Nigerian Government Mulls the Authoritarian “Chinese Model.”
When the Youths in Nigeria started a peaceful protest against police brutality and extra-judicial killings through the hashtag #EndSARSNow, it threw the government of General Muhammed Buhari into a tailspin. Caught unawares and totally flummoxed by the well-organized and Social Media-savvy Youths, the only crude way the political elites could respond was through violence and killings unleashed by its thugs and the Army.
Thus on Tuesday 20 October 2020, the Army went against military protocols and the Rules of Engagement to shoot and kill peaceful, unarmed protestors who were only singing Nigeria’s national anthem with the national flag wrapped around them.
A few days after, the nation’s Minister of Information went to the National Assembly to clamor for the regulation of Social Media through the adoption of the “Chinese Model.” According to the Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the biggest challenge facing Nigeria is fake news and misinformation. The truth is that innocent Nigerians were shot. Moreover, it is only reminiscent of a President who several decades ago, during his military dictatorship days in 1985 enacted the obnoxious law, Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation), the Decree №4 which went on to punish the publication of the truth.
Since 2018, government had been trying to regulate the Social Media and use its might to dominate what can be seen and what cannot be seen. The truth, however, is that the ruling elites are like wolves, killing and shedding innocent blood, so as to continue looting Nigeria.
The fallout of the peaceful Youths protests at the Lekki Toll Booth in Lagos, Nigeria had an added dimension, of which the government is using China as the example on how to repress freedom of speech by destroying the fundamental rights that are guaranteed in Nigeria’s Constitution of 1999 (as amended).
The government tries to diminish Nigeria’s democracy by destabilizing previously won freedoms: freedom to speak, to publish, to worship, to criticize, to think, pray, satirize, read, search the internet, and demand an end to corruption. Another word for that is dictatorship. To achieve this, government comes up with spurious morality and nonsense issues so as to end free speech and freedom to organize. How does this work? First, you prohibit assembly of people, denigrate the Civil Society Organizations and “implant” thugs supported by state security operatives to subvert lawful assembly.
Nigerian government’s template is to borrow from the Xi Jinping, China’s Model: a repressive government that carries out ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs, brutally suppresses Hong Kong protestors and censors free speech, among others. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm throws up the prospect of a Nigeria without liberty led by authoritarians. After all, the late Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak had said that: “There’s freedom of speech. There’s just no freedom after speech.” In Nigeria, there was #EndSARSNow protest against police brutality and extra-judicial killings, and after there is the killing by the Army.
It is obvious that the government of Gen. Buhari came to power in 2015 on the wings of Social Media. The truth is that the government now wants to check the very tool that allowed it to assume power.
Nigeria’s democracy is on the decline, with greed, incompetence, waste, institutionalized corruption, high-profile scandals, a power-abusing elite; a government that takes its people out of poverty only on paper, yet is categorized as the poorest nation on earth; increasing crimes, banditry, extra-judicial killings; with a characteristic disdain for the populace, as signposts. Government couldn’t provide basic amenities such as electricity, water, roads, decent schools, hospitals, nor employment for Nigerians, yet is quick at labeling Youths as lazy.
There is a systematic approach to destroy Nigeria’s hard won democracy, by attempting to promulgate unpopular legislations and further constrain the very essence of Nigeria’s federalism: the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2020 that seems to target a section of the Nigerian society because of their religious belief; the RUGA Policy — aimed at providing settlements for herders in reserved communities thus giving an undue advantage over other Nigerians; the Water Resources Bill that wants to vest all waters of local communities in the federal government; the suppression of Universities; appointing mediocre judges who do the biddings of government; and rendering comatose the anti-corruption agencies, among others.
The “Chinese Model” suggested by Nigeria’s Minister of Information is authoritarian, rigid and repressive. China, a monolithic one-party regime, operates state-controlled media agencies: the Xinhua News Agency, China Daily and China Global Television Network, among others. Unlike the BBC, CNN, Deutsche Welle, the Chinese party media always paint rosy view of China. What China has done is to advance an alternative media model very different from democratic-style “Watchdog journalism,” has prevented free flow of information and barred the Social Media, Google, Instagram, Twitter and others in China.
It is not too far-fetched to conclude that this remains an attractive model for a repressive, kleptocratic government. Besides, Nigeria needs to present a side to China, which seems to counter Western narratives and democratic tendencies. This is what Nigeria’s “preemptive obedience” is trying to sell to the Chinese. Controlling the Social Media is an attempt at keeping Nigerians in darkness. Why is this so? Government lies to the populace and makes exaggerated claims — especially on tackling poverty, security of lives and property, armed herdsmen killings, banditry, extra-judicial killings; while its officials loot the treasury.
Across Nigeria, monies meant for public projects and ameliorating the plights of the poor during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic are found in private accounts, with essential foodstuffs meant as palliatives hoarded in private warehouses. If there had been no Social Media, the Army would have continued its brazen lies on the killing of protestors. Indeed, the military had tagged the extra-judicial killings of innocent protestors at the Lekki Toll Booth, caught on amateur video as “Fake News.”
However, the government will have to go in 2023, but Social Media will remain. It needs reinforcing that Social Media has disrupted conventional politics and transformed the speed at which it happened. It must equally be stated that fake news travels faster, reaches more people, goes viral than other categories of information. Twitter is now confronting differing laws and practices relating to expression and speech. But there is no justification to foist dictatorship on Nigerians. It is illegal. In Nigeria, the conventional media, like in other parts of the world is in decline with little or no revenue, which is now worsened with government’s over-regulation and threats. This has only resulted in self-censorship by the mainstream media, thus enabling the rise of the Social Media.
The new democracy of knowledge that is revolutionizing information and the most basic concepts of authority and power mean the Nigerian government cannot control Social Media, nor is it tech-savvy enough to offer a counter narrative. Just as mainstream journalists have lost the near-monopoly on news and how to distribute them, so also has the government lost the ability to control what news is available to the people.
Nigerians want to know what is happening in the society. They like to see corruption exposed; power to be accountable and scandals unearthed. The people are desperate for good governance and accountability. More importantly, they want an end to impunity and extra-judicial killings. But government seemed to have lost it, while the police is back to its old ways, picking up innocent Nigerians, publicly parading them as thugs, thus violating their constitutional rights to dignity and presumption of innocence.
A government that cannot and had indeed refused to separate truths from untruths is equally lost in the ‘post-truth’ age. Do Nigerians love their country and do the politicians love Nigeria more than ordinary citizens? Intimidating the mainstream press by insulting their professionalism is definitely not a solution, nor undermining their credibility. The Nigerian government of Gen. Buhari could do well by putting an end to its distrust and contempt for its people. As Alan Rusbridger opines: “Power need witnesses. Witnesses need to be able to speak freely to an audience.”