Thread by @JoeWSJ

The youth-led protests in Nigeria are still growing - and today the #EndSARS demonstrators managed to essentially shut down Africa's largest city. I'm in Lagos -- here's a link to our latest story and a short thread on why you need to pay attention.

wsj.com/articles/niger…

In case you haven't been following: the protests began with demands to ban a notorious police unit, SARS, organized under the hashtag #EndSARS, which has won the backing of many in Nigerian diaspora + celebrities and business leaders around the world, including @Kanye and @Jack.

Today's protests in Lagos were the largest yet - coordinated and strategic. Protesters positioned themselves at the most important intersections, shutting down traffic across a city home to 20 million people, blocking access to key highways and the airport.

Many roads were eerily empty of vehicles - a strange sight in a city infamous for having one of the world's worst traffic problems. Thousands of people could be seen walking on streets and causeways where its normally bumper to bumper.

The protests were not confined to Lagos - demonstrators took to the streets in cities across the south and centre of the country. But as the numbers have grown on the street, the rhetoric from the government has also sharpened.

The Defense Minister warned protesters against breaching national security and the information minister said the government wouldn’t “fold its arms and allow the country to descend into anarchy.” This afternoon, the army deployed to several intersections in the capital, Abuja.

Protesters and Amnesty international say the government is deploying agitators to cause chaos and create a pretext for a crackdown, a charge the government denies.

The protests come in a context of profound economic malaise--the oil-price crash and COVID has slammed Nigeria’s economy, which is failing to keep pace with rapid population growth. More than 55% of Nigerians are underemployed or unemployed and youth unemployment is even higher.

President Muhammadu Buhari has dissolved SARS & asked for more time to meet protester demands. A former general, he has deployed the army against other protests before: in 2018, 45 Shiite Muslims were killed during a march to support a jailed cleric.

These demonstrators -- and the optics around them -- are very different. They are not led by a marginalized group but by young educated (and famous, @davido) Nigerians, many of whom live in the country's more affluent neighborhoods.

Nigeria's population is very young (av age 18) and is one of the world’s fastest growing, projected to overtake the U.S. to become the third-largest by 2050. The demonstrations fit into an emerging global pattern of youth-led calls for change we've seen in Hong Kong,Sudan, Chile

The government appears to be divided on how to respond. Some officials want a crackdown, arguing the platform has become hijacked (and funded) by political opposition to Buhari's government, who won re-election last year.

Fractures are also appearing inside the protest movement -- between those who want to keep the focus on police brutality and those pushing for more fundamental change.

A key actor (of course) is Nigeria's military, which just announced it will begin a exercise—Operation Crocodile Smile—the first time the annual exercise, typically concentrated in the oil-producing Delta region, will be nationwide.

For now, Lagos protesters are staying in the streets. “These protests are happening in phases and we are not ready to leave the streets anytime soon,” said Uche Nnadi, a 36-year-old Nigerian actor. “We are tired of bad leadership.”