Nigerians Keep Up Their Protests Against The Rising Cost Of Living

On Friday, during a protest over the nation’s greatest cost-of-living problem in a generation, protestors and Lagos residents got into physical altercations.

In Lagos, demonstrators bearing Nigeria’s green-and-white flag, bells, and placards encountered a strong police presence.

The main causes of the riots in Africa’s most populous nation were food shortages and allegations of corrupt and mismanaged leadership.

Nigeria, one of the leading oil producers on the continent, has some of the world’s poorest and most hungry citizens, but its public officials are among the highest paid in Africa.

“My salary’s purchasing power has been completely diminished,” an angry protestor told The Associated Press.

Chanting songs, the demonstrators, who were primarily young, enumerated their demands, which included the restoration of gas and electricity subsidies that had been canceled as part of an attempt at economic reform.

The northern areas of Nigeria, which are among the worst affected by hunger and insecurity, saw a concentration of violence and looting.

According to the Nigeria office of Amnesty International, during widespread demonstrations over the nation’s economic crisis, security forces in Nigeria killed at least nine individuals.