Police arrest 25 for staging protest over high cost of living in Niger

Aisha Jibrin, 30, has been taken into custody by the Niger State Police Command. On Monday, she organised a large-scale demonstration in Minna, the state capital, where she spoke out against the high cost of living.

Aisha was taken into custody together with 22 other women, including 43-year-old Fatima Isyaku and 57-year-old Fatima Aliyu.

Niger State women and youths protested on Monday in the streets of Minna against what they described as the harsh reality and growing expense of life in the nation.

At the well-known Kpakungu Roundabout, a group of women led by Aisha blocked Minna-Bida Road in protest of what they perceived to be the suffering caused by the Bola Tinubu administration.

Later, men and young people joined them in stopping moving cars.

The teenagers continued to protest despite the police being dispatched to the location, with some of them heard claiming that the police were government agents and that nothing could be done to stop them.

But the Niger State Police Command claimed that the demonstrators were violent when it released a statement on Wednesday announcing the arrest of Aisha and two of her colleagues.

DSP Abiodun Wasiu, the public relations officer for the state police, acknowledged that the police used minimal force to scatter the demonstrators.

He, however, alleged that following the admission of minimum force by the police, the protesters turned violent by “attacking the police with weapons such as stones, bottles, sticks, cutlasses and damaged police patrol vehicles and parts of the Kpakungu Division roof.”

Source