NIGERIA GOV’T BRIBED PROTESTERS?

A video has surfaced of a Nigerian anti-government protester alleging President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government paid citizens to disrupt protests that have rocked the country over a cost-of-living crisis.

The unnamed man said people received 5,000 nairas or $3 to disrupt #EndBadGovernance demonstrations in the capital, Abuja.

Like their kin in Kenya, who have protested tax hikes for the past two months, Nigerians are crying out in the streets against International Monetary Fund-approved economic policies that have spiked the cost of living.

Oil-rich Nigeria has suffered an economic crisis since Tinubu scrapped a decades-old fuel subsidy and lowered the value of the Nigerian currency, the naira, to attract foreign investment after taking office in May 2023. Inflation has climbed to a 28-year high of 34.19 per cent, as of mid-July, while the naira has depreciated to a record low against the US dollar.

Nigeria is also combating an armed insurgency that, as of 2021, had k*lled some 350,000 people, mostly children below the age of five, according to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report.

Video credit: @NewsCentralTV (X)