Paper short abstract:

Protests in Nigeria hardly empower people to influence policies that determine their energy supply. Historically, protest groups have limited protest and contentious claims to demand for price fixity. How may we understand such self-limitation and failure of protests to engender empowerment?

Paper long abstract:

Struggles over energy imply voice or a level of empowerment. Do such struggles empower social groups to influence or take more control over the policies that influence their energy supply? The question requires a movement away from 'how citizens can recover their sense of capacity to act' to whether that 'sense of capacity to act' motivates critical action geared at influencing or taking more control of policy arenas that shape energy supply. Fuel subsidy struggles in Nigeria appear insufficient to empower citizens to influence policies that determine their energy supply. Protestations of subsidy removal have over and over again failed to move beyond a demand to revert to the status quo ante. Moreover, protesters' contentious claims have hardly gone beyond articulation of negative impact of price hike and reinstatement of pre-existing price. Protesters seem less interested in challenging the logic of petrocapitalism than competing for distributional advantage. How do we explain such apparently self-limiting strategy of protesters? What are the implications for efforts to promote citizens' empowerment in fragile and conflict affected countries? The paper relies on qualitative data derived from interviews and secondary sources conducted in Nigeria as part of the Demanding Power Research Project under the A4EA Programme.