NIGERIA is presently a nation on the edge. The reason is quite glaring for all to see. The masses, especially the youths, have vowed to organize protests across the country to call government’s attention to the hardship in the land. The government, headed by President Bola Tinubu, has told the youths that he is aware of their sufferings and that he is doing all within his power to provide succour.
However, this doesn’t appear to placate the organisers, who seem set on going ahead with their protests starting August 1st till 10th Nigeria’s security agencies have pleaded with those behind the planned protests to shelve it as they believe that it could be hijacked by touts and politicians to cause havoc in the country. The Directorate of State Security actually said that the planners of the protests are planning to use the Kenya and Bangladesh models in their sinister plot to destabilize the country.
Few weeks back, Kenya went up in smoke when youths took to the streets to protest a new legislation that proposed an increase in the price of Bread. Bread, again? The Kenya protests were triggered by the William Ruto-led government’s introduction of a finance bill that proposed, among other things, a 16 per cent sales tax on bread and a 25 per cent duty on cooking oil. In addition, there was a planned increase in the tax on financial transactions and a new annual tax on vehicle ownership, amounting to 2.5 per cent of the vehicle’s value.
These measures sparked immediate outrage. The people’s anger, which had accumulated for years due to unresolved national issues such as population growth, land degradation, corruption, and the dominance of politics over economics, was let loose. Eighty per cent of Kenya’s population is under 35 years old, creating an urgent need for the government to adopt innovative approaches to create economic opportunities for the youths. However, the proposed Finance Bill was the last straw. Reports of businesses closing in Kenya due to high taxes, leading to job loses, further fuelled the anger. With high expectations based on their education levels, the Gen Z saw their employment opportunities dwindling and decided to take the bull by the horns to confront the government.
Within a few days, the protest spread and the number of protesters increased. When the protests became rowdy and shops were being looted, the Police and the Military intervened to quell the violence which led to the death of over 50 Kenyans. In a bid to stop the violence, Ruto withdrew the controversial Tax Law and sacked his entire cabinet. But the protesters were not placated and later changed their request from the withdrawal of the Tax Law to calling on the President to resign. Ruto met them half way with the sack of his cabinet members. He has now appointed more opposition leaders to his new cabinet but the youths are still not placated although the intensity of the protest has died down.
The Kenya model is what military chiefs in Nigeria are now saying is afoot and are doing all within their power to thwart. There is nothing that is happening in Kenya in the area of economy that we are not presently going through in Nigeria. The price of bread and other essentials have tripled in the last few months. To eat now has become a daunting task for those working, while the unemployed are going through hell on earth.
When the Tinubu’s administration came on board a year ago, he announced the removal of fuel subsidy in his inaugural address to the nation and few days later, unified the dual exchange rate of the Naira. Those two policies have led to a sharp increase in the prices of foodstuff beyond the reach of average Nigerians. The Price of fuel rose from N185 to between N700 and N850 in most filling stations across the country while the Naira lost more than 60 per cent of its value, exchanging at N770/$ in May last year to N1,500/$ few days ago.
With the high cost of transporting farm produce to the markets in the city centres as well as the farmers/herders clash, which has forced many farmers to abandon their farms, the little that get to the markets become expensive and many Nigerians can no longer afford to feed effectively. For the first time in my life, I saw yam tubers being cut into smaller pieces so that the masses could afford to buy yam to eat. In most yam markets in the south west, a tuber of yam now cost between N5,000 and N10,000 depending on the size.
Garri, a staple food in the country soon became a luxury item with a bucket paint going for N3,500. Few years back, the same quantity cost N400. A bag of rice rose from N18,000 to N75,000, while beans and plantain will cost you an arm and a leg before you can get them. With the success achieved by the youths in Kenya, it wasn’t long before agitation for a nationwide protest started gaining traction here in the country, led by youths and supported by faceless politicians.
Few days to the D-Day, it is quite clear that the government is jittery and at its wit’s end on how to placate the youths. The Tinubu administration is doing all within its power to prevent the protest from taking place because the government does not know what would be the end result of the protests. There are fears in the corridors of power that the protest may consume the government as it nearly did in Kenya. Although President Ruto is still standing strong after sacking his entire cabinet, the youth are still not relenting.
However, I do not think it will get to that level in Nigeria. We are too divided as a nation for such a movement to sail through. The various security agencies in the country have been pleading with the organisers of the protest to give the government more time to resolve the economic crisis facing the country. They have also promised to quash any uprising if the protests turn violent.
Aside that, Tinubu has also been meeting opinion leaders and several interest groups to plead for understanding, assuring that those economic measures introduced by his administration would cost pain in the short term but were the right things to do. He also assured the protest organizers that while it is within their right to protest, it should not be a violent one.
Indeed, Nigerians should be allowed to say their mind through a peaceful protest. The Nigerian Constitution in Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution guarantees the right to peaceful Assembly and Association. This much was alluded to by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who has supported the proposed nationwide protest.
In the same vein, Mr. Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party in the last general elections, has also spoken of the right to peaceful protest by Nigerians as guaranteed in the constitution.
It is understandable if the Federal Government is afraid of the proposed hardship protest as most states of the federation are yet to fully recover from the EndSARS protest which engulfed the nation in 2020. In fact, Financial Derivatives Company, an advisory firm of financial experts, estimates the economic cost of the #EndSARS protest disruption at N1.5 trillion, about 11.47 percent of the 2021 budget.
In Lagos state, the transportation sector suffered a huge setback with the burning of mass transit buses known as BRT, which are yet to be replaced till date. According to the Lagos State commissioner for information, Gbenga Omotosho, a total of 80 BRT vehicles were destroyed, made up of 23 big buses and 57 medium-size buses, noting that 57 of the 80 buses were at the Oyingbo Terminus.
The big buses cost around $200,000 each, while the medium-size buses cost around $100,000 each. With the exchange rate at the time of the incident, the 80 destroyed BRT buses were valued at N3.9 billion. Small businesses were also not spared, as almost one in three businesses in Lagos lost between N500,000 and N1 million, while 14 percent lost between N150,000 and 500,000; 14 percent lost less than N150,000, according to a report by SBM Intelligence. However, over 10,000 small businesses affected by the #EndSARS protests have received a total of N939 million support from the Lagos State government.
The economic cost of the looting and destruction that engulfed Nigeria was a setback on its fragile economy. The protest coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, the effects of which Africa’s biggest economy is yet to recover from, and thus, compounding its economic woes. The two-week long protest against police brutality was initially peaceful until hoodlums hijacked it and went on to loot and destroy properties running into billions of Naira.
At a virtual meeting with Commissioners of Police in the 36 states and FCT on October 30, 2020, the former Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, disclosed that 71 public warehouses and 248 privately owned stores were looted in the course of the protests in 13 states and the FCT. The states were Lagos, Edo, Delta, Oyo, Kano, Plateau, Osun, Ondo, Ogun, Rivers, Abia, Imo, and Ekiti states, and the FCT. This was obtained from statistics collated between October 11 and 27, 2020, after the #EndSARS protest spread across the country.
According to the police boss, the affected states recorded major violence leading to attacks on critical national security infrastructure and other corporate and private properties as well as injuries on civilians, the police and other security agents. Adamu said 205 critical national security assets, corporate facilities and private property were attacked, burnt and vandalised.
On the August 1st proposed protest, appealing to the sentiment of the people would not solve the problem until the federal government takes practical steps to ameliorate the sufferings of the people. One way of doing this is to ensure that Dangote Refinery delivers cheap fuel to Nigeria and stops fuel importation. If Dangote refinery could get crude oil and refine same in the country and with Port Harcourt Refinery and other modular refineries fully functional, we could deliver fuel at N400 per litre. This would go a long way in reducing the cost of transportation and ultimately, a reduction in food prices.
The government should also be serious in finding a lasting solution to the farmers/ herders crisis so that farmers can return to the farms while insecurity, banditry and kidnapping, which have become big businesses in the North East and North West, should be seriously tackled. Again, the Naira, which is almost becoming useless, should be reflated and the surest way of doing this is to attract more direct foreign investment into the country.
The Tinubu administration has a lot to do and has little time to do it, so it should put its acts together. Large scale corruption among his employees should be addressed. He should not be calling on the masses to tighten their belts while those working for him continue to feed fat on our commonwealth. I pray for a peaceful protests that would not lead the loss of life. The youths, even without the protests, have made their voices heard loud and clear.
See you next week.
- Akintunde is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Glittersonline newspaper. His syndicated column, Monday Discourse, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.