A Day of National Protest in Nigeria

by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún

I’ve heard it said that if you can successfully explain Nigeria to a foreigner, you must have left a significant portion out. Today, August 1, 2024, provides a stark example of the current confusion and mismanagement of Africa’s most populous country.

The government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, facing citizens angry about runaway inflation and the slow progress of the new administration in its first 14 months, agreed to designate today as a day of national protest. But the administration, composed of people who reached their exalted positions because of their own repute in leading national protests, was afraid.

“Warn your children to not protest,” public announcements blared to parents, playing on the general fear of violence and loss of life. 

Events in Kenya over the last couple of weeks, where young people have taken to the streets to demand considerable concessions from the government, provided a pretext for the scaremongering. The East African protests started earlier in the year, when Kenyan lawmakers proposed a finance bill that, citizens believed, left the rich untouched while putting undue burdens on a people already suffering in a terrible economy. Days of protests often turned violent and captured the world’s attention, forcing the president and prominent lawmakers to withdraw the unpopular tax bill. But the protests didn’t end there. Young protestors are now calling for a change of government entirely. More than sixty people have been killed so far.

Tinubu, a veteran of many years of national protests, peaceful and otherwise, eventually made it to the presidency through a series of coincidences in his favour. His predecessor was immensely unpopular, the economy was in the dustbin, and the leading opposition party, which could have given him the toughest challenge, was splintered between Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, creating a wide enough crack for Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress (APC) to make it through. 

Tinubu was sworn in in May of last year. 

Now here we are, at a precipice of discontent. Whether or not one year is sufficient to assess the progress of a new administration, Tinubu’s APC isn’t asking for the benefit of the doubt. It’s asking, instead, with its top-down scaremongering, for silent compliance. It is true what they say; an executioner is never comfortable in the presence of a sword near his own head.