On the heels of recent tumult in Kenya, Senegal, Togo, Comoros and Uganda, Nigeria became the latest country in Africa earlier this month to witness mass discontent as thousands of Nigerians trooped to the streets in protest at the devastating cost-of-living crisis, acute hunger, insecurity, and rampant corruption in government.
The idea of a ten days of rage, spanning from August 1st to 10th, and tagged #EndBadGovernance, first filtered into the X (formerly Twitter) landscape in the early days of July as the dramatic events in Kenya loomed large across the region. However, it was not until the following weeks that the initiative began to gain traction on social media. This fervent digital activism, a precedence for which had been laid during the #EndSARS protest four years prior, created panic among state authorities, including Nigeria’s national police, the army and the intelligence services, as the protest day drew nearer. The resulting atmosphere of tension produced a condition of partial strike in the first few days of the protest as government offices, banks, schools and private businesses were locked, and the roads, including in the commercial nerve-centre, Lagos, were free of traffic.
Although the youth-driven protests have simmered after drawing tens of thousands into the streets and leading to riots and vandalism in some of the Northern states of the country, the entire country is still reeling from the experience of the dramatic events. According to documented reports, not less than 22 protesters were killed during the protest. Additionally, over 1,000 protesters were arrested nationwide during the protests. Public criticisms have trailed the method of these arrests, particularly the Gestapo-style abductions and illegal detentions of young protesters on the grounds of national security and unfounded allegations of misdemeanour, vandalism and even treason. A similar violent crackdown unfolded in Uganda in late July as anti-corruption protesters, motivated by Kenya’s example, tried to rally in the capital, Kampala.
But in all this, what is most concerning is the paradox that lay at the heart of the protest itself. Last year, when President Tinubu assumed office on May 29, hopes were high that his administration would reform Nigeria’s badly managed economy. Sadly, it is the very reforms which President Tinubu began to implement as soon as he got to power that have provoked the recent outburst of anger. The first of these was the abolishing of a decades-long oil subsidy programme established by his predecessors to protect Nigerians from paying the full dollar-worth of petrol prices due to Nigeria’s inability to refine its own crude oil. Over the years, the oil subsidy, colloquially referred to as “subsidy scam”, became a watering hole for oil marketers and corrupt state officials through round-tripping and other sharp practices.
By putting an end to it, although without doing enough to secure stakeholders’ buy-in, Tinubu dared where others before him cringed in carrying out a decisive reform which the IMF had spent years pressuring successive Nigerian leaders to undertake. In addition, the administration also devalued the national currency and implemented a nearly 300% increase in electricity tariff hikes. But instead of the recovery promised, the country of 220 million was plunged into economic chaos and a 28-year high inflation which unraveled whatever precarious stability remained. In addition, the reforms have had a ripple effect on the economy, causing the naira to lose over 40 percent of its value, driving up prices of essential goods and unleashing unprecedented levels of hunger and suffering across the country.
Part of the catalyst for public anger, however, is that at the very period when citizens are being asked to “tighten their belts”, politicians and state officials continue to live a life of luxury while the treasury picks the bill. For instance, the social media landscape came agog last week when pictures of a luxury vehicle, a gleaming armoured black Cadillac Escalade, and a new presidential jet surfaced. This sort of unconscionable display of extravagance by Nigeria’s political elite, alongside the shocking controversy over how much Nigeria’s lawmakers earn, contains the seed of even more discontent and explosion of anger in future. What is worse is how they fail to engender the trust and confidence any meaningful reforms need to succeed.
In the same breadth, the unfolding situation has also provoked questions about the relevance of IMF prescriptions for developing countries like Nigeria. Hence just as was seen in Kenya a few months ago, several placards held aloft during the protest in Nigeria had slogans disparaging the IMF. This brings to mind a similar development three decades ago when student protests and riots broke out across Nigeria against the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) – another reform measure prescribed by the IMF for the Ibrahim Babangida military junta.
While that was a different era altogether, hostility in the country or even within the broader region towards the very institutions that underpin the global financial order can produce a different result in the prevailing circumstance. This is in part because as key countries like the United States and France continue to lose military presence in the Sahel due to the emergence of pro-Moscow juntas in the zone, the institutions of the IMF, World Bank as well as donor agencies will likely become the only viable means for Western influence and interventions to be sustained in the region. Therefore, maintaining the credibility of these institutions is crucial for the future of Western influence.
This is why these blooming protests are not only a wake-up call to Africa’s leaders but to the West as well. Indeed, the first step is to recognize that any reform without immediate economic relief for the region’s poor is an exercise in futility. Such is the severity of hunger and poverty in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that for reforms to succeed, policies with long-term gestation periods must strike a balance with those capable of delivering immediate and trackable relief.
By and large, Nigeria’s hunger protest has exposed the challenge of reforming an economy where trust in elected government is low, and results do not seem to coincide with promises. Although the protests have subsided for now, the government’s response—including its criminalization of protests, mobilization of thugs to attack protesters, blanket classification of protesters in Northern Nigeria waving Russian flags as elements of insurrection, and the disturbing new trend of obtaining court orders to confine demonstrations to designated locations—will remain a significant point of discussion in years to come even as they have now piled as additional grievances for future dissent.
