 A handful of #EndBadGovernance protesters who assembled at the City Centre of Uyo, known as Ibom Plaza, were on Friday given a baptism of teargas fire by the security agents who had been keeping vigil around the area.
The protesters, who were only 16 in number, displayed placards with various inscriptions such as “End bad governance in Nigeria”, “End hunger in Nigeria”, “End bad governance in Akwa Ibom State”, “Reduce fuel price to N100”, among others.
They also displayed the Nigerian flags with some inscriptions like “Up Nigeria” written on the white portion of the flag.
Problem started when the protesters who had hitherto been singing and chanting solidarity songs, began to sing the old national anthem: “Arise O Compatriots”, which seemed to have angered the police who then began to fire several canisters of teargas at them, ordering them to relocate to Unity Park along Udoudoma Avenue, about three kilometres from Ibom plaza.
At the Unity Park to which the various security agents such as the police, army, civil defence as well the local vigilantes – Akwa Ibom Community Watch – matched them, the protesters whose number had even dwindled the more, were surrounded by the security agents who all but reduced them to an intimidated lot and seemed only desirous to be left alone to return to wherever they came from.
Some of the protesters who had spoken with journalists at the plaza, before being matched away, said they were out because life in Nigeria has become unbearable for an average person to cope with.
“We are here to protect against the high cost of fuel. In this country we can do better as a people; we cannot produce crude oil in Nigeria and buy fuel at N900 per liter; this is unacceptable,” they said.
” An average person cannot feed his family again because of the way things are going.The federal government said it has increased minimum wage. But the minimum wage is useless because it can’t even buy a bag of rice.
” If you collect N70, 000, you need to borrow M20,000 to add before you can buy a bag of rice; we want a bag of rice to be brought back to N10, 000 and the price of fuel down to N100,” one of them added
 The protest was rendered ineffective in Akwa Ibom due to heavy presence of security agents on the streets during the first day (yesterday, Thursday, August 1) coupled with early morning rain which lasted several hours.
Besides, it was learnt that yesterday, the protesters had converged at Unity Park, along Udoudoma Avenue, the approved venue by the police command, to start the protest but could not move out of the venue as they were equally restricted by the police, forcing them to disperse.
