Photograph 

By Kayode Oyero

Policemen tear-gassed defiant #EndBadGovernance protesters at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos on Thursday morning.

The Lekki Tollgate, now symbolic for civil demonstrations following the #EndSARS nationwide protests against police brutality in 2020, was initially deserted on Thursday morning as protesters marched against hunger and hardship in different parts of Nigeria.

However, around 11 am, protesters emerged at the Lekki Tollgate bearing placards with different inscriptions that conveyed their dissatisfaction against the current administration of President Bola Tinubu.

Demonstrators gather during the End Bad Governance protest at Ikeja, Lagos, on August 1, 2024. (Photo by Benson Ibeabuchi / Bloomberg / AFP)
Chanting solidarity songs, the protesters lamented the hunger in the country and urged the government to do something as quickly as possible.

“We just want the country to be stable. People are hungry. People are dying. We are not coming to fight; we only want the government to do something,” a female protester said.

Scores of security agents including policemen, soldiers, officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and the Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Agency were on ground at the iconic tollgate.

The security agents informed the demonstrators, mostly youths, of a court order restricting their gathering to the Gani Fawehinmi Park in Ojota and the Peace Park in Ketu, both areas in the Lagos mainland part of the state.

Nigerian policemen take position near protestors gathering during the End Bad Governance protest in Abuja on August 1, 2024. (Photo by Kola Sulaimon / AFP)
The pocket of youths who converged on the tollgate rejected the relocation to Lagos mainland and continued their demonstrations till they were dispersed by police teargas.

Propagated on social media, the nationwide protests against economic hardship started on Thursday, August 1, 2024, and is scheduled to stretch till August 10 across all states of the Federation as well as the nation’s capital Abuja.

Prices of food and basic commodities have gone through the roof in the last months, as Nigerians battle one of the country’s worst inflation rates and economic crises sparked by the government’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of forex windows.

The police, military and the Department of State Services had warned against Kenya-styled protests. Politicians, who surmised that the planned rallies might end up like the EndSARS demonstrations of October 2020, have continued to appeal to youths to shelve the planned rallies but the young people have been unfazed.

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