Nigerian officials are hoping that plans for a nationwide August 1 protest over the country’s soaring living costs will be jettisoned.
Nigerians, frustrated with the country’s crippling 34.2% inflation, are calling for the demonstration on social media posts.
The cost-of-living crisis was exacerbated last year when President Bola Tinubu canceled a popular fuel subsidy and took steps that devalued the naira, hurting millions of Nigerians.
On Tuesday, the national assembly voted to more than double the monthly minimum wage of federal workers from 30,000 naira to 70,000 naira, about $43. That measure, which must still be approved by the president, has done little to dampen the calls for a nationwide demonstration.
“On the issue of the planned protest, Mr. President does not see any need for that,” Information Minister Mohammed Idris said after a Cabinet meeting. Idris said Tinubu wants the protesters to suspend their demonstration plans in order to give the president time to respond to the country’s economic hardships.
It is not immediately clear if Nigerians will heed the president’s call to avoid the demonstration, which some are calling the End Bad Governance in Nigeria protest.
“Some groups of people, self-appointed crusaders and influencers, have been strategizing and mobilizing potential protesters to unleash terror in the land under the guise of replicating the recent Kenya protests,” Kayode Egbetokun, Nigeria’s inspector general of police, warned.
Dozens of people have died in anti-government protests in Kenya in recent weeks. Nigerian officials are leery of a similar situation emerging in Nigeria.
“We must ensure that these protests do not snowball into violence or disorder,” Egbetokun said.
“This is a Nigerian family issue and all of us are looking at this issue very well,” Idris said. “We hope that peace will prevail at the end of the day.”
Some information in this story came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
