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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.

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Hiroshima Marks 80 Years As US-Russia Nuclear Tensions Rise

Published

12 hours ago

August 7, 2025

Editor

Japan marked 80 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Wednesday with a ceremony reminding the world of the horrors unleashed, as sabre-rattling between the United States and Russia keeps the nuclear “Doomsday Clock” close to midnight.

A silent prayer was held at 8:15 am (2315 GMT), the moment when US aircraft Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” over the western Japanese city on August 6, 1945.

On a sweltering morning, hundreds of black-clad officials, students and survivors laid flowers at the memorial cenotaph, with the ruins of a domed building in the background, a stark reminder of the horrors that unfolded.

In a speech, Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui warned of “an accelerating trend toward military buildup around the world”, against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the chaos in the Middle East.

“These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history,” he said.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said it was Japan’s mission “to take the lead… toward a world without nuclear weapons”.

The final death toll of the Hiroshima attack would hit around 140,000 people, killed not just by the colossal blast and the ball of fire, but also later by the radiation.

Three days after “Little Boy”, on August 9, another atomic bomb killed 74,000 people in Nagasaki. Imperial Japan surrendered on August 15, bringing an end to World War II.

Today, Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis of 1.2 million but the attacks live on in the memories of many.

On the eve of the ceremony, people began lining up to pay their respects to the victims in front of the cenotaph.

Before dawn on Wednesday, families who lost loved ones in the attack also came to pray.

Yoshie Yokoyama, 96, who arrived in a wheelchair with her grandson, told reporters that her parents and grandparents were bomb victims.

“My grandfather died soon after the bombing, while my father and mother both died after developing cancer. My parents-in-law also died, so my husband couldn’t see them again when he came back from battlefields after the war.

“People are still suffering,” she added.

Wednesday’s ceremony was set to include a record of around 120 countries and regions including, for the first time, Taiwanese and Palestinian representatives.

The United States — which has never formally apologised for the bombings — was represented by its ambassador to Japan. Russia and China were absent.

Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots organisation that last year won the Nobel Peace Prize, is representing the dwindling number of survivors, known as hibakusha.

As of March, there were 99,130 hibakusha, according to the Japanese health ministry, with the average age of 86.

“I want foreign envoys to visit the peace memorial museum and understand what happened,” the group’s co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki told local media ahead of the commemorations.

Pope Leo XIV said in a statement that “in our time of mounting global tensions and conflicts”, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained “living reminders of the profound horrors wrought by nuclear weapons”.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “the very weapons that brought such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again being treated as tools of coercion”.

– Younger generation –
The attacks remain the only time atomic bombs have been used in wartime.

Kunihiko Sakuma, 80, who survived the blasts as a baby, told AFP he was hopeful that there could eventually be a nuclear-free world.

“The younger generation is working hard for that end,” he said ahead of the ceremony.

But in January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” shifted to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest in its 78-year history.

The clock symbolising humanity’s distance from destruction was last moved to 90 seconds to midnight over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia and the United States account for around 90 percent of the world’s over 12,000 warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

SIPRI warned in June that “a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened,” with nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states modernising their arsenals.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump said that he had ordered the deployment of two nuclear submarines following an online spat with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

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Rare 1937 ‘Hobbit’ Discovered In House Clearance Sells For $57,000

Published

13 hours ago

August 7, 2025

Editor

A rare first-edition copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” sold for 43,000 pounds ($57,000) at auction on Wednesday, after it was found during a house clearance in South-West England.

Purchased by a private collector in the United Kingdom, the book is one of 1,500 original copies of the British author’s seminal fantasy novel that were published in 1937.

Of those, only “a few hundred are believed to still remain”, according to the auction house Auctioneum, which discovered the book on a bookcase at a home in Bristol.

Bidders from around the world drove the price up by more than four times what the auction house expected for the manuscript.

“It’s a wonderful result for a very special book,” said Auctioneum rare books specialist Caitlin Riley.

“The surviving books from the initial print run are now considered some of the most sought-after books in modern literature,” Auctioneum said in a statement.

Auctioneum unearthed the book during a routine house clearance after its owner passed away.

“Nobody knew it was there,” Riley said. “It was just a run-of-the-mill bookcase.”

“It was clearly an early Hobbit at first glance, so I just pulled it out and began to flick through it, never expecting it to be a true first edition,” she said.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she added, calling it an “unimaginably rare find”.

The copy is bound in light green cloth and features rare black-and-white illustrations by Tolkien, who created his beloved Middle-earth universe while he was a professor at the University of Oxford.

The book was passed down in the family library of Hubert Priestley, a botanist connected to the university.

“It is likely that both men knew each other,” according to Auctioneum, which said Priestley and Tolkien shared mutual correspondence with author C.S. Lewis, who was also at Oxford.

“The Hobbit”, which was followed by the epic series “The Lord of the Rings”, has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.

The sagas were turned into a hit movie franchise in the 2000s.

A first edition of “The Hobbit” with a handwritten note in Elvish by the author sold for £137,000 at Sotheby’s in June 2015.

AFP

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Relief For Applicants As Germany Eases Visa Process, Opens Visa Centres In Nigeria, Others

Published

14 hours ago

August 6, 2025

Editor

Germany has expanded its Schengen visa services by launching four new application centres in Africa and the Middle East, including two in Nigeria.

The centres, located in Abuja, Lagos (Nigeria), Yaoundé (Cameroon), and Nicosia (Cyprus), are part of a new seven-year partnership between Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and VFS Global, the international visa processing firm.

Until now, Nigerians applying for German Schengen visas had to go through the German Embassy in Abuja or the Consulate General in Lagos, where limited capacity and high demand often caused delays and long appointment wait times.

The new visa centres are expected to significantly ease the process, cut down on waiting periods, and improve overall access for applicants.

Germany continues to be a major destination for Africans and Middle Easterners pursuing education, healthcare, tourism, and job opportunities.

Meanwhile, VFS Global has issued a warning to the public about fake websites and individuals offering fraudulent visa appointments for a fee.

Recent figures indicate Nigeria had a 45.9% Schengen visa rejection rate in 2024—the third-highest globally after Bangladesh.