More than 500 hundred Nigerians took to the streets of Lagos on Monday to vent their dissatisfaction with President Muhammadu Buhari who is currently out on vacation in Britain.
The angry protesters, in a rare show of public dissent, are blaming the 74 year old for the country’s economic recession which has rendered many jobless.
Africa’s most populous nation is grappling with its worst economic crisis since 1991, as unemployment and inflation rates climb to 11 and 6 year highs respectively.
“Unemployed people are hungry and angry,” read one Lagos demonstrator’s sign, against a backbeat of anthems by Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti, a fearless critic of Nigeria’s often brutal and corrupt military rule until his death in 1997.
“Government of the rich, for the rich, making rules for the poor,” chanted other protesters.
The protest is much to analyst expectations that Nigeria’s rising misery index could trigger a widespread protest against the current administration.
Bismarck Rewane, the chief executive officer at advisory firm, Financial Derivatives Company (FDC) had given a three-month timeline before such protests surface.
“If nothing changes to ease the pain of Nigerians within the next three months, it could spark a civil unrest which would be damaging if the current administration is eyeing a re-election at the next poll,” Rewane said in January.
There is an inverse relationship between a country’s misery index and the serving political leader; such that when the index accelerates, the incumbent leader’s popularity among the people bottoms out.
Nigeria’s misery index of 52.15, as at the third quarter of 2016, is the fourth highest in sub-Saharan Africa, and compares poorly with Cameroon’s 4.55, Ivory Coast’s 5.1 and Uganda’s 9.5.
It is believed that consecutive rises in the misery index usually lead to a decline in the favourability ratings of the serving administration, and could result in a re-election loss for the incumbent.
This was the case for United States President Ford and Jimmy carter, whose terms saw the misery index reach all-time highs. Likewise, Nigeria’s 2015 elections reflected this hypothesis.
The recent presidential election in Ghana and Gambia is also proof that electorates grow impatient with their political leaders when their misery worsens.
Buhari took office in 2015 on pledges to diversify the economy away from oil, fight corruption and end an Islamic insurgency by Boko Haram that broke out in the northeast in 2009.
But critics say he has made little progress, with deteriorating power supply and rising unemployment rate which is at a six-year high of 13.9 percent, according to the NBS.
