Africa Feature: Will Fuel Protests Ignite an Opposition Movement in Nigeria? (Campbell and Gambrell)
Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 8:34
#OccupyNigeria: An activist-produced montage of the emerging protest movement
John Campbell, writing for the Council on Foreign Relations considers the significance of the protests sweeping Nigeria, whilst Jon Gambrell of America's ABC News outlines the underlying situation triggering the hike in fuel prices and looks ahead to the industrial strike planned for Monday.
#Occupy Nigeria
John Campbell
Anger at President Goodluck Jonathan’s elimination of the fuel subsidy appears to have united Nigerians in a way not seen for many years. There have been popular protests in virtually all of Nigeria’s major cities. According to the Nigerian press, protestors have shut-down economic activity in Lagos, Ibadan, and Kano. In the capital, Abuja, most gas stations are closed. It is likely that road haulage will decline in the face of a tripling of gasoline prices since the end of the fuel subsidy --- most Nigerian goods move by road. It remains to be seen when or if civil aviation will be affected.
In Kano, the metropolis of the predominately Muslim North, the protest was accompanied by a reported accord between Christians and Muslims. There are news photos of Christians providing protection while Muslim protestors pray, and Muslims returning the favor—this in a city that has been a byword for religious hatred and Islamic radicalism. The Kano protestors are demanding restoration of the fuel subsidy and the firing of Minister of Finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the governor of the central bank (a Muslim from the North), Lamido Sanusi. The powerful Nigeria Bar Association and the National Medical Association are supporting organized labor’s call for a general strike next week. It remains to be seen whether unions in the oil industry will participate. If they do, they have the capacity to shut-down Nigeria’s oil production. In Lagos, apparently some of the police, who are widely hated, joined the protests. I have seen no evidence thus far that they have been joined by soldiers.
Is this the long-awaited Nigerian Spring? The conventional wisdom (which I shared but increasingly doubt) is that the country was too divided by religion and ethnicity and with too weak a sense of national identity for a popular opposition movement comparable to those that roiled Tunisia, Egypt or Syria. Yet, the protests are nationwide and peaceful; thus far, casualties have been caused by the security services, not the protestors. In some cases, protestors have organized themselves through the use of social media. Protestors in Kano are explicitly invoking the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement. They refer to their encampment as "Occupy Kano" and its venue as "Tahrir Square".
Nigeria --- at least for the moment --- may be transforming itself before our very eyes. Enough is new to make the past an inadequate guide to the future.
End of Decades of Cheap Gas in Nigeria Fuel Unrest
Jon Gambrell
For decades, Nigerians have expected low gasoline prices, one of the few perks seen by residents of an oil-rich nation where corruption siphons billions. Now, that long-cherished benefit has ended, more than doubling prices and fueling a planned nationwide strike by angry labor unions.
The strike scheduled for Monday already bears echoes to a similar nationwide strike in 2003 that saw the country almost entirely shut down by angry laborers and residents. And while analysts say the subsidy's end frees up $8 billion a year that is needed to help the country, they warn the way it was carried out only alienates those living in a nation of more than 160 million people where only the wealthy elite benefit from oil.
"The government does not have credibility," said Adeola Adenikinju, an economics professor at the University of Ibadan who has long supported ending the fuel subsidies. "I think the issue is that Nigerians don't trust government."
Gas prices have risen from $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per liter) to at least $3.50 per gallon (94 cents per liter) since the subsidy ended Sunday at the order of President Goodluck Jonathan. That also spurred a spike in prices for food and transportation across Nigeria, a nation where most live on less than $2 a day.
In response, two major unions have called for a strike Monday. While an industrial court has issued an order trying to stop the strike, the Nigerian Labor Congress already has said it will continue out into the streets no matter what — mirroring a 2003 strike where it ignored a court order as well.
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