Before the
1st of January this year, the word "occupy" was just a random word to
the average Nigerian but by the end of the first week of 2012 there was only a
handful of people who didn’t know its meaning. According to the English
dictionary the word “occupy” as used in this context refers to the act of taking
over a place: to invade and take control of a country, area or building. There
were two major occupy protests this year, the first one was OCCUPY Nigeria and
these protests which grounded the country to a halt for 5 days occurred as a
result of the Federal government announcement on the removal of the fuel
subsidy on the 1st day of the year. The second one was the OCCUPY
UNILAG protests. The latter didn’t ground the nations economy but activities in
the school were suspended because of the riots that ensued the democracy day
(may 29) speech of the President in which he announced the changing of the name
of the university to Moshood Abiola university of Lagos (MAULAG). This
announcement did not go down well with most people as protests began that very day as
early as 9 a.m. Let’s go into the nitty gritty of the whole story.
OCCUPY NIGERIA
What
started as a happy day being the 1st day of the year ended up with a
lot of mixed feelings.
I woke up
that faithful morning and all I was hearing was the exchange of pleasantries
between neighbors and the usual “happy new year, same to you” greetings. I went
to church, grateful to God for the gift of 2012 and when I got back home, I decided to watch t.v and that was when I
saw the news. The next thing I knew people were spitting fire and brimstone on
social media i.e twitter, facebook and even on the streets. People who didn’t
even know the meaning of subsidy were suddenly enlightened. Then activists and
other organizations decided to embark on an industrial strike action so that
the government would retrace their steps. ]
The
protests began in the 2nd week of the year and the first two days of
the protests were thorough. Lagos state was at the center of it all. People
also gathered in other states like Oyo, Abuja, Kaduna, Edo and even outside the country like in NEW YORK to
hold their protests. In Lagos, the Gani Fawehinmi freedom park was the camping
ground for the protests. The protests were coordinated by the SAVE NIGERIA
GROUP and other activists. The protesters would start marching from yaba and would be joined by other protesters along the way. then they would all converge at the freedom park. The freedom park was likened to the Tahrir square of Egypt where protesters camped till they had their revolution.
During the protests, the streets were empty.Its either you were on the road protesting or you were in your house watching the protests. People were afraid to come out because of the riots which were getting worse by the day. The fear of tear gas, random shootings et all kept a lot of people indoors.
By day 4 of the protests, the freedom park gathering was starting to look more like a concert because various musicians were performing and since the youths constituted the highest number of people around, it wasn't difficult to engage them. while they were enjoying themselves, the convener of the SNG advised them not to forget the main reason for their gathering. Many celebrities were present and so they decided to thrill the crowd so they don]t get tired. We can conclude that this worked because more people were trouping to the freedom park.
There was a meeting earlier that week between the Federal government and executives of the NIGERIAN LABOUR CONGRESS (NLC) but it was more like an ego battle because none of the two parties was willing to come down from their high horse.it was a grid lock. They had another meeting on saturday and the price of fuel was reduced to 97 naira per litre. Of course, some people were not happy with the resolution but the protesters had agreed to stop and so Occupy Nigeria died down.
These are some of the pictures of the protests.
These are some of the pictures of the protests.
Yes...they also occupied the north.
The crowd was MASSIVE....
Some people really took it personal ....
....while others were calm about the whole thing
yeah....the police and army were also present :)
...and some people decided to occupy the streets
Hmmmmm.... I had a pretty good laugh looking at these pictures, I hope you did too. The last set of pictures reminds me about the average Nigerian's sense of humour. Let's not forget the subsidy songs like "wa gba petrol" and cartoons that were produced. Our ability to smile even in the midst of so much suffering cannot be overestimated.
Look out for OCCUPY UNILAG in my next post.
GRACIAS.
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