Chad, Mali, Russia amongst several others, are countries that rank among the lowest by every democratic ranking. Most of the countries in Africa and around the world that have resorted to minimum or complete internet shutdowns in the past two years are countries with very questionable democratic ideals and equally poor human rights record. If there was any question as to the path Nigeria is currently towing, the answers were glaring from the month after the APC won the 2015 General elections. As of today, none of the judges whose houses were raided has been convicted.Īs a matter of fact, in late 2019 it was found that Buhari had violated at least 40 court orders since 2015, some of which were judgments ordering the Federal Government to release some members of the opposition as well as Ibrahim El Zakzakky, leader of Nigeria’s persecuted Shi’ite minority. The Gestapo style raid on some of the country’s most senior judges was met with outcry but the Buhari regime doubled down by claiming that such a direct, violent, confrontational approach is important to fight corruption it claimed was rampant within that arm of government. The DSS raid on judges in 2016 was a major affront on the judiciary which has now been paralysed by an eight-week-long strike by its workers agitating for judicial autonomy. Ultimately, the failure to understand the importance of opposition in a democracy has led to the birth of several dictatorial actions that have crippled the civic space in Nigeria. President Buhari failed to understand the concept of opposition he was unable to realise that sanctions must follow due process without exemptions. ![]() He vindictively banned private operator, African Independent Television (AIT), from covering government-related events after it had run the bulk of campaign ads against him during the election season. The first pointer Nigeria had started on this journey came less than a month after Buhari was elected in 2015. Governments who are paranoid about such things as protests against police brutality, which lead them to clamp down with force that results in massacres, only exist to rule in a state of fear and thus see civil liberties such as free speech as threats to national security when the actual action is borne out of a perceived threat to regime security. For smaller, less stable countries, the major concern is civil liberties. The alleged Russian interference in the US election of 2016 and the reaction to its effect is an important example in this regard. But in the wake of the growing importance which social media has taken on in recent times, campaigns of misinformation have also been classified by some people as subtle acts of aggression against a state. Stable democracies see external acts of aggression as a national security concern. One of the important things to note about a country’s slide to authoritarianism is in what it perceives as a threat to the state. ![]() The fight against opposition in democratic Nigeria Lai also added that Twitter encouraged and supported the #EndSARS protests by donating bitcoin to frontline protesters. Nigeria’s minister of information, Lai Mohammed, has also made claims against Twitter for being anti-Nigeria – given how much leeway, in his opinion, Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, has enjoyed on the platform. Twitter’s decision to take down the president’s tweet set the social media company against some senior members of the Buhari regime and triggered the ban. ![]() The tweet in question contained an implied threat to unleash state-level genocidal violence on the instigators of violence in the South-East geopolitical zone following a mass outcry. Twitter apparently crossed a national red line when they deleted President Buhari’s tweet. Nigeria’s full-throttle descent to autocracy was finally confirmed following events from last week that culminated in a ban on Twitter by the Federal Government. The early markers of autocratic leadership
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