Labor unions in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with 160 million people, ended the crippling nine-day national strike on Jan. 17 after President Goodluck Jonathan announced on Jan. 1 that the government’s much-needed oil subsidy would end, according to Bloomberg Business News and the Associated Press.
There are also reports that soldiers had begun using live ammunition and tear gas to deal with the massive protests. Jonathan stated during his national broadcast on Jan. 17 that the government would subsidize oil to approximately $2.70 a gallon, which means that the price per gallon has risen 50 cents since the government’s decision to end the subsidy.
Before ending the subsidy, gas was $1.70 a gallon, and without the government’s help, gas would have been $3.50 a gallon in a nation where most workers live on $2 a day. Ironically, Nigeria is one of the top suppliers of crude to the United States. London’s the Telegraph noted that as far back as 2005, Nigeria was pulling in $450 billion annually from its crude oil exports.
Nigerian nationals in the United States held demonstrations in front of the Nigerian Mission to the United Nations on Jan. 9 and 10 and at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, D.C., under the banner of “Occupy Nigeria.”
Noimotylola Olayokun, 19, who was born in the Ogun State in southwestern Nigeria and is a member of the Nigerian Youth Commission, said the demonstrations among the American Diaspora were “all about developing an awareness of what was going on in Nigeria.”
Bolade Ogungbuyi, 24, said the protests here and in Nigeria were a sign that Nigerians were “coming together” as Africans, and were beginning to understand that it was more about “actions, not words.”
Tino Bendel, 39, said he was a rapper and that the Nigerian “leadership has done nothing for the people.”
“I do not believe in the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They are all crooks; they gave our leaders all of that money-now we have debts,” Bendel said. “The Nigerian people are tired and angry and want change!”
The CIA’s World Factbook states that Nigeria’s external debt as of 2010 was $9.16 billion, leaving 70 percent of the Nigerian population living below the poverty level.
I remember a former Nigerian News Service reporter, who was assigned to the United Nations, telling this reporter a few years back that when he went home for a visit, he couldn’t get enough oil to keep the electricity going after dark. I looked at him in amazement, just shaking my head.
There was an article in the Washington Times back in 1999 quoting a farmer in the Benue State in Nigeria: “We have a new government. It makes no difference to me. Here we have no light; we have no water; there is no road. We have no schools. The government does nothing for us.”
Another amazing fact that has escaped the scrutiny of the American public is that a high-level U.N. official, Jeffrey Sachs, who serves as a UN special adviser for economic issues, told Jonathan the United Nations “supports” the removal of the fuel subsidy.
However, when reporters questioned the spokesman for the secretary-general concerning Sachs’ statement, there was no response.
The Nigerian ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.C., professor Ade Adefuye, explained on the embassy’s website that ending the oil subsidy was a “necessity.”
“The removal of the fuel subsidy is a painful but necessary action,” the ambassador said. “Removing the subsidy, while temporarily painful, will ultimately benefit the masses.”
Obviously, the masses disagree.
Nonetheless, there is another very important issue facing Nigerians and their government: Is Nigeria heading for civil war?
“We see the nation heading towards a civil war,” wrote Nobel laureate professor Wole Soyinka in an article that was carried by TheBlackList. Soyinka, a dramatist and essayist, became Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature in 1986.
Soyinka told the BBC that the religious and ethnic unrest that has cost the lives of 14,000 Nigerians since 1999, according to Human Rights Watch, was pushing his nation in the direction of civil war. “It’s going that way. We no longer can pretend it’s not.”
Meanwhile, Adefuye called people who espouse such thoughts “Nigerian pessimists.”
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon shared a report on Jan. 10 at the U.N. headquarters on First Avenue with Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister Olugbenga Ayodeji Ashiru. The report discussed a concern in the West African region that are links between al-Qaeda, Somalia’s al-Shabaab and the Nigerian group Boko Haram, according to a readout from the secretary-general’s spokesman.
Boko Haram, supposedly a militant group of Muslims, seems bent on driving all Nigerian Christians from Nigeria’s north and has been blamed for acts of violence since 2000.
Observers say that in a nation where religion is one of the most important features of identity, the ongoing struggle between Christians and Muslims over political power is a significant factor in the nation’s ongoing unrest. There are reportedly 350 ethnic groups in Nigeria who speak 250 languages. Muslims make up 50 percent of the population, with Christians at 40 percent.
However, the burning question is still whether religious violence will lead to a division of Nigeria along the same lines that divided Sudan, that is, into a Muslim north and a Christian south.
Christian Science Monitor reported on Jan. 12, “Vociferous religious ideology often obscures violence driven more by economic factors.”
Dr. Leonard Jeffries, former director of Africana studies at City College and one of the leading Pan-African voices in the United States, said he has been dealing with Nigerian issues “for 50 years.”
“There is an unseen hand at work today in Nigeria, taking advantage of a shattered consciousness and a fractured identity; and there are definitely outsiders perpetuating the identity crisis,” said Jeffries.
“White folks want control of Nigeria’s resources, so they develop a ‘shock doctrine’ to foment the crisis and then go in and take over,” he added. “Nigeria is so important, so critical. Africans must come up with a formula on how to work together through their differences.”
Omoyele Sowore, a Nigerian national who calls himself a “citizen activist,” has been working in the United States for the past 15 years in an attempt to develop a better understanding of the issues facing his homeland. He has developed the Sahara Reporters, which may be found at www.saharareporters.com.
“Nigerians, particularly in the north, are struggling to restore the dignity that has been compromised over the past 50 years,” said Sowore, adding that he has witnessed Muslims and Christians holding hands to fight oil companies that continue to pollute Nigeria’s air and water supply.
On the issue of a north-south divide, he said, “What has failed in Nigeria is the leadership, and what has failed is the Nigerian state, which must restore dignity and economic rights to its citizens.”
Minister Akbar Muhammad, an international representative of the Nation of Islam, explained to this reporter on his way to Nigeria that there is a need to be careful about how the violence in Nigeria is reported on by Western media outlets. “The BBC would have you believe that there are crazy Muslims burning Christian churches and vice versa,” stated Muhammad. He said the real question is, who has opened the door for al-Qaeda to be in West Africa?
In the meantime, it was reported that Boko Haram ordered all Christians to leave northern Nigeria. The president of the Christian Association of Nigeria has been quoted as saying the attacks against Christians are a “declaration of war” and warned that Christians would “have no choice but to respond appropriately.”