A priori, it was a message for slow reflection in the midst of the storm, a call for calm from a supposed mass youth leader. A watch generated the opposite: it unleashed a social volcano.
Last week, Seyi Tinubu, the eldest son of the president of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, published a photograph on his Instagram account, on which he has almost 850,000 followers, to support his father in the face of the wave of protests that shake the country. town of Africa. In recent weeks, the Nigerian giant, with the economy in free fall - this week inflation stood at 29.9%, a figure not seen since 1996, and several foods have doubled their price in one year - , has experienced demonstrations in several cities to protest the increase in the cost of cereals or gasoline, which has multiplied its price by four since last year the government surprisingly eliminated subsidies on fuel in an attempt to stop the economic disaster.
To quell the heated tempers, Seyi opted for a social media post in which he quoted a speech by his father. “There is no joy in seeing the people of this nation carry a weight that should have been freed from years ago.
I wish today's difficulties did not exist. But we must endure if we want to reach the good side of our future.” Seyi accompanied the text with a black and white photo of himself, in which he appears with a lost gaze and a serious Che Guevara-style demeanor. He also added several hastags of support for the president such as
In his call for social peace, he forgot to hide a detail. At the end of the image she saw a watch strap tied to her wrist. In a few minutes, Internet users found other photos from her account in which the model was seen. A gem: a Richard Mille RM 055, a luxury Swiss example, valued at around 350,000 euros.
The publication, with more than 10,300 comments, was the starting point of the outrage. “The most painful thing is that the guy has a Richard Mille on his wrist while he asks us to be strong,” wrote Aremu, who defines himself as an entrepreneur in his profile. A Nigerian girl, Quin Uju, questioned the president's son. “How are we supposed to resist when your people have eliminated subsidies and are failing to increase incomes. Isn't that evil? “Everything goes up except salaries.”
While hundreds of protesters took to the streets of cities like Ibadan or Lagos with banners against the government or calling the president a thief, new examples of Seyi's ostentatious life were shown on the networks, such as a trip on the presidential plane that the young man went late last year to attend a polo match in the city of Kano, in the north of the country.
On that occasion, Nigerian journalist Jaafar Jaafar published images of Seyi getting off the plane and surrounded by security members and greeting the local authorities, who had come to receive him at the airport. The reporter also reported that one of the president's daughters, Hanan, had used the presidential jet to take a photo set in the northern region of Bauchi.
“Even if our laws are vague in this regard,” Jaafar wrote then, “one thing is clear. “This is an affront to the moral code of leadership.”
Although on this occasion it has been exacerbated by the attitude of the son of the president of Nigeria, the growing Nigerian unrest is no exception.
On February 20, the African Development Bank released a report in which it warned of a social earthquake brewing across the continent. According to its biannual Africa Macroeconomic Performance Outlook study, although overall economic growth is expected in most African countries, rising costs of energy, food and other commodities could “trigger significant domestic social unrest.” .
The conclusions especially pointed out the risk in four African nations: Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya... and Nigeria.
