Late last year, we ran a piece on the documentary Fuelling Poverty, a 30 minute crash course on the politics, implications, and significance of #OccupyNigeria and the fuel subsidy protests of January 2012. Made by Ishaya Bako and backed by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, the film deftly exposes Nigeria’s failed social contract. But […]
Nigerian producers Chris Dada and Funmi Iyanda created chopcassava.com “to document the popular fuel subsidy protests in Lagos.” They have now stitched together their “short viral films and video-blog diary, made by a team of volunteers and first uploaded during the protests.”
Today’s Financial Times, has a full page analysis by Xan Rice on how the failure of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to remove fuel subsidies has raised questions about his abilities to push through “reform.”
Nigeria’s political leaders probably did not expect this kind of response from the populace –mass protests, a national strike starting today that shut down major cities–when they decided, on January 1, 2012, to scrap fuel subsidies (as part of “reforms” to deregulate the oil sector). The rationale was that by freeing money spent on the […]
