(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis worsened as protests mushroomed across the nation, resulting in the deaths of at least six people and belying President Bola Tinubu’s attempt to avoid a Kenya-style imbroglio.
Security operatives killed people in a town in the north-central Niger state and a number of others were injured, the Daily Trust reported. A 24-hour curfew was declared in Borno state in the north east after an explosion killed 16 people on Wednesday, the newspaper said.
Organizers of the demonstrations — whose social-media campaigning methods are similar to those that were recently used to mobilize protesters in Kenya — oppose government policies that have driven inflation to a near three-decade high. There’s a risk that the unrest could deter Tinubu’s administration from continuing to implement its economic-reform program, which in turn may crimp its efforts to attract foreign capital inflows into a country where 40% of its more than 200 million people live in extreme poverty.
Small groups of demonstrators took to the streets of Lagos and the capital, Abuja, on Thursday. Police fired tear gas in Abuja in a bid to disperse the crowds.
While bank workers reported for duty, some lenders closed their doors to customers to forestall potential attacks. Those that did open in Lagos were largely empty, as were the city’s usually bustling streets.
There were also pockets of protests in Kano, where a government-owned property was looted, and Katsina in the north, and Port Harcourt in the southwest, according to local media reports.
Protests that erupted in Kenya in mid-June culminated in hundreds of people storming parliament and forced the government to abandon measures aimed at raising more than $2 billion of revenue needed to plug the East African nation’s budget shortfall. At least 61 people have died.
Nigeria has experienced its own deadly protests in the past: at least 56 people were killed in rallies against police brutality in 2020, according to Amnesty International. The popular Lekki Tollgate in the wealthy Victoria Island area — where some protesters were killed in 2020 — was largely empty on Thursday amid a heavy police deployment.
The government has repeatedly tried to defuse calls for the nationwide protest, with Tinubu warning last week that “we do not want to turn Nigeria to Sudan.” Thousands of people have died and millions of others have been displaced since a civil war began in Sudan in April last year.
The Lagos State Police Command said on Wednesday that it safely neutralized an improvised explosive device in the city, while warning residents to be careful of suspicious objects and report them.
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--With assistance from Emele Onu, Arijit Ghosh and Mike Cohen.
(Updates with death toll in first paragraph.)
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