Prix du fuel : émeute à Lagos. Un mort – 3 janvier 2012

Nigeria fuel price protest turns violent in Lagos

usatoday.com

4 01 2012

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) – Protesters furious over spiraling gas prices set fires on an expressway Tuesday and at least one person was killed in the violent unrest after Nigeria’s government did away with a subsidy program that had kept fuel costs down for more than two decades.

One union leader described the federal government’s hugely unpopular move as « immoral and politically suicidal, » and urged Nigerians to resist « with everything they have. » But Tuesday’s protest showed that, once unleashed, the pent-up anger of the masses could be hard to curtail.

Angry crowds vandalized gas stations, intimidated owners into keeping their pumps unused and assaulted a soldier, showing how easily the fragile peace in Africa’s most populous nation could spiral into chaos.

One young man threw jerrycans of engine oil off the racks at a gas station and tried to damage the station’s gas pumps. After union leader and chairman of the Joint Action Front, Dipo Fashina, asked the young man to stop vandalizing the station, he did, but later started one of the first bonfires of the protest in the middle of the highway.

Other activists marched to the protest songs of the late Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti who fought against the injustices of military rule in Nigeria. His musician son, Seun, walked shirtless among the demonstrators, as his father used to, and also made attempts to keep things civil. Read more…