Documentary: Fuelling Poverty in Nigeria

Kicking off with an introduction from Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, the short documentary Fuelling Poverty amounts to a very brief Nigerian Fuel Subsidy 101 course. In thirty minutes, it covers the history of the issue and methodically explains how the government (encouraged by the IFIs, by the way) failed its people. By removing the subsidy as it did, the government shocked the informal economy and made life more miserable for a huge segment of the population. Subsequent investigations into the complex workings of the subsidy regime revealed a massive corruption cover-up to the tune of US $7 billion annually.

Written by Ishaya Bako, produced by Oliver Aleogena, and funded by the Open Society Institute for West Africa, Fuelling Poverty looks good, sounds good, and says all the right things. Its interviews, featuring those affected by the subsidy removal and those that participated in Nigeria’s nationwide protests in January 2012, are affecting. The fuel subsidy was, as the film argues, the only real social spending the government did. Its removal cast a wide net.

The filmmakers hope to move the nation out of its current standstill, back toward action. “Nigerians need to hold government accountable and the way to do that is to organize,” they said at the film’s premiere at the Silverbird in Abuja last weekend. “The consequences of a docile public with the current challenges facing the country will be disastrous. This documentary, if well distributed, is going to trigger anger and demand for change. Our job is to manage that anger and make it a constructive force for social change.”

Further Reading

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?