Angered by gasoline prices and corrupt government, Nigeria begins strike

Gas prices have risen from $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per liter) to at least $3.50 per gallon (94 cents per liter) since a government fuel subsidy ended on Jan. 1 at the orders of Jonathan’s administration. That spurred a spike in prices for food and transportation across a nation of more than 160 million people, most of whom live on less than $2 a day.

While lawmakers on Sunday rebuked the president’s decision, the unions said they would continue their strike.

Bola Adejobi, 53, said she’s protesting against more than just fuel costs. For her and many others in Africa’s most populous country, the strike represents anger that much of the nation remains without electricity and clean drinking water after more than 50 years of oil production.

“It is high time to take Nigeria into our hands,” Adejobi said. “It happened in Egypt. It happened in Libya.”

Two major unions have said they will maintain the strike despite a court restraining order. A similar situation occurred in 2003, when strikers over eight days attacked shops that remained open, took over air traffic control towers and caused a drop in oil production in a country vital to U.S. energy supplies.

Organizers have called for peaceful protests, but gang members already began stoning vehicles and harassing motorists in Lagos. Some riot police stood on hand at the demonstration site Monday. They quickly became outnumbered by protesters.

The strikes comes as activists have begun a loose-knit group of protests called “Occupy Nigeria,” inspired by those near Wall Street in New York. Their anger extends to the government’s weak response to ongoing violence in Nigeria by a radical Muslim sect that, according to an Associated Press count, killed at least 510 people last year.

Famous Nigerian authors, including Chinua Achebe, issued a statement Monday saying they support the strike, and warning that if left unattended the violence by the extremist group could sweep the country.

“The country’s leadership should not view the incessant attacks as mere temporary misfortune with which the citizenry must learn to live; they are precursors to events that could destabilize the entire country,” their statement read.

The government has so fair failed to calm public anger over the spiraling gasoline costs. The government has promised that the $8 billion in estimated savings a year from the end of the fuel subsidies would go toward badly needed road and public projects.

One protester in Lagos held his protest sign upside down.

“Our life is already turned upside down,” he told a reporter. “It is not how it’s supposed to be.”

Demonstrators burned a patrol car and a private car parked next to it in the northern city of Kano, filling the sky with billows of smoke as thousands protested below. Some in Nigeria’s second-largest city are asking for the government to restore the subsidy. Others want Jonathan to resign. “He cannot rule this country,” a placard read.

Some protesters also marched to the seat of the state of government in Kano where security officers used tear gas and fired into the air to disperse the crowd.