Nigeria fuel protests: two killed and dozens wounded as
police open fire

Police use live ammunition and teargas to disperse
crowds taking part in national strike in protest
against fuel subsidy cuts

Monica Mark in Lagos 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/09/nigeria-fuel-protests-one-killed

Monday 9 January 2012

Protests against soaring petrol prices 

[A man blows into a vuvuzela as others shout and
gesture next to a bonfire on Ikorodu Road in Lagos
during a protest against soaring petrol prices.
Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images]

Two people were killed and swaths of Nigeria ground to
a halt on Monday as thousands of protesters took to the
streets at the start of an indefinite strike against
soaring fuel prices.

According to reports, one person was killed in the
commercial hub of Lagos and another in the northern
city of Kano, while dozens more were wounded as strikes
spread out across the country. Police used live
ammunition and teargas in attempts to disperse the
crowds.

The usually packed markets and business district of
Lagos, with its population of 11 million, emptied out.
On the long stretches of highway that span the city's
lagoons, only rare police headlamps pierced the
rush-hour fog.

Not everywhere was deserted. Burning tyres lit the way
to rallies across the city where thousands massed in
protest at the government's decision to remove state
subsidies on fuel as the new year began. That sent fuel
prices in Africa's largest oil-producing country to
about 65p a litre, and trade unions urged more than 2
million members to stage an indefinite strike that
threatens to paralyse the country.

While much of the anger focused on the timing and
manner of the subsidy removal, announced without
warning barely a week after a string of attacks by the
violent Islamist group Boko Haram, some analysts said
it was a deliberate - and risky - gamble.

"It deflects attention from the Boko Haram violence and
unites Nigerians, Muslims and Christians, against what
is the lesser evil. But it means the president is
battling on many fronts: radical militants and millions
of Nigerians at the same time," said activist Shehu
Sani.

In a small Lagos park, Seun Kuti, the son of Afrobeat
pioneer Fela Kuti, addressed thousands, many waving
branches and sporting T-shirts with the slogan "Remove
corruption, not subsidy".

"Does the government think we are mumu [fools?]" he
asked a cheering crowd, mixing pidgin English and
Yoruba. "Food cost go rise, housing cost go rise,
meanwhile ordinary Nigerian's salary no go rise."

Every previous government's attempt to remove the
subsidy, which funnels a quarter of the #15.5bn annual
government budget to a well-connected cartel of fuel
importers, has floundered amid mass protests. Many see
the subsidy as a rare opportunity to share in the
nation's oil riches, whose 2m barrels per day industry
has failed to lift the vast majority of citizens out of
extreme poverty. In 2003, there were eight days of
strikes when the government attempted to increase fuel
prices.

Flanked by union leaders and Nigerian film stars and
musicians, Kuti said the strikes would last until the
government erased corruption. "There must be no
compromise this time. When it comes to doing something
that inflicts pain on ordinary Nigerians, the president
is quick to do it. But members of his own cabinet have
been indicted for corruption, yet they are rewarded by
promotions in the government," he said.

A Lagos lawyer, Yewande Aina, 29, said this was her
first anti-government demonstration. "Normally we are
afraid of the police. But we have to take a stand this
time - before they removed the subsidy, they should
have consulted us if it's in our interests."

With an economic agenda to renew Nigeria's crumbling
infrastructure and haul Africa's largest country into
middle-income status, President Goodluck Jonathan
appears determined to see through the cuts - even
facing down opposition within his government.

He faces an uphill battle convincing citizens as
decades of top-level mismanagement and corruption have
left the country incapable of refining its own fuel.
"Is it because the president has a PhD in zoology he
wants to treat us like animals? The only way thousands
of us could have come into the streets is because we
are not happy with what our government is offering us,"
said Umar Afolabi in the northern town of Kaduna.

The country's stability appeared menaced as the
president claimed some government and security
officials were secretly backing Boko Haram. The shadowy
organisation claimed responsibility for Nigeria's first
suicide bombing, which killed 24 people in the UN
building in the capital, Abuja, in August and has
killed at least 30 in the last week. A wave of attacks
that began with four church bombings on Christmas Day
threatens to push Nigeria to the brink of sectarian
civil conflict.

In the north, where several states are under a state of
emergency after sectarian attacks, witnesses said one
person died of gunshot wounds after demonstrators
clashed with police in Kano. In Abuja, protesters
chanted at dozens of police to "arrest Goodluck", but
the crowds began to thin out in the midday sun.

"Many people are not quarrelling with the fact the
subsidy isn't affordable or sustainable," former
presidential economic adviser Bismarke Rewane said.
"But we're already dealing with a looming sectarian
crisis. On top of that, you're asking people to go
through pain and sacrifice. So the real issue in
contention is that there is no track record of
credibility from this or the previous administration."

(c) 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its
affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

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