ABUJA: President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Nigeria's armed forces warned on Thursday of Kenya-style violence in protests planned for next week over soaring living costs, with the military saying it would avert “anarchy”.
Kenya was rocked by deadly protests that forced the government to scrap new taxes. Nigeria's economic reforms have seen a 40 percent increase in food inflation, but there has been no unrest.
Social media have been called to demonstrations from August 1.
It is unclear who is behind the talks or whether people will participate at a time when many Nigerians are wary of job losses and wary of past crackdowns.
President Tinubu addressed the concerns in a statement late Thursday, saying: “We are not afraid of protests. Our concern is the common people and the damage that will happen.”
In a separate statement, he said “we do not want to turn Nigeria into Sudan,” referring to the 15-month-old civil war in the northeast African country.
“We're talking about hunger, not funerals. We have to be careful.”
Prices have risen since Tinubu ended a costly fuel subsidy and liberalized the naira currency in reforms needed to revive the economy of Africa's most populous nation.
Officials, security forces and governors have urged youths to stay away from any protests. Some have even accused the organizers of treason and trying to destabilize the country.
“While citizens have the right to peaceful protest, they do not have the right to mobilize for anarchy and unleash terror,” defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Edward Buba told reporters.
“It is easy to see that the contemporary context of the planned protest is to overshadow the events in Kenya, which I must say are violent,” he added.
The armed forces had detected some “elements prepared to hijack” the planned protests, he said.
“The level of violence envisioned can only be described as a state of anarchy. The armed forces, for their part, will not stand by and allow anarchy to befall our nation.”
The Department of State Services or DSS, which deals with domestic threats, said “sinister” elements wanted to exploit the protests and were politically motivated.
“The conspirators want to use the intended violent outcome to smear the federal and sub-national governments; make them unpopular and pit them against the masses,” it said in a rare statement.
Tinubu, who has repeatedly called for patience with his reforms, has also suggested that some groups are mobilizing protests to unleash violence and replicate the Kenyan protests.
On Thursday, he met with traditional rulers to ask for their help in countering any demonstrations.
“We traditional rulers are not committed to people, especially youths, coming out to start looting, to start breaking down law and order,” Ooni of Ife Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi said after the meeting.
The president last week agreed to more than double the monthly minimum wage for federal workers to 70,000 naira ($43). He has also started delivering truckloads of rice to each state in an effort to ease the cost of living.
The last major protest movement in Nigeria, in October 2020, began due to abuses by the SARS police against robberies, but grew into the largest anti-government demonstrations in Nigeria's modern history.
The police unit was disbanded but the protests ended in bloodshed.
Witnesses and rights groups accused security forces of opening fire on peaceful protesters at the Lekki Customs Gate in Lagos on October 20, 2020.
Amnesty International said the army killed at least 10 people at the customs gate, but security forces denied responsibility, saying troops used blank rounds to disperse people breaking the curfew.