Many banks, schools and stores shuttered their doors yesterday in Nigerian cities where guilds representing millions of workers embarked on a general strike to protest fuel price increases.
The strike, which began at midnight on Tuesday, threatened oil exports from Africa's largest producer.
Nigeria's two major oil unions were participating in the strike. Don Boham, a spokesman for Royal Dutch/Shell, accounting for half the country's production of 2.5 million barrels a day, said some workers in the commercial capital of Lagos were unable to come to work because buses and taxis were not operating.
It was too early to determine whether the company's operations had been adversely affected, Boham added.
"We're still studying the effects," he said. "The situation is calm."
Leaders of Nigeria's blue-collar oil union were meeting yesterday to decide what steps to take next, officials said.
Nigeria is the world's seventh-biggest oil exporter and the source of one-fifth of US oil imports.
Few vehicles plied the normally traffic-clogged roads of Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, where clusters of riot police kept watch over a small group of chanting university students and separate clusters of thugs known as "area boys" gathering on otherwise abandoned streets.
In the capital, Abuja, traffic was a bit heavier, although many shops and stores were also closed. Peter Ozo-Eson, a Nigeria Labor Congress official, blamed a state television report that incorrectly reported the strike was called off late Tuesday for "confusing some people" who ventured out onto the streets.
"This is a strike. We have asked people to stay home," Ozo-Eson said.
Armored vehicles carrying police with tear gas launchers and automatic rifles stationed at key intersections in the capital deterred union members from staging rallies as anticipated "because the Nigerian citizens don't have guns to challenge them," Ozo-Eson said.
Talks called by President Olusegun Obasanjo's government on Monday and Tuesday failed to avert the strike.
Late Tuesday, a court in Abuja ordered the government to lower fuel prices and told unions to call off the strike or face punitive action.
Labor Minister Hassan Lawal argued that it was independent marketers -- and not the government -- who were responsible for raising pump prices under recent government deregulation. Lawal urged marketers to bring prices down.
Nigeria Labor Congress leader Adams Oshiomhole accused the government of "hiding behind deregulation" while "jacking up prices."
Strikers threatened to shut down oil terminals and rigs, cutting off the flow.
Police warned against protests, saying none had been granted a permit, and urged people to go about their "lawful business."
Police shot and killed at least 12 people during a violent 10-day strike called last year to protest a fuel price increase.
The strike was called off after the government agreed to lower prices.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS