ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Thousands of mostly young people poured onto the streets across Nigeria on Thursday as they protested against the country’s worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation. Security forces fired tear gas to disperse protesters in several places.
In Abuja, where a court granted an order late Wednesday to restrict the protest to a stadium, Nigerian police officers were seen firing tear gas to disperse a crowd of protesters that gathered a few kilometers (miles) from the Presidential Villa.
The police also fired tear gas at protesters in Bauchi and Borno states in the conflict-battered northeast. It was not immediately clear if security forces made any arrests.
Nigeria’s public officials, frequently accused of corruption, are among the best paid in Africa, a stark contrast in a country that, despite being one of the continent’s top oil producers, also has some of the world’s poorest and hungriest people.
Roads were blocked in parts of the country by either placard-carrying protesters or armed security forces, who were deployed overnight after days of mobilization for protests against the government of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. Some groups also staged protests in support of the Nigerian leader.
Rights groups and activists had raised concerns about a possible clampdown on the protests. Comments in recent days suggest “a troubling readiness to stifle dissent, heightening fears of a violent crackdown,” the international rights group Human Rights Watch said.
Many businesses across the country were also shut on Thursday amid fears the protests could be a replay of the deadly 2020 demonstrations against police brutality in the West African nation — or a wave of violence similar to last month’s protests in Kenya, where a tax hike led to chaos in the capital, Nairobi.
Carrying placards, bells and Nigeria’s green-and-white flag, protesters chanted songs as they listed their demands, including the reinstatement of gas and electricity subsidies whose removal as part of the government’s audacious reforms to grow the economy has had a knock-on effect on the price of just about everything else.
“People are fed up and angry because we deserve better,” said Jude Sochima, who is protesting in Abuja.
Though originally planned for 10 days, Omoyele Sowore, a former presidential aspirant and one of the protest organizers, said they won’t back down until their demands are met.
The protesters said they are also aggrieved over the country’s deadly security crises in the conflict-battered north, which Tinubu had promised to end when he was campaigning for president. Fourteen months into office, the country’s security and economic crises have persisted, and even worsened in some instances, official statistics show.
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