The northern part of Nigeria recorded the highest number of fatalities at the very first day of the cost of living protest which is yet to falter in Africa’s biggest economy.

This is according to a new report by SBM Intelligence, an Africa-focused market and security intel-gathering consulting firm.

The report titled “An August Nightmare: Assessing The Early Days of The #EndBadGovernanceProtestInNigeria” stated that of the 30 people killed on the first day, 29 were killed in northern states with Borno having the highest record of 16 deaths.

The demonstration was most felt in the north as 86 million of its population is multidimensionally poor, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a report in 2022.

This is the region where about 70 per cent of the country’s population resides yet is plagued with rising poverty and several out-of-school children.

The northern people in Nigeria are predominantly subsistence farmers with traditional skills and tools for farming but bandits and kidnappers have taken over large swathes of territory in the northwest and central regions.

According to SBM Intel, the north has suffered more kidnappings between July 2023 and June 2024, with more than ten times as many kidnap victims as the south.

The challenge that insecurity poses has primarily manifested at dining tables and driven people to the streets, which, in a way, has complicated Nigeria’s already fragile security situation, the intel firm said.

“While hunger and economic woes affect the entire country, they are significantly more severe in the North,” the report stated.

Available data revealed that the region has the most insecure states despite being the largest supplier of the country’s agricultural needs.

As insecurity is pushing the farmers off their farms, multiple taxations by bandit warlords operating in the rural areas are shrinking their proceeds – a blow for a country ranked 109th worldwide in the 2023 Global Hunger Index.

“In early 2024, SBM found that no less than N139 million was paid as farm levies (including planting and harvesting) to bandits who demanded at least N224 million across the North between 2020 and 2023,” the report said.

“In the same period leading up to June 2024, at least 1,356 farmers were killed across the country, with most of the killings occurring in the North,” it added.

These illegal tolls have made it difficult for farmers in the region to access their farms and added to the mounting food insecurity exacerbated by factors such as an unstable currency.

Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer is currently witnessing its worst economic crisis in at least a decade buoyed by rising inflationary pressures and soaring food prices which have been double-digit for the past two years.

The high consumer prices are punishing spending power and worsening the cost of living. This fall in the living conditions of the citizens is pushing them to the streets to demand good governance, which according to them, will ease their pains.

But the protest which started peacefully degenerated into chaos and violence, especially in cities such as Bauchi, Dutse, Gombe, Kaduna, and Kano, forcing the state governments to impose curfews to douse the tension in the region. (BusinessDay)

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