Protesters on day five of the nationwide strike
following the removal of a fuel subsidy by the government, in Lagos and Abuja,
Nigeria, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. Unions in Nigeria announced on Friday a weekend
pause in a paralyzing national strike amid new negotiations with the government
over spiraling gasoline costs.
LAGOS, Nigeria — A nationwide strike and
demonstrations have unleashed years of pent-up frustrations in Nigeria over its
kleptocratic leaders, and the rage has grown even stronger across social media
this week.
Twitter
users shared pictures of dead protesters while others broke down the oil-rich
nation’s 2012 budget figures, comparing funds allocated to the president and
vice president’s offices with the cost of living of the average Nigerian.
Hackers have targeted government websites, while others criticized local news
coverage of demonstrations in nation where journalists often accept bribes from
those they cover.
“I think the government
has opened a can of worms and we are now picking each one at a time,” said Kola
Oyeneyin, 31, an entrepreneur who uses Twitter to give protest updates.
Tens of thousands of
people have taken to the streets across Africa’s most populous nation to
protest the government’s removal on Jan. 1 of a subsidy that had kept gasoline
prices low for more than two decades. Overnight, prices at the pump more than
doubled, from $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per liter) to at least $3.50 per
gallon (94 cents per liter). The costs of food and transportation also doubled
in a nation where most live on less than $2 a day.
President Goodluck
Jonathan insists the move was necessary to save the country an estimated $8
billion a year, which he promises will go toward badly needed roads and public
projects. But the president, who used Facebook to announce he would run in the
nation’s presidential elections last year, has faced increasingly angry
comments on his own profile where most offered praise in the past.
Protesters — who joined
the current nationwide labor strike under the hash-tagged slogan of “Occupy Nigeria”
— say the government is in no position to ask people to sacrifice in a nation
with extravagant government spending and a history of widespread theft of
billions by military rulers and politicians.
Nigeria, an OPEC member
nation producing about 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day, is a top
supplier to the U.S., but virtually all of its petroleum products are imported
after years of graft, mismanagement and violence at its refineries.
“They (the government)
are saying that they need to save. OK, but do you need to save by making us pay
for your waste?” Oyeneyin asked.
The country only
recently passed a Freedom of Information bill granting, in theory, public
access to documents. But the nation’s budgeting remains opaque at best in a
nation that operated for years under an official secrets act that made
unauthorized release of government information an imprisonable offense.
“People are now more
informed about what’s going on and it won’t be long before we have an open and
transparent government,” said Ngozi Sulaiman, a businesswoman who was sending
photos to her Blackberry contacts from a protest in a posh Lagos neighborhood.
However, social media
also has spread false information about government resignations in recent days
as well. Text messages circulating the country also fed a rumor that a radical
Islamist sect planned to infiltrate and bomb demonstrations.
A group of hackers also
have attacked a series of government websites over several days, including the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Friday.
Eager to calm public
anger, government-aligned groups have published front-page newspaper
advertisements for days trying to sell Nigeria’s more than 160 million people
on the idea that money saved by removing fuel subsidies will go toward needed
projects. While Nigeria has an unruly free press, underpaid journalists often
accept so-called “brown envelope” bribes slipped into briefing documents at
news conferences. And at least one private news channel in the country has
gotten calls from government officials asking it not to broadcast live images
of a daily demonstration in Lagos that drew more than 20,000 people on Friday
alone.
Criticism of news on the
state-run Nigerian Television Authority also sparked a protest outside its
Lagos headquarters by more than a thousand people Thursday. The channel aired a
short story on the protest 43 minutes into its nightly broadcast, after a host
of pro-subsidy removal stories and commercials.
The protests will
continue to be swayed by social media, despite low incomes, as Nigeria has the
continent’s top mobile phone market and is estimated to have the largest online
audience in Africa.
