Nigerians marched against hunger, security forces responded with gunshots and force, killing 22

Ismail Musa was out having tea with his brother Jamilu. As they heard a gunshot.  Musa ran to hide under a table but was hit by a bullet fired to disperse protesters in northern Nigeria’s Kano state. The 23-year-old barely made it halfway to the hospital.

“All he said was ‘mama’,” Musa’s sister said, her voice weak from crying. Musa was among the 22 who were killed during protests against hunger and bad governance in Nigeria, according to Amnesty International’s Nigeria office.

Nigerian security forces said they used “appropriate” measures to quell violence during the protests and only admitted killing one protester — a teenager who the Nigerian army said was killed by a “warning shot”. But The Associated Press spoke to three families who said their relatives were killed by gunshots fired by security agencies, some of their accounts verified by witnesses and videos from the scenes.

“There was nothing whatsoever that happened during that protest to warrant the use of live firearms,” Amnesty International’s Nigeria director Isa Sanusi said.

The cost-of-living crisis that fueled the protests is the worst in a generation in this oil-rich and most populous African country, which by 2050 is forecast to become the third most populous nation in the world, tied with the United States after India and China.