local government chair, who luckily escaped unhurt.

In Lagos, the epicentre was around the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park at Ojóta, a major entry-point into the state, with thousands of protesters coming from different parts of the state each day. It had also been the Lagos epicentre of the January 2012 #OccupyNigeria uprising. The state designated it as the place for the #EndBadGovernance protest in Lagos with a catch; protesters were to go into the gated park. Their resistance led to the police conceding that they take over the area around the park without trapping themselves inside its premises. There were other rallying points in defiance of the state’s directive, such as in front of the Lagos State House of Assembly at Alausa. But none drew the kind of crowd that was at Ojota.

The enthusiasm of protesters there was palpable. On Friday, the barricade coordinators suggested a weekend break, there was a loud shout of no, in response. The following day, there were up to five thousand people at the rally ground. It was, however agreed to have it low-keyed on Sunday. In the wake of President Tinubu’s speech on Sunday, fifth columnists tried to use the opportunity of a low turnout as planned and the absence of most of the comrades who had provided leadership there to demobilise, claiming the protest had been called off. This deception, coupled with much more massive anti-riot presence resulted in declining numbers of protesters there on Monday. There were less than a thousand people, the least since the protest started.

Interestingly, Monday was when a protest could be held in Ondo state, where thugs had attacked activists rallying for a protest on Day 1 of the #DaysOfRage. This could inspire action in some of the remaining seven states.

Conclusion

The ongoing nationwide protest would be the third massive protest movement in 21st century Nigeria, after the 2012 #OccupyNigeria uprising and the 2020 #EndSARS Rebellion. But, while 2012 and 2020 started as largely spontaneous popular responses with no set time, these #DaysOfRage started with clearly defined commencement and end dates. Within the “structurelessness” and “leaderful” “leaderlessness” that defined #EndSARS and most of the unfolding (consciously or unconsciously) autonomist-inspired social movements since #OccupyWallStreet, a sense of organisation is emergent. This is largely possible because of the role of a nationwide radical, non-sectarian left platform; the Take It Back movement, which was equally central in cohering the demands and mobilisation of the #EndSARS movement.

Organised labour might also be losing its relevance as the social force wholly representative of the working class. What happened on Day 1 and Day 2 was effectively a general strike. But it would be crucial for the emergent movement to be able to go beyond passive involvement of rank-and-file workers to active engagement, in building working people’s power.

It is also significant that this protest’s demands started where the #EndSARS demands ended before it was drowned in blood; #EndBadGovernance. Fostering understanding of the necessity of system change and revolutionary democracy from below, rooted in working people’s power, to “end bad governance” is of utmost importance for the left’s political work in the unfolding period. This would, amongst other things, help dispel the illusions in Putin, Russia and military vanguardism of any sort.

It is now past halfway through the #DaysOfRage. In light of the repression and chicanery thrown at it, the protest movement has, to a great extent, been a success. Much more important than the coming few days is the soil it has ploughed for the seeds of a coming gale wave, and which is likely to be quite soon.

As the protest organisers pointed out when the state was finding people to hold responsible as mobilisers for the protest; the key mobilisers are hunger and generalised hardship in the land. And there is no sign that any of these are going away soon.