Local people in the Southeast protested against recruitment conditions into an oil company.

Calm has now returned to Niger’s southeastern region near the border with Nigeria after young unemployed people in the provincial town of Diffa rioted, protesting for two days against what they considered unjust recruitment conditions into a local oil company, the Xinhua news agency reported yesterday, April 29, 2013.

The return of calm followed the visit of Prime Minister Brigi Rafini who led a delegation of local parliamentarians. The rioting young people clashed with security forces, leaving three demonstrators with bullet wounds and a lot of property destroyed. The wounded were admitted at Diffa Regional Hospital. The violence that began on Saturday, April 27, 2013, saw the destruction of a bar, school, the ransacking of a local bank and burning of a police vehicle, a local witness said.  

According to Radio France Internationale, RFI the demonstrations began on Thursday, April 25, 2013 and were put down following the intervention of National Guard troops, gendarmes and policemen. It said many people were wounded, including three serious cases with bullet wounds. According to the IINA news agency, the riots were partly prompted by the rising cost of living in Diffa region following the beginning of oil exploration in 2009. The situation has been aggravated by the flooding of River Komadougou Yobé on Lake Chad, leaving local people who usually engage in dry season market gardening without jobs.

Diffa is located 1,300 km southeast of the Niger capital, Niamey, near Nigeria’s Borno State – the hotbed of Boko Haram activities – and about 100 km from the Chadian border. Since the start of oil production in the southeast of Niger, social tensions have been threatening to explode. Young people who can no longer cross over to Libya for employment opportunities following the overthrow of the regime of Muammar Ghaddafi in 2011 have been placing their hopes on securing jobs in the local petroleum industry.