Gangs set up burning roadblocks, police fired tear gas and businesses shut in Nigeria Tuesday, the second day of a national strike that has paralysed the country and left six people dead.
As thousands took to the streets to protest soaring fuel costs, youth gangs set up roadblocks of burning tyres along major roads in Lagos, the largest city in Africa’s most populous nation, and threw stones at cars while extorting cash from drivers. Protesters marched through the streets of the city to the sound of blaring afrobeat music, sometimes with soldiers clapping and taking pictures.
One person brought a goat wrapped in a union flag while others carried a mock coffin labelled “Badluck”, a play on the name of President Goodluck Jonathan. Protesters encouraged those watching from the roadside to join in. The mass of marchers later crossed a bridge and entered the historic centre of Lagos, chanting and dancing through the winding roads.
In one area of the city, protesters set up roadblocks and held up drivers, claiming a bus had run over someone on his way to the demonstration and killed him. Traders in another part of Lagos were said to have stayed away from a market out of fear that criminals would seek to rob them amid the unrest. In the northern city of Bauchi, police fired tear gas and shot into the air to disperse a few thousand protesters at two locations, residents said. No one was reported hurt.
The indefinite strike follows the government’s controversial move to end fuel subsidies on January 1, which caused petrol prices to more than double in a country where most of the 160 million population lives on less than $2 a day.
