Business
Nigeria: Fuel subsidy removal met with protests
Protesters unhappy over spiraling gas prices set fires on an expressway Tuesday and at least one person was killed in the unrest after Nigeria’s government did away with a subsidy program that had kept fuel costs down for more than two decades.
One union leader described the federal government’s unpopular move as “immoral and politically suicidal,” and urged Nigerians to resist the measure.
Crowds vandalized gas stations, intimidated owners into keeping their pumps unused and assaulted a soldier.
One young man threw jerrycans of engine oil off the racks at a gas station and tried to damage the station’s gas pumps. After union leader and chairman of the Joint Action Front, Dipo Fashina, asked the young man to stop vandalizing the station, he did, but later started one of the first bonfires of the protest in the middle of the highway.
Other activists marched to the protest songs of the late Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti who fought against the injustices of military rule in Nigeria. His musician son, Seun, walked shirtless among the demonstrators, as his father used to, and also made attempts to keep things civil.
In the central city of Ilorin, another demonstration where policemen fired tear gas left a man dead. The National Labor Congress accused the police in a statement Tuesday of shooting the “antifuel hike protester.”
However, Kwara state police spokesman Dabo Ezekiel denied the claim, saying the man was stabbed by motorcycle-taxi drivers angered because they believed he was against their cause. Mr. Ezekiel couldn’t say what triggered the attack.
The Nigerian government’s quiet announcement over the long holiday weekend that the popular subsidy was being ended triggered a wave of protests in Africa’s most populous nation of 160 million.
The government says it will use US$8 billion in savings to make much-needed infrastructure improvements, but previous attempts to tamper with the subsidy have been met with nationwide protests.
At around US$3.50 a gallon (94 cents per liter), the price is more than double what consumers paid only days ago for the fuel needed to power the generators that keep many businesses running in Nigeria, where the national electricity supply can be described as sporadic at best.
President Goodluck Jonathan announced Monday evening that he has set up a committee to ensure that the savings from the subsidy’s end will be invested effectively to improve the quality of life of Nigerians.
Mr. Jonathan already declared a state of emergency over the weekend in parts of the country hit by a growing Islamic insurgency that is fueled in part by widespread poverty.
And the gas price hike is likely to result in even higher prices in the landlocked north, as Nigeria’s refined oil is mainly imported through ports in the country’s south.
Already the price of gas has risen to at least US$3.50 per gallon (94 cents per liter), just over double Sunday’s morning price of about US$1.70 per gallon (45 cents per liter).
“I don’t want to lose customers by doubling my rates, so I’ll have to bear some of this cost myself,” said Yomi Esan, 31, a driver for a taxi chain. “My biggest worry is losing my customers because this is how I feed my family.”
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.
The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency announced Sunday that effective immediately it would stop paying the subsidy on fuel to petroleum importers.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press