Hardship in Nigeria: Popular Resistance and State Repression

The Global Labour Journal and the Global Labour Column (https://globallabourcolumn.org) are pleased to deepen their collaboration, which has allowed them to cross-publish articles over the years.In this issue, we republish two columns analysing recent protests in Nigeria and Kenya.Watch this space for more exchanges between the sister publications.Severe economic hardship in Nigeria has pushed millions of people in the country to the wall, resulting in waves of mass action from February to August.The last of these was the 1 to 10 August #EndBadGovernance nationwide #DaysOfRage protest.The government's threat and campaign of calumny to stop it failed.Protesters shut down major economic activities when the protests started, costing business US$300 million just on the first day of action (Hassan, 2024).The state cracked down brutally on the protesters.By the third day, more than forty people may have been killed, according to the Nigeria Labour Congress.More than 1 200 people were arrested.These included people rounded up on the streets during the protests and leftists identified from WhatsApp groups the state had infiltrated.These repressive measures have failed to dampen the morale of the popular resistance.Mass mobilisation has been ongoing for yet another nationwide protest on 1 October, the country's national day.The protest movement is being fuelled by mass hunger.And this is because of the neoliberal policies of the government, which has been the most rabid in pushing through economic policies inspired by the Bretton Woods institutions.President Bola Tinubu proudly called for Guinness World Records recognition of his economic reforms (Daramola, 2023).He removed the fuel subsidy on his inauguration day, in May 2023, resulting in a 240 per cent increase in the pump price.Electricity tariffs have also increased, by 300 per cent.And the country's currency was devalued by 70 per cent within a few months.Consumer price inflation, which had averaged 13 per cent between 2002 and 2022, now stands at 34 per cent.Millions can barely feed themselves, pay their rents or afford healthcare, in a country where more than 76 per cent of health expenditure is outof-pocket.People now die from easily treatable ailments.Meanwhile, the working-class demand for a living wage as the new national minimum wage was treated with contempt.The nominal increase from N30 000 to N70 000 agreed to in July represents a fall in real wages from US$83.50 to US$46.35.Resistance to this widespread suffering started with spontaneous outbursts in February.These were organised by women who are peasants and traders in some states in the northern region.Within days they had spread across the country.The Nigeria Labour Congress's declaration of 27 and 28 February as nationwide workers' protest days further generalised the momentum, even though the unions mellowed after only the first day.The wave continued into March, in an atmosphere of an impending general strike, which the trade unions had created but failed to live up to.