Headline

FULL LIST: From Nigeria To UK, Protesters Demanding Better Deals From Govts

Published

1 year ago

August 5, 2024

The second quarter of 2024 has been greeted by protests in many countries worldwide. The peculiarity of peaceful protests becoming violent is usually affiliated with Africa, but it has taken an upturn in recent months, extending to Europe and Asia.

The recent protests broke out in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Kenya, Bangladesh, and India.

It first broke out in Kenya when youths in the country began demonstrations that turned violent over the prospect of increased levies on essential foodstuffs. The protest claimed more than 20 lives. This led the country’s president, William Ruto, to withdraw his finance bill and dissolve his cabinet.

Aside from Kenya, protesters in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, and India have followed suit in what they believe to be a revolutionary protest that would solve the myriads of problems ranging from the high cost of living, anti-immigration, anti-labour policies and quota system for government jobs.

In this report, The PUNCH highlights the countries where protests are ongoing, causes, and the demands by the protesters in the identified countries.

2. Nigeria

Protesters hit the streets across the country over the high cost of living and soaring prices of foodstuffs on August 1. The protest scheduled to hold for 10 days was tagged ‘Days of Rage’ and organised by a group called the “Take It Back” Movement in collaboration with Concerned Nigerians, Nigerians Against Hunger, Initiative for Change, Human Rights Co-Advocacy Group, Nigerians Against Corruption Initiative, Citizens for Change Advocacy Initiative, Timely Intervention, Active Citizens Group, Students for Change, We Coalition, Total Intervention, Refurbished Nigeria, Tomorrow Today, Our Future in Our Own Hands Initiative, Youths Against Tyranny, and Call a Spade a Spade Movement, among others, to put a stop to what they described as ‘bad governance’ by the country’s leaders.

Their demands include an end to anti-people’s policies, a reversal of fuel price, an increase in the national minimum wage to N300,000, a reversal of the hike in tertiary education fees, transparency and accountability in governance, electoral reforms, including the autonomy of the Independent National Electoral Commission, reforms in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, transition to a unicameral legislature, and reform security agencies to stop human rights violations.

The protest has reached day five despite President Bola Tinubu calling on the protesters to quell their action because of infiltrators who were noticed waving the Russian flag in FCT, Kano, Kaduna, and Zamfara.

2. India

The Indian National Trade Union Congress has called for sit-in protests at all district collectorate offices across Kerala State on August 5 to denounce the state government’s labour policies.

It first started in February when police used tear gas and barricades to stop thousands of farmers from marching to the capital, New Delhi, to press their demands that the government set a minimum price for all their produce to ensure they could sustain their livelihood. This demonstration has lingered, and others who are not in the Agricultural sector have supported it.

Earlier talks with the Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai failed to secure a government commitment to provide support prices, which spurred the farmers to go ahead with their “Delhi Chalo”, or “Let’s go to Delhi”, march.

Their demand is that the Ministry of Agriculture should increase prices for their crops to ensure they can sustain their livelihood.

3. Bangladesh

Bangladesh is on the boil again, with close to 100 people killed on Sunday as protesters, calling for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation, clashed with security forces and supporters of the ruling party.

Last month, at least 150 people were killed and thousands injured in violence touched off by student groups protesting against reserved quotas in government jobs. The ‘Students Against Discrimination’ group, which was at the forefront of last month’s job quota protests, is leading the latest demonstrations.

Demonstrations started at university campuses in June after the High Court reinstated a quota system for government jobs, overturning a 2018 decision by Hasina’s government to scrap it.

The Supreme Court suspended the high court order after the government’s appeal and then dismissed the lower court order last month, directing that 93% of jobs should be open to candidates on merit.

REAS ALSO: JUST IN: Tinubu, Security Chiefs In Closed-door Meeting Amid Protests

The protests to reform the quota system paused after the Supreme Court scrapped most quotas on July 21. Protesters, however, returned last week demanding a public apology from the country’s Prime Minister Hasina for the violence, restoration of internet connections, reopening of college and university campuses, and release of those arrested.

Their demand is that the job quota in the country be reversed and that PM Hasina resign. Although the resignation call has been fulfilled, the country’s PM was seen today in a video that went viral on social media, fleeing her palace to seek a place in India until the unrest subsided.

4. United Kingdom

Violent protests have erupted in towns and cities across Britain after three girls were killed in a knife attack at a children’s dance class in Southport in northwest England last week.

The murders were seized on by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups as misinformation spread that the suspected attacker was an immigrant and a radical Islamist. Police have said the suspect was born in Britain and are not treating it as a terrorist incident.

The protests have spread through cities across the country, including in Liverpool, Bristol and Manchester on Saturday, resulting in dozens of arrests as shops and businesses were vandalised and looted, and several police officers were injured.

On Sunday, hundreds of anti-immigration protesters gathered by a hotel near Rotherham, northern England, which Britain’s interior minister said was housing asylum seekers.
Although the country’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, condemned what he described as “far-right thuggery” and said perpetrators would face the full force of the law after days of violent anti-immigration protests culminated in hotels being targeted.

Some Britons are demanding the return of immigrants to their countries as they believe that they are the ones causing unrest in the UK.

5. Kenya

A wave of protests swept through Kenya. Triggered by controversial proposed tax hikes, the movement has evolved into a wider campaign for more accountable governance in the country. Some demand the entire government’s resignation. The demonstrations started on June 18 and, for a week, were overwhelmingly peaceful, but in the early afternoon of June 25, they took a violent turn.

A number of demonstrators breached police barricades and stormed the precincts of parliament. They set parts of the building on fire, destroyed legislators’ offices, and carted away property, including the speaker’s mace.

Their demand is that the bill be reversed and President Ruto’s resignation be announced. So far, only the finance bill has been reversed; the President remains.

Headline

UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

Published

15 hours ago

October 25, 2025

Editor

UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

“This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.

Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.

Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.

Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.

“Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.

The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

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UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

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Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

Headline

King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP