A woman protest against hardship on the street of Lagos, Nigeria, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024. Thousands of mostly young people poured onto the streets across Nigeria on Thursday as they protested against the country’s worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation. Security forces fired tear gas to disperse some of the protesters in the capital, Abuja.
Sunday Alamba/AP
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Sunday Alamba/AP
LAGOS, Nigeria – Thousands of protesters have gathered in several Nigerian cities, in organized nationwide demonstrations against the rising cost of living and bad governance. A brutal combination of unprecedented fuel prices, high food inflation, rising electricity tariffs a collapse in the value of the naira, has led to one of the worst economic crises for decades in Africa’s most populous country.
On Thursday, police fired teargas at hundreds of protestors in the capital, Abuja, who gathered at Eagle Square a public space near the city-center. In several cities in northern Nigeria, demonstrations which are planned to continue for 10 days, have met a heavy police presence. In Kano, a populous city in northern Nigeria, anti-government protestors forced their way into government buildings.
In Lagos, much of the city usually bustling with activity and traffic, was eerily quiet, with several shops closed, and a larger police and military presence visible across the city. On Thursday, close to a thousand demonstrators gathered at a main expressway in Ketu, a commercial hub in Lagos, defying police orders to move into a designated area. Ibrahim Suleiman, a trader in Lagos, held a placard reading “end bad governance” and…