Occupy Nigeria — The Fuel Subsidy Protests

On 1 January 2012 the Jonathan administration, through Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke and PPPRA, announced the removal of the petroleum subsidy. The pump price of petrol moved overnight from ₦65 to ₦141 per litre. The Nigerian Labour Congress, Trade Union Congress and a coalition of civil-society organisations called a nationwide general strike from 9 January. Mass protests, organised in Lagos at Gani Fawehinmi Square (Ojota), in Abuja at the Eagle Square, and in Kano, Kaduna and Port Harcourt, were the largest urban protests since the anti-SAP demonstrations of 1989. On 16 January the federal government announced a partial restoration that set the price at ₦97 per litre. A subsequent National Assembly probe led by Hon. Farouk Lawan documented multi-billion-naira fraud in the subsidy regime — though the Lawan probe itself collapsed in the Otedola bribery scandal later that year. Occupy Nigeria established the template — coordinated labour-civil society mobilisation, intensive social-media documentation, named protest squares — that End SARS would inherit in 2020.