People wave Russian flags during a protest in Kaduna, Nigeria, on August 5, 2024.Mohammed Ibrahim/The Associated Press
When hundreds of protesters waved Russian flags during mass demonstrations in northern Nigeria in early August, it sent shock waves through the West African country.
Military commanders swiftly denounced it as “treason.” Police arrested more than 90 of the flag-waving protesters, along with local tailors who had sold the flags. Political commentators fretted that Russia was expanding its influence in the region after pro-Moscow regimes had seized power in military coups in three other West African countries.
But interviews with many of the Nigerian protesters tell a different story. It’s one that complicates the conventional narrative about the Russian surge in Africa, which is often seen solely as a story of superpower rivalry and anti-colonial sentiment.
Instead, the protesters said they were mainly motivated by financial issues, including the deteriorating economy in northern Nigeria and the temporary closing of borders after a coup in neighbouring Niger last year. For them, pro-Russian protests are largely a cry of economic desperation – a search for any external force to help them, without knowing how.
Western fears of growing Russian influence have gained momentum since the recent coups in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Each case led to military agreements between Moscow and the new regimes, with Russian military contractors arriving to support the local armies, while French and United Nations forces were ejected.
But the support for Russia is not merely a geopolitical manoeuvre. Umar Yussuf, a 37-year-old shoemaker in the northwestern Nigerian city of Katsina, said he waved a Russian flag during the anti-government protests because of his growing anger at the country’s failure to tackle the economic crisis.
More than a decade ago, after migrating from Niger to Katsina, Mr. Yussuf was able to earn nearly US$200 a month as a cobbler. But his income has plummeted in the past year.
Nigeria’s collapsing currency and its soaring inflation rate, which has reached a 28-year high, have driven up the cost of his imported shoemaking supplies. An insurgency in the north, combined with rising banditry and kidnapping, has damaged the local economy, with many businesses shutting down.
And as his customers suffered a decline in income, his sales dropped, too. “For many people here, it’s now all about surviving, eating and ensuring safety in some little way,” Mr. Yussuf said.
His own income these days is as low as US$5 a month; he has been forced to borrow from friends and relatives, while reducing his family’s meals. Hunger has become more common in his home.
A man holds a Russian flag during an anti-government demonstrations in Kaduna state, Nigeria on August 5, 2024.Stringer/Reuters
“I feel less like a man,” Mr. Yussuf said.
Anti-government protests, sometimes turning violent, began to sweep across Nigeria in early August. A few days later, President Bola Tinubu went on national television, calling for the suspension of the protests.
Mr. Yussuf watched the speech, feeling deeply disappointed. The next day, he joined the protests, waving a Russian flag to show the extent of his anger. Tailors were selling the flags for as little as $0.20 each.
“I have had enough,” he said. “The Nigerian President does not listen to the people. The hardship is severe, and he needs to tend to us.”
Yakubu Adu, a 39-year-old onion trader, waved a Russian flag during the protests in Kano, another northern Nigerian city. He said he was inspired by pro-Russian sentiment among the Hausa people of Niger, who share linguistic and ethnic links with much of northern Nigeria’s population. But he was also motivated by his own economic hardship.
Mr. Adu said he lost hundreds of dollars when he bought a shipment of onions from Niger and could not get it across the border to Nigeria because the border was shut by sanctions imposed against the former country after its military coup.
Mr. Adu estimates that he lost two-thirds of his daily income after the sanctions were imposed: “It nearly ruined my business,” he said.
His family had to cut their meals, subsisting on cheap local maize: “It was barely enough,” he said.
The sanctions were imposed by the West African political bloc, ECOWAS, which was chaired by Mr. Tinubu at the time. But many West Africans have blamed American and European leaders for the sanctions, accusing them of using backroom pressure to force the border closings. (ECOWAS has denied this.)
Leaders such as Mr. Tinubu are also perceived as Western-backed, and Nigeria’s currency devaluation is often portrayed as being a result of Western pressure.
Sanni Usman, a Kano resident, said the Russian flags were marketed by vendors who were exploiting the anti-Western mood in northern Nigeria. One of the vendors approached him during the protests.
“He asked me if I was willing to get the attention of a global power who was different from the Western infidels,” Mr. Usman said.
Mohammed Bala, a 41-year-old truck driver in Katsina, said he waved a Russian flag at the demonstrations after the border closing caused him, like Mr. Adu, a year of economic hardship.
Before the sanctions, Mr. Bala had been earning as much as US$225 monthly by transporting goods between Nigeria and Niger. But after the border was closed, he and other truck drivers were stranded in Niger for weeks, while their money ran out.
He survived on the cheapest food he could find – watermelon and dates – and the charity of his fellow truck drivers, until eventually, he found a smuggler’s route into Nigeria by bribing the border guards.
“At the border, whenever I thought about the hardship my family was experiencing due to my absence, my hatred for the West increased greatly,” Mr. Bala said.
With a report from Geoffrey York in Johannesburg.