From COVID-19 to fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria: Assessing the political opportunities for local grievance

Abstract

How do publics protest local misgovernance? Two crisis cycles that posed severe economic hardship on ordinary Nigerians – the COVID-19 pandemic [2020] and the fuel subsidy removal policy [2023] – are interesting cases by which this study examines the dynamics of grassroot protests that are triggered by economic crises. It assesses the incentives and disincentives for local mobilisations across the two episodes and arrives at fundamental and direct factors underpinning local grievance and local governance inefficiencies. This study contends that social and economic opportunities for grassroot protests are created or subverted within a larger political context which hosts and possesses the capacity to mediate those collective action prospects. It further argues that the polarisation of the Nigerian polity occasioned by the 2023 general elections cycle partly accounts for the absence of immediate protests in response to the 2023 fuel subsidy removal policy, in contrast to the widespread demonstrations that instantly greeted the 2012 episode.