Occupy Nigeria: The Beginning of A Sub Saharan Awakening

On January 1st, Nigerian President Goodluck Johnathan removed an essential fuel subsidy in the country, making not only the price of fuel, but also the price of any and all consumer goods transported by fuel double, and in some states, as much as triple. Nigerians took to the streets in outrage, first protesting the removal of the subsidy—their one and only form of government welfare—and then expanding the protest to address the systematic government corruption and rampant income inequality that has pushed Nigerians into poverty.

On January 2nd, massive protests erupted in Lagos and Abuja, demanding the government to re-instate the subsidy. The next day, the protests spread across the country, to Kano, Kaduna and Ibidan both demanding the subsidy and denouncing the government’s legitimacy. Protestors began demanding the resignation of Goodluck Johnathan and his grossly overpaid cabinet. On Monday, Nigeria’s trade unions announced an indefinite strike and promised to paralyze the country’s petroleum exports with persistent nation-wide demonstrations until the fuel subsidy is re-instated.

The protests have been become widely known and recognized as #OccupyNigeria.

Although Nigeria is an oil-rich country, producing and exporting as much as 2.4 million barrels of quality crude oil per day, Nigerians are currently unable to refine their own oil—largely because of government mismanagement, and the political focus on an export economy, rather than cultivating natural resources. Now, Nigerians are forced to import 70 percent of their petroleum. If Nigerians could refine their own crude oil, gasoline would cost 65 naira, or $0.40 per liter. However, imported gasoline costs 140 naira, and as much as 200 naira on the black market—and now these prices are slated to at least double.

As more than two thirds of Nigerians live on less than two dollars per day, and the few who are employed often make only a minimum wage of $110 per month, this steep increase in fuel prices and consequently consumer goods will dramatically affect their cost of living.

In contrast, the Nigerian government is ranked the most grossly overpaid government in the world, with one of the highest rates of corruption. An average Nigerian senator—who only represents a handful of constituents—makes a monthly salary of $135,802, amounting to more than $1.5 million in yearly compensation. A large percentage of this is an “allowance” in addition to a salary, or in more explicit terms, budgeting government cabinet members’ personal, often extravagant expenses into the Nigerian national budget while the people starve.

Nigerian officials are making the excuse that they don’t want to become caught in a trap of debt, and claims that the savings from the subsidy will fund much need projects for roads and infrastructure. However, most of the vast profits accrued from crude oil exports once promised to fund long overdue infrastructure have only further lined government official’s pockets, funding their lavish lifestyles of multiple homes and fleets of private jets and cars that further drain the country of its now luxurious fuel—and every other resource.

As Nigerians can only afford half of the fuel that they could once afford, the rest of this fuel will most likely be redirected exported to the west—these profits will further line kleptocratic government officials’ pockets.

Some Nigerians are padlocking their gas tanks to deter fuel theft. Others have moved on from protesting merely the subsidy, joining protestors in Abuja chanting, “remove corruption, not the subsidy.”

One protestor carried a sign saying, “One day, all Nigerians will have to eat is the rich.”

Though the protests have largely consisted of peaceful marches and demonstrations, some protests have become violent—as many as three have been killed, and twenty injured all from being severely beaten by the police. The Nigerian government is expressing concern that the instability and chaos caused by the protests will incite religious violence between the Christian and Muslim communities in Nigeria. In reality, as in Egypt, the Christian protestors are standing over the Muslim protestors, protecting them as they pray.

Nigeria, for the first time in a long history of religious, ethnic, and tribal conflict, is a people united.

It is Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt all over again. It is the battle of a rigid kleptocracy versus its deprived, poverty stricken and enraged masses. Now, like a formula for revolution, Nigerians—like the Tunisians, Egyptians, Greeks, Spaniards, and even Americans who have taken to the streets to protest unlivable conditions—have begun to rise up, using one incident to demand systemic change. President Goodluck Johnathan, like Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, have pushed his people to the brink—now the masses are organizing themselves, vowing the relentlessly retaliate and use this moment of mass awakening to give a long-awaited voice to each and every grievance and injustice that their government has ever invoked as they join the world in deconstructing and dismantling the past to imagine a new future.

 

Front page photo: Occupy Nigeria rally in Lagos, September 2011 by Temi Kogbe,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.