The current wave of demonstrations in 40 French cities, driven by chronic teacher shortages, dilapidated school infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms and anger over iron-fisted policing, peaked nationally in early October. Because 9 October marks the historical date of Che Guevara’s execution in Bolivia, critics, left-wing commentators and historically minded student factions occasionally draw conceptual parallels between the two.
As university students several decades ago, we thought there was a romantic link between French radicalism and the Guevara movement. Whenever French youths take to the streets, build blockades and clash with riot police, they consciously or unconsciously evoke the ghosts of 1968, making any proximity to revolutionary anniversaries feel rhetorically potent, even if accidental.
Che Guevara flashback
While the 9 October date is coincidental, the spirit of global youth rebellion that Che Guevara came to represent is permanently baked into the DNA of French student protests. It will be recalled that during the legendary May 1968 student uprisings in France, Che Guevara, alongside figures such as Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong, was adopted as a primary icon of anti-establishment defiance. Images of Che frequently flew alongside red and black flags on barricades in the Latin Quarter of Paris.
Major demonstrations, school blockades and clashes have been concentrated in the following cities: Paris and the Greater Paris Region (Île-de-France), Marseille, Lyon, Rennes, Nantes, Toulouse, Lille, Toulon, Bayonne, Belfort, Nancy, Perpignan and Tours.
As a Nigerian, I feel that the French are simply having a taste of their uniquely Francophone blend of Ali Must Go and EndSARS protests rolled into one. Hundreds of thousands of secondary school and university students are on the streets demanding better-quality human and material resources in the education sector. The police are having a hard time keeping the peace. If you place the Nigerian students’ struggle of the 1970s side by side with the ongoing French demonstrations, you would immediately come to the realisation that the future of every nation belongs to its youths. Only the youths can put their lives on the line unconditionally in pursuit of what may appear to older folks as utopia.
Despite being separated by decades and continents, both the Nigerian and French student movements expose the friction points between youth populations demanding systemic accountability and states struggling to manage economic austerity. The students are complaining of chronic, decade-long teacher shortages, severely overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating infrastructure and frustration with computerised administrative admissions portals such as Parcoursup.
Conversely, the Nigerian student protests of the 1970s, which culminated in the nationwide mobilisation of 1978, were initially sparked by increases in accommodation and feeding fees. The protests quickly broadened into a rejection of wider socio-economic pressures under the military regime.
The modern French protests are characterised by decentralised, rapid mobilisation driven by high school student unions, including the Union Syndicale Lycéenne, and amplified through digital networks. By comparison, the Nigerian student movement of the 1970s possessed a formidable, highly centralised institutional framework anchored by the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS), which acted almost as an unofficial opposition party in the absence of democracy. The organisational depth of NUNS allowed protests to be synchronised across the federation.
Whereas the French authorities have deployed tear gas, imposed curfews or ordered closures on affected campuses, and made mass arrests handled through the judicial system, the engagement occurs within the framework of a liberal democratic republic. Nigerian students were not so lucky under military rule. The use of live ammunition by soldiers and police against unarmed students at institutions such as the University of Lagos and Ahmadu Bello University resulted in tragic fatalities, including that of student leader Akintunde Ojo. The Nigerian state relied on the jackboot, shutting down federal universities indefinitely, banning NUNS, expelling student leaders and purging sympathetic leftist academics.
But we must not get it twisted. Protests in the era of Che Guevara were explicitly ideological, anti-imperialist and systemic, aiming to overthrow or radically restructure capitalist and geopolitical systems. The ongoing protests in France are fundamentally pragmatic, with demands that are immediate and material: a €10 billion injection into public education, fixed classrooms, functioning heating and safe student transport.
Ultimately, the coincidental alignment of the French protests with the anniversary of Che Guevara’s death provides a striking poetic symmetry for observers tracking global youth unrest. Interestingly, it also provides an opportunity for delusional right-wing pseudo-nationalists to point to the demonstrations as a direct fallout of borderless immigration.
Trumpian delusion
Predictably, US President Donald Trump attributed all the problems to porous borders. He linked the violent turn in the protests directly to mass migration, claiming that unchecked demographic and cultural shifts were destabilising many European nations. He issued sharp warnings directed at French President Emmanuel Macron, controversially framing the unrest around identity politics and asserting that “Islam wants to take over France”.
His claim has been widely criticised by French officials and mainstream analysts as a fundamental distortion of reality, reflecting a consistent, long-term rhetorical pattern rather than an objective analysis of events abroad. By attributing domestic European institutional crises, such as teacher shortages, funding cuts and backlash against educational reforms, to migration, he leverages international events to reinforce his squint-eyed domestic political narrative for his MAGA devotees at home.
From the perspective of reporters on the ground in France, Trump’s statements display a complete detachment from the actual grievances of the movement. Even domestic right-wing figures who are normally critical of immigration have noted that these specific demonstrations are rooted in student concerns and education policy, entirely separate from identity- or religion-based conflicts.
Of course, this is not Trump’s first time fouling the air in another man’s land. He had weighed in on major waves of unrest in France over the years, most notably the historic Yellow Vest (Gilets Jaunes) demonstrations. During the massive anti-government protests over fuel taxes that rocked Paris, Trump claimed, without evidence, that protesters marching through the city were chanting slogans in support of him, specifically asserting that they were shouting “We want Trump”. This claim was widely debunked by international fact-checkers and reporters on the ground.
The truth is that what is happening in France is bigger than a thousand Trumps. It is the result of the inexorable wheel of consequences grinding on. Rather than posing as the benevolent Mother Hen, France is sensible enough to acknowledge its dependence on its former colonies. Thankfully, former French President Jacques Chirac, in a moment of unforced candour, declared in March 2008: “Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power.”
Lesson
So, this is not a matter of African immigrants putting pressure on the facilities of a European country. Rather, it is the chickens of a broken system coming home to roost.
We have a choice: learn from the French protests or continue to repeat the same mistakes that led to historic demonstrations. The young men and women of France are teaching the rest of the world four important lessons: (a) structural decay breeds systemic rage; (b) when political leaders respond to systemic failures with administrative detachment, they widen the chasm of distrust; (c) relying primarily on law enforcement to contain social unrest born of institutional failure is counterproductive; and (d) youths are no longer willing to “wait their turn”.
A generation that feels shortchanged by the present will bypass slow-moving, traditional consultative channels and resort to digital organising and street-level disruption. Such actions can be replicated across multiple municipalities to bring a government to its knees.
But do the political elites and the governments they head ever learn?
