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Nigerian Forces ‘Shot to Kill’ During Protests, Amnesty Says - BLOOMBERG
(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria’s security forces used excessive force to quell demonstrations against high living costs, with evidence suggesting the police were “shooting to kill,” Amnesty International said.
Crowds chanting “we are hungry” marched through the streets of several Nigerian cities Aug. 1-10 to protest a surge in the prices of food and other commodities that drove the inflation rate to a near three-decade high. The demonstrators blamed their increasing hardship on reforms championed by President Bola Tinubu after he took office in May 2023, including scrapping fuel subsidies and relaxing foreign-exchange controls — which resulted in the naira losing about 70% of its value against the dollar.
At least 21 people died in the protests, according to the government.
“The death toll could be higher than 24 because of the authorities’ apparent desperate efforts to cover up the atrocities,” Isa Sanusi, director of Amnesty International Nigeria, said in the report published on its website on Thursday. “Peaceful protest over government policies is now a matter of life and death in Nigeria.”
Amnesty also noted that at least 1,200 people, including minors, were detained during the course of the protests, and that some of those who expressed support for the demonstrators on social media were either attacked or arbitrarily arrested by the police or members of the state security department.
The police and information ministry didn’t immediately respond to request for comments.
Amnesty’s report adds to the rising concern that Tinubu’s administration is failing to respect civil rights and is resorting to extreme measures to ensure his painful reforms don’t trigger mass unrest in Africa’s most populous nation, where about half of the population of about 200 million people are categorized as extremely poor.
The civil rights group urged the authorities to “hold the police and other security agencies to account for unleashing deadly force on people who did not constitute an imminent threat to lives.”
