ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Thousands of mostly young people poured onto the streets across Nigeria on Thursday to protest against the country’s worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation, prompting police to fire tear gas to disperse the crowds.
In the capital of Abuja, where a court granted an order late Wednesday to restrict the protest to a stadium, police repeatedly fired salvos of tear gas at protesters gathered in a district with mainly government offices. Police also fired tear gas at protesters in Bauchi and Borno states in the conflict-battered northeast.
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 protesters carrying banners or armed security forces who were deployed overnight.
Rights groups and activists had raised concerns about a possible clampdown on the protests against the government of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. 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 shuttered 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 banners, bells and Nigeria’s green-and-white flag, the protesters chanted songs as they listed their demands, including the reinstatement of gas and electricity subsidies whose removal as part of the government’s reform efforts 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, one of the protesters in Abuja.
Some demonstrators carried banners reading, “This hunger is too much” and called for an end to “bad governance” in Nigeria.
The demonstrations had no single group leading the protests, which had over the past days gained momentum on social media and mounted pressure on the Nigerian government as millions struggle in the face the of economic and security crises.
Though originally planned to last 10 days, prominent activist Omoyele Sowore said the demonstrators won’t back down until their demands are met.
The protesters said they were also troubled over the country’s deadly security crisis in the conflict-battered north, which Tinubu had promised to end when he was campaigning for president. Fourteen months into office, the country’s challenges have persisted, and even worsened in some instances, official statistics show.
Also Thursday, some groups staged demonstrations in support of the Nigerian leader.
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