Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Big banks are reporting their quarterly earnings this week, and broadly, they're doing pretty well.

Belt tightening earlier in the year seems to have staved off disaster. Now many banks are

sitting on piles of cash. Question is, save it or spend it. And roadworks abound in Egypt. There are highways cutting through leafy Cairo neighborhoods

and skirting the edges of the great pyramids. Many seem poorly built. Some are out and out

dangerous, and mostly they look like political pandering. But first...

A video of a man apparently being killed by police goes viral.

Protests break out, grow and spread, even internationally.

Calls for police reform get louder and louder.

The police react violently.

Protesters are killed.

It's too familiar a story, and this time it's happening across Nigeria.

The focus of the protesters' fury is a group called the Specialist Anti-Robbery Squad, or

SARS, a secretive outfit with a long-running reputation for brutality.

Stop killing our boyfriends. Stop killing our children. Stop. Mothers are crying. Stop killing them.

It seems clear that Nigeria's people have had enough. President Muhammadu Buhari has already

made concessions, but the protest mood hints at discontent that stretches far beyond police reform.

These have been completely widespread protests taking place in most of the major cities,

not least in Lagos, which is the main commercial hub, and Abuja, which is the capital.

Jonathan Rosenthal is the economist's Africa editor.

It is the biggest rising in Nigeria in a very long time.

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