Political Movements

Following President Muhammadu Buhari's May 11 meeting with the military service chiefs and the inspector general of police, Nigerian military sources confirmed that some troops were being moved from Borno State, where they have been engaged with Boko Haram and other jihadis, to the South East, to counter "bandits" and the regional separatist organization, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), along with its security force, the Eastern Security Network (ESN). The army and police have sustained increased casualties in the South East, so aircraft—including combat helicopters—will be "deployed to conduct massive raids" on the hideouts of "criminals" from the IPOB and ESN. Another source suggested traditional rulers, community heads, and chiefs could be arrested to warn them against "conniving with the agitators." The police announced yesterday the launch of Operation Restore Peace to confront the IPOB and ESN. So, rather than a counterinsurgency approach to Igbo separatism with a political dimension, the federal government is resorting to military and police force. The use of helicopters and other aircraft is concerning in that it could—and likely will—result in growing civilian casualties, thereby feeding the very separatist movements that the government is seeking to contain. It will also likely exacerbate ethnic tensions. Military and police personnel are increasingly unwilling to serve in the South East and, if there, unwilling to wear their uniforms, especially if they are not Igbos, the ethnic majority in the region. For President Buhari and others of his generation, the central event of Nigeria's post-independence history was the 1967-70 civil war, in which the primarily Igbo separatists attempted to leave the federation and establish an independent state of Biafra. The federal forces defeated Biafra, and the territory was reincorporated into Nigeria; deaths from the fighting and associated disease and famine were up to two million. Hence, successive federal administrations have reacted strongly against any resurgence of Biafran separatism.

Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland Gani Adams, in a speech at a book launch in Lagos on April 14 said that the Yoruba people have "graduated from restructuring to self-determination." He continued by saying that Nigeria is dominated by a "main powerful bloc" that, he implied, makes restructuring impossible. Specifically, he is advocating autonomy for Nigeria’s regions, in which “70 to 80 percent” of political power would be exercised by the regions rather than the federal government. The Aare seems to advocating a form of governance similar to that of the Federal Republic of Germany—an example often cited in Nigeria of successful regional devolution. These sentiments were also expressed by other representatives present of the Yoruba elite. The Aare and other speakers also vented against President Muhammadu Buhari and the Muslim north—especially the pastoral Fulani. (Buhari is a northern Fulani.) The representative of the Ooni of Ife, regarded as one of the two paramount Yoruba traditional rulers, complained that most of the wealth of the south was enjoyed in the north. Reflecting Yoruba cultural concerns, he also called for the reintroduction of history in school curricula, presumably in support of Yoruba identity. Calls for restructuring Nigeria are widespread across the country. In Yorubaland, agitation for autonomy rather than restructuring could presage a drift toward Yoruba separatist sentiment. The leader of Igbo separatism, Nnamdi Kanu, appears to see that possibility. He welcomed the Aare's speech on social media. Yoruba calls for "autonomy," even if falling short of calls for separatism, do not bode well for the unity of Nigeria, already challenged in the oil patch, in Igboland, and by jihadis in the north. The Aare has long been involved in Yoruba cultural and political movements. He led the militant wing of the Oodua Peoples' Congress, which advocates for an "autonomous" Yoruba state and has been accused of terrorism. (Gani Adams was jailed for a time.) He was raised to the Aare rank by the Alaafin of Oyo, the other paramount Yoruba traditional ruler. The previous holder of the Aare title was Moshood Abiola, presidential victor in the 1993 elections—Nigeria's most credible—but excluded from office by the army; he later died in prison under suspicious circumstances. The Aare appears to be at the center of Yoruba political ferment. The media reports that Afenifere, another Yoruba cultural/political organization, effected the Aare’s reconciliation with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The Yoruba are one of the "big three" ethnic groups in Nigeria. (The other two are the Hausa and the Igbo.) Estimates of their size are up to 40 million. They are concentrated in southwest Nigeria, but some Yoruba in Brazil recognize Yoruba traditional rulers in Nigeria. Yoruba identity and culture are strong. Nominally, the Yoruba are divided between Christianity and Islam, but religious tension among adherents of the two is absent. Yoruba families usually include both Christians and Muslims, and adherents of each religion celebrate the other's holidays as well as their own. Some ascribe this tranquility to the fact that, whether Christian or Muslim, Yoruba respect the traditional Yoruba gods. A hierarchy of traditional rulers commands popular respect. At the pinnacle are the Ooni of Ife and the Alaafin of Oyo, often rivals in the past. The Yoruba have a tradition of political fractiousness, which led to British occupation in the mid-nineteenth century. Olusegun Obasanjo, military ruler in the 1970s and civilian president from 1999 to 2007, is a Yoruba. The Yoruba dominate the Lagos-Ibadan corridor, the most developed part of Nigeria. This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.

On April 5, gunmen attacked a prison in Owerri, Nigeria, freeing 1,844 inmates. (Owerri, the capital of Imo State, is a major trading center with more than one million residents.) On April 6, “bandits” stormed a police station in Ehime Mbano, also in Imo State, freeing detainees. No group has claimed responsibility, but police say the likely perpetrators are the Eastern Security Network, the armed wing of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). President Buhari, in London for medical reasons, characterized the perpetrators as “terrorists”; the army pledged to “flush out the miscreants” from the region. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo arrived in Imo State yesterday to assess the damage in Owerri. Imo is mostly Igbo and Christian in population. It was the heartland of support for an independent Biafra during the 1967-70 civil war. Since then, successive federal governments have taken a hard line on separatism. Since 2015, when Buhari, a northern Muslim, was elected president, separatist sentiment has been growing. The movement of Muslim, ethnically Fulani herdsmen into the region looking for pasture has exacerbated the situation, as has the influx of mostly Muslim internally displaced persons fleeing Boko Haram in the North East. Some advocates for renewed Biafran separatism claim an Islamic plot, abetted by the Buhari government, to place all of Nigeria under the crescent. The jailbreaks will likely increase violence and insecurity in Imo State. It should be noted, however, that pro-Biafra sentiment is not widespread in the adjacent oil patch in the Niger Delta, specifically Bayelsa and Rivers States. The low-level insurrection in the Niger Delta has different drivers.

Francesca Eremeeva is a research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Middle East Program. Nolan Quinn is a research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa Program. On December 10, 2020, then-President Donald Trump tweeted that because “Morocco recognized the United States in 1777,” the United States should return the favor by recognizing “[Moroccan] sovereignty over the Western Sahara.” This rather explicit quid pro quo, which allowed the Trump administration to secure the final addition to its Abraham Accords, was slammed as a “rash move disguised as diplomacy” by James A. Baker III, who served as both U.S. secretary of state and UN special envoy for Western Sahara. Criticism of the Trump administration’s decision has centered on its norm-breaking abandonment of the UN peace process. Another way to look at the decision, however, is to see it as the natural consequence of a dispute which has lacked effective and impartial mediators, creating a vacuum in which transactional diplomacy trumps multilateral peace efforts. The conflict over Western Sahara dates back to efforts to decolonize the African continent. When Spain relinquished control over the “Spanish Sahara” in 1975, it agreed to transfer administrative responsibilities to Morocco and Mauritania. A three-way war erupted soon after involving the two African states and the Polisario Front, an Algerian-backed politico-military organization representing the interests of the indigenous Sahrawi population. While Mauritanian involvement in the war proved short-lived, fighting between Moroccan forces and Polisario guerillas continued until a UN-backed ceasefire was signed in 1991. The ceasefire left the political status of Western Sahara up to a referendum to be administered by the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). Initially scheduled for January 1992, the referendum has yet to take place, leaving Western Sahara under de facto Moroccan occupation. MINURSO’s task of organizing a referendum was difficult from its inception. The essential first step—identifying eligible voters—quickly became a fierce political dispute. While MINURSO proposed technical solutions to the impasse, it left unaddressed the underlying political problem: both sides were committed to achieving victory in a “winner-takes-all” referendum. Well placed to fulfill that mediating role should have been the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and its successor, the African Union (AU). However, faced with Moroccan intransigence, a growing number of OAU member states—twenty-three by June 1980—decided to recognize bilaterally the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), established by Sahrawi nationalists in 1976 to defend their sovereignty claims over Western Sahara, and sought its admission to the OAU. Morocco warned against admitting SADR on the grounds that it did not constitute an “independent sovereign African State” as specified in article IV of the continental body’s founding charter [PDF]. SADR was nonetheless admitted in 1982, to which Morocco responded by withdrawing its membership from the OAU. The OAU’s anti-colonial roots made it understandably predisposed to support Sahrawi nationalism. But the decision to admit SADR as a full member effectively put the OAU ahead of the UN stance [PDF] that, while the peoples of Western Sahara were entitled to self-determination [PDF] and independence, SADR did not—and still does not—constitute a state. The legally contentious and politically explosive decision engendered a Moroccan perception that the OAU and, later, the AU, were not neutral enough to take part in negotiations. Subsequent flip-flopping by the AU further reduced the continental body’s ability to mediate the Western Sahara dispute. After a thirty-three-year absence, Morocco was re-admitted to the AU in 2017, and in 2018 the AU formally limited its role in peace efforts concerning Western Sahara, choosing instead to support the UN process—both diplomatic wins for Morocco. Failures by the OAU and AU have been amplified by the UN Security Council’s unwillingness to apply pressure to break the ongoing diplomatic impasse. Baker, who came closest to achieving a resolution over Western Sahara in 2004 as special envoy, resigned the same year due to intra-Security Council divisions. A pattern of rhetorical condemnation over Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara, coupled with delays to the referendum without political retribution, has led to a stagnant peace process. Outside actors have, in turn, prioritized their bilateral relations with Morocco—or, less frequently, with the Polisario Front—over supporting a viable peace plan. The United States, until Trump’s volte-face, maintained an ambiguous policy of “positive neutrality,” supporting Morocco militarily while maintaining a neutral position on Western Sahara’s political status. Prioritizing bilateral relations is ultimately what made Western Sahara’s “final status” a dispensable concern which President Trump could wield as a bargaining chip. After all, America’s partnership with Morocco was never conditioned on the peace process. Trump’s norm-breaking over Western Sahara was driven, in part, by the same factors that motivated his support for Israeli claims over the Golan Heights and Jerusalem: securing votes from a relatively small group of U.S. voters for whom supporting Israel is among the more important issues on the ballot. That the interests of such a faraway group, almost entirely unrelated to Western Sahara, could bear influence on the territory’s political status serves to underline the danger of detached diplomacy. The AU, which remains an unwilling and ineffective mediator in the region, should view it as a warning call. Other latent disputes on the continent that require action are, for the most part, ignored. The AU has done little to bring Somalia and the breakaway republic of Somaliland together for talks, allegedly because it does not want to encourage other independence movements on the continent. Yet allowing Israel and Gulf states to vie unchecked for influence is hardly a better outcome. The AU’s marginal role in discussions on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam allowed the dispute to fester; a first round of AU-brokered negotiations last year showed promise but later failed, prompting calls for outside involvement. The looming threat from climate change—already causing conflict in West Africa and likely to intensify border disputes—means the AU needs to build stronger frameworks for numerous and varied disputes. The establishment in 2016 of the AU Mediation Support Unit is encouraging, as is the recognition of the crucially important role of regional economic communities, some of which have proven themselves effective mediators. But without a more forward posture in encouraging talks in conflict situations, new institutional arrangements will make little difference in building the AU’s credibility as a mediator.

Civil organizations in Nigeria have thrown their support behind planned demonstrations on February 13 at the Lekki Toll Gate, the site of the October 20, 2020 killing of demonstrators calling for the disbandment of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit widely accused of human rights abuse. The occasion of the demonstration is the decision of the Lagos State Judicial Panel to reopen the toll gate, which is administered by the Lekki Concession Company, a private enterprise. As was the case in October, the demonstration appears to be organized through social media. However, the organizers are providing advance publicity. The demonstrators will protest the lack of meaningful police reform, continuing intimidation of the October demonstrators, the lack of an investigation of the Lekki incident, and the failure to hold accountable the perpetrators of the killing. The government has disbanded SARS, but from the perspective of human rights organizations and other observers, there has been no meaningful improvement in police behavior. Amnesty International credibly accuses an official cover-up. In a recent development, Lagos State’s Environmental Tasks Force cleared—with little notice—an "informal settlement" adjacent to the toll gate, some residents of which talked to the press contradicting the official narrative of what happened. Official clearances of informal settlements happens frequently and for a variety of reasons. In this case, however, many will take it as retribution. It remains to be seen how many demonstrators will actually show. If the demonstration is large, it will be an indication that in Lagos, at least, anger about the Lekki Toll Gate episode and abusive police behavior has not gone away, with political consequences that are unpredictable. On social media there are expressions of unease about the potential of violence. In Nigeria, violence is by no means rare in demonstrations against official authority. It should be noted that the Lekki Toll Gate episode involves divided official authority. Lagos State—not the federal government in Abuja—has ordered the reopening of the toll gate. The lead in the investigation of the October incident also rests with Lagos State. It was also Lagos State authorities that cleared the informal settlement. But SARS and the Nigerian police are a federal, not state, entity. As for a cover-up or suppression of the results of an investigation, that is an old song in Nigeria.

Nolan Quinn contributed to this post. Fighting between government forces and an Igbo separatist group risks adding yet another challenge for the Buhari administration. The emergence of an Igbo paramilitary force highlights the growing breakdown of any federal government monopoly on the use of force in the face of multiple security challenges. Even in good times, security is fragile in the former Biafra. Insecurity has multiple dimensions. The Igbo people are Nigeria's third largest ethnic group. They were the losers in the 1967–70 civil war in which they tried to establish a separate, Igbo-dominated state, Biafra. Many Igbo continue to believe that they are disadvantaged in Nigeria, and there continues to be residual support for Biafran independence, though not among the Igbo "establishment." Conflict over land and water, once largely restricted to the Middle Belt, is spreading to the south, where it frequently acquires ethnic and religious overtones. Many Igbo—mostly Christian—believe they are targeted by the Muslim Fulani herdsmen bringing their flocks south in search of better pastures. Criminal activity is widespread and often the Igbo attribute it to the Fulani. Many residents of the former Biafra are alienated from the federal government and see the Buhari administration as Muslim-dominated and as enabling Fulani atrocities. Added to this mix is Nnamdi Kanu's Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a separatist movement that reflects and facilitates popular discontent. The federal government, recalling the civil war, is bitterly opposed to Igbo separatism, as is most of the Igbo establishment. The government has long sought to defang the IPOB and silence Kanu, sometimes through illegal or quasi-legal methods. He, in turn, has used alleged Fulani depredations as a means of attacking the Buhari administration. Starting in August 2020, violence between IPOB and the federal police and the army has escalated. In that month, the Nigerian police killed up to twenty-one civilians at an IPOB meeting in Enugu State. In response, the IPOB promised retaliation and urged its members to practice self-defense. In December, Kanu announced the establishment of a paramilitary wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), allegedly to protect the Igbo against the Fulani. For the federal government, a non-state sanctioned, paramilitary organization in the old Biafran heartland was unacceptable, and it moved against ESN camps. In late January 2021, serious fighting broke out in the town of Orlu in Imo State, leading to significant numbers of displaced persons. Fighting stopped when Kanu declared a cease-fire, saying that he was redirecting ESN efforts against "Fulani raiders." (He also claimed that the federal forces had withdrawn from Orlu.) Supporters of the ESN, including in the Igbo diaspora, justify it as being like Miyetti Allah in the north and Amotekun in Yorubaland in the west. Both are paramilitary operations outside the federal government's legal purview but with some ambiguous level of government approval. The north and the west were on the winning side in the civil war, and that may help account for the federal government's greater tolerance for their paramilitary organizations than for one associated with the Igbo. The escalating fighting in IPOB strongholds carries the risk of radicalizing the population and building support for the IPOB. Credible evidence suggests police assaulted residents in Orlu, and some police perpetrators have been arrested. The commissioner of police for Imo State has apologized. But as recently as December 2020, IPOB was saying that ESN forces were merely a "vigilante" group protecting the Igbo against the Fulani. Now Kanu has an organized wing, the ESN, and believes he has the authority to order a cease-fire in a fight with federal forces. Violence is escalating, and the outcome is unpredictable.

Nolan Quinn contributed to this post. Omoyele Sowore, human rights activist and former presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, was arrested New Year’s Eve following a peaceful protest in the capital, Abuja. According to Nigerian media, he has been denied bail and arraigned at the Magistrate Court in Abuja; he and other activists are now being held in Kuje prison. Initially he and a small group of fellow protestors were taken to Abattoir police station, formerly a facility of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the police unit whose brutality ignited the October anti-SARS protests in Lagos that led to the notorious police murder of protestors at the Lekki Toll Gate. (Abattoir is the formal name of the police station, which is situated in a defunct abattoir.) SARS has officially been disbanded, but critics fear that it has merely been reconstituted with a new name. Though he has been a thorn in the side of the Buhari administration, why did the police arrest Sowore in the aftermath of a small, peaceful protest? He is an internationally known human rights activist and founder of Sahara Reporters, a well-regarded news site based in New York. He is a permanent resident of the United States; his family lives in New Jersey. His 2019 detention of 144 days without charge attracted the protest of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). Sowore is a fierce critic of Nigeria's political economy in general and President Muhammadu Buhari in particular. He has called for a “revolution” and organized peaceful protests across the nation. Some critics see his use of “revolution” as evidence that he is trying to overthrow the government extralegally, though his protests have been peaceful. He is at present charged with “treason” and had been out on bail following his previous arrest; one of the conditions was that he could not leave Abuja. Just before New Year's he was calling for nationwide “crossover protests” against bad government, the Lekki massacre, and other human rights grievances. In Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, opposition to a government may be construed as treason. Because the protests were to be nationwide, the authorities (or some of them) may have seen Sowore as violating the provision of his parole that restricts him to Abuja even though he had not left the city. For them, that could be a pretext for jailing him. From media accounts, the arrests were heavy-handed: multiple police vans appeared and Sowore is reported to have been beaten.  Many of those who benefit from Nigeria's political economy, not least the police, detest Sowore. Instigation for his arrest could have a variety of sources, not necessarily including the presidency. The episode, if not quickly resolved, could further damage Nigeria's international reputation—particularly among the diaspora living in the United States. The incoming Biden administration has signaled that it will be deeply concerned about human rights issues. The arrest of Sowore and the denial of bail is a poor representation of Nigeria to the incoming administration.

Nkasi Wodu is a lawyer, peacebuilding practitioner, and development expert based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. In January 2006, a fledgling group known as the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta People (MEND) kidnapped a group of oil workers, setting in motion a series of high-profile abductions of oil workers and attacks on oil facilities. Nigeria’s oil revenues fell, fomenting instability in the Niger Delta region. Militant groups under the platform of MEND unleashed coordinated attacks on Nigeria’s oil and gas infrastructure from 2006 to 2009. The pace of attacks fell after President Umaru Yar’Adua established an Amnesty Program that ostensibly included disarmament of militants, job training programs for ex-militants, and a system of payoffs that especially benefitted their leaders. When they were active, the Niger Delta militants were often enmeshed deep in the creeks of the region, in makeshift camps cautiously hidden from view to protect against possible aerial bombardment and attacks by the Nigerian military. From those hideouts, militants orchestrated attacks on oil facilities and kidnapped workers. In response, the Nigerian military chased them all over the creeks of the Delta—sometimes inflicting casualties, at others outwitted by a ragtag group with little formal training in warfare. According to a UN Development Program report, the difficult topography in the region “encourages people to gather in small communities—of the estimated 13,329 settlements in the region, 94 percent have populations of less than five thousand,” though the regional population is estimated around thirty million in total. In the Delta’s small settlements, “infrastructure and social services are generally deplorable.” The report highlights the paradox of an oil-rich region mired in poverty: “ordinarily, the Niger Delta should be a gigantic economic reservoir of national and international importance,” due to the scale of its resource wealth. However, “in reality, the Niger Delta is a region suffering from administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructure and services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic conflict.” This reality animates the various armed groups that have emerged in the region. MEND, the Niger Delta Avengers, and the Niger Delta Green Justice Mandate have all insisted that the federal government address issues of poverty, neglect, and environmental degradation. And because of the failure of successive governments to address these issues, armed militants remain active. These groups evade the military as they traverse the creeks and tributaries of the region to bomb oil facilities or abduct oil workers. In 2016 alone there were more than twenty attacks carried out on oil facilities in the region. Sometimes, these attacks are carried out with the knowledge and tacit support of local people. In October 2020, a group known as the Reformed Niger Delta Avengers issued a warning to the Nigerian government, threatening to resume attacks if their eleven demands are not met by the new year. The relationship between armed groups and the indigenous populations of the region is complex. Militants clearly employ techniques to attract local people and then lock them into a network of incentives. These range from persuasion to coercion, and are designed to control, corral, manipulate, and mobilize populations. Armed militants in the Niger Delta continually seek to legitimize their actions in the eyes of the local population. Residents of the region—particularly in the coastal communities where militant activities are rife—experience neglect, deprivation, and a lack of infrastructure. School buildings and health centers, already decrepit, are often times not operational because teachers and doctors do not want to travel to work. Abject poverty is widespread, with a teeming youth population that is either out of school, unemployed, or both. Delta residents feel a great sense of frustration at the almost total abandonment by successive federal and state governments, which receive huge sums from the oil drilled in the residents’ backyard. Armed groups tap into these frustrations frequently by projecting themselves as freedom fighters, supposedly risking life and limb to agitate the government for a better life in the Delta. People see the agitations of the armed groups as an expression of their internal frustrations and yearnings to hold federal and local governments to account for failing to fulfill their responsibilities. Of course, sometimes militants use fear to keep the people submissive. Yet, armed groups have also taken up the role of philanthropists, providing welfare to a people weighed down continuously by the burden of living in a paradox. Militant leaders have been known to utilize proceeds from oil bunkering activities to provide scholarships to students, build health centers and schools, and resolve disputes in their communities. By doing this, they seek legitimacy from the people, who are then willing to overlook—even excuse—their criminal enterprises. The federal government’s response to the issue of militancy has always been to deploy more soldiers to the region to restore calm. These deployments often result in heightened insecurity in the region. Human rights violations occur frequently; communities have been raided and in some cases bombed. And herein lies the problem: what is usually meant to be an operation to restore order takes the form of an occupation or invasion by a force that the people consider alien to them. Military activities erode further the trust deficit between the state and the people. To address sustainably the issue of militancy in the region, the government should do two things. It should first seek to delegitimize armed groups by building trust with the people. It can do so by asserting its authority—not through military might, but by providing basic services, such as education and proper health facilities. For many Niger Delta communities, the most visible signs of development are infrastructure built by international oil companies or former militant generals, while many of the waterways are dotted with military assets of the Joint Task Force. A running joke in the region goes that while development remains elusive, the ballot box has no problem getting to Delta communities on election days. The federal government should also exercise good faith by committing to its obligations under the Strategic Implementation Work Plan, established in 2017 in response to militant agitations in the region, as well as the Action Plan enacted by the Ministry of the Niger Delta. Prioritizing the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill is another necessary step. When Niger Delta residents see more development and fewer bullets from the military, agitations of armed groups in the region will cease.

On the night of October 20, Nigerian army units attacked demonstrators calling for the abolition of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), an elite police unit known for its brutality. Demonstrators were killed—the army acknowledged two, but demonstrators and human rights groups said the number was far higher. The army first claimed that it had not used live ammunition. Now, the army acknowledges that it did—to counter "hoodlums" that had infiltrated the demonstrators. CNN has conducted an investigation of the Lekki episode, and it has broadcast horrifying footage that leaves little doubt that the army fired on peaceful demonstrators with live ammunition. The unanswered questions are “why?” and “who gave the orders?” Officially, the answers will be forthcoming following a "judicial panel of inquiry." Yet, the government has not acknowledged any wrongdoing. The most likely outcome is that there will never be any answers or that the results of a credible investigation will not be made public. Episodes like Lekki, and the refusal of either the federal government or the Lagos state government to be forthcoming, are reasons for the profound alienation of many Nigerians—from the army and the police, but also more generally from the Nigerian political system, as I discuss in my forthcoming book, Nigeria and Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World. The Lekki episode also calls attention to the risks of the United States and others becoming identified with the Nigerian army.

Two weeks ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist celebrated for her Half a Yellow Sun, was awarded the Women's Prize for Fiction as the author of the best book to win the annual prize over the past twenty-five years. This is a one-off prize, designed to highlight the best of the best. Adichie won the annual prize in 2007. Her novel is set in Biafra at the end of the 1967–70 Nigerian civil war. The “half of a yellow sun” recalls the Biafran flag. The book has been extraordinarily popular throughout the English-speaking world and has been made into a film. Adichie joins Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart), Wole Soyinka (Death and the King’s Horseman), Ben Okri (The Famished Road), Teju Cole (Open City), and many other Nigerian novelists and poets in achieving worldwide acclaim. In music, architecture, and painting there has been similar international recognition of Nigerian talent. Yet Nigeria faces security and economic challenges that are seemingly accelerating.  Adichie, Achebe, Soyinka, and Okri are indisputably African artists. Yet, they live or lived much of the time outside of Nigeria: Achebe and Soyinka taught in the United States; Teju Cole was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to Nigerian parents; Okri lives in the United Kingdom. The reasons for their expatriation are no doubt highly individual and complex. But artists from other countries have also chosen expatriation: examples include the Americans who flocked to Paris post-World War I or the luminaries of the Irish renaissance who often lived in the United Kingdom, France, or the United States.

Human rights advocates in Nigeria and abroad are concerned that the Buhari administration is adopting a policy of repression following the demonstrations against abuses by the police’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The October demonstrations ignited in Lagos and later spread to other cities. The centerpiece was the police killing of a dozen demonstrators at the Lekki Toll Gate on October 20. Initially, the Buhari administration promised to abolish SARS, as had some of its predecessors. Vice President Osinbajo said that the government accepted responsibility for police brutality and affirmed that dialogue was the way forward. Thus far, however, there has been no public accounting for the Lekki Toll Gate killings or, more broadly, for police human rights abuses. Nor is there a public dialogue. Whether SARS has been disbanded or merely rebranded is unclear. The demonstrations, the largest since 2012, have fizzled out; how and why is not clear and would require studying. A strong law-and-order response, or repression, has played a role. According to Nigerian media, the bank accounts of twenty activists have been frozen for 180 days, pending "an investigation." The passport of at least one human rights lawyer was seized. A few days later, it was returned without explanation. Support for the demonstrations could have been weaker than appeared at the time. The demonstrations were concentrated in the south, especially Lagos, and among youth who adopted the rhetoric and style of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. At least at first, the demonstrators appeared to be relatively privileged. (Poor people in Nigeria do not have bank accounts that can be frozen.) The Nigerian diaspora, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, vocally supported the demonstrations. However, SARS is not as hated in other parts of the country as it is in Lagos and the south. Demonstrations in the predominantly Muslim north were not extensive. Over time, broader support for the demonstrators appears to have melted away. The demonstrations had no designated leaders and no equivalent of a politburo. Demonstrations started spontaneously and were coordinated by social media. This decentralization at first appeared to be a source of strength: the movement had no leaders that the authorities could pick off. However, over time, it could have inhibited the sustainability of the protests much beyond a relatively narrow demographic. The Buhari administration is already being accused of repression. Muhammadu Buhari was among the military offices that overthrew the civilian government of Shehu Shagari and he was military chief of state from 1983 to 1985, when he, in turn, was overthrown in another military coup. As military chief of state, he was known for his "war against indiscipline," which many Nigerians, especially in Lagos, found repressive. Even after he was elected civilian president a generation later in 2015, some Nigerians are suspicious that he remains authoritarian at heart.

"Dr. Richard A. Joseph, professor emeritus at Northwestern University and previously of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His 1987 book Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic has done much to shape academic analysis of Nigeria and, in this op-ed, he places Nigeria's current protest movement within a broader historical and comparative context. I owe an intellectual debt to Dr. Joseph in my upcoming book Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World." - John Campbell On March 21, 1960 in Sharpeville, South Africa, sixty-nine persons were killed and many wounded during protests at a police station against the detested pass laws. The massacre intensified the struggle against apartheid, but the heinous system persisted another three decades. During the Soweto Uprising of June 1976 against the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, hundreds of student protesters were killed and thousands wounded. These tragedies were brought to mind by the October 20 atrocity in Lagos, Nigeria. A campaign against police brutality had endured for two weeks. After the largest demonstration in that city, as night fell, a barrage of live ammunition was unleashed by security forces against unarmed protesters. Nigeria’s governance system is oppressive, though it lacks an evocative name like apartheid. A small percentage of the population benefits from the country’s wealth while most citizens are condemned to lives of deprivation and penury. In his second book on Nigeria, Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World, former U.S. Ambassador John Campbell describes its essential features. Campbell contends that viewing Nigeria through the prism of the nation-state is a mistake. The federal government is largely sustained by income from petroleum exports. An “elite cartel” competes for, and controls access to, a significant part of this income. Whatever effective governance exists, he argues, is usually found in subnational states and associational groups. Leading scholars strain for terms to describe Nigeria. Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka once remarked that “it was too complex an entity.” Oxford scholar Wale Adebanwi entitled his book on the struggle to curb corruption A Paradise for Maggots. For the international edition, Adebanwi borrowed a milder title from a song by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Authority Stealing. In a similar vein, Harvard scholar Biodun Jeyifo entitled his collection of essays Against the Predators’ Republic. Four decades ago, I published my first essay on “prebendalism” in Nigeria. The concept concerns the treatment of state offices as “prebends” to be captured in a variety of ways. Their resources, or access to them, are primarily used for self-enrichment and the nurturing of clientelistic relations. This analytical framework provides the scaffolding for much subsequent analyses of Nigerian politics and government. The tragic episodes of brutality by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), while dismaying, are not new occurrences. Reports from human rights organizations are replete with details of violent abuses of state power. Traffic policing involves, to a significant degree, the extortion of bribes from road users. When soldiers or police are summoned to control public disturbances, excessive force often follows. As a consequence of the May 25 slaying of African American George Floyd, the Nigerian campaign against police misconduct had already attracted international attention. The October 20 atrocity has not only been shocking but raised alarms about what exactly is happening in Nigeria. In June 2018 the World Poverty Clock declared that Nigeria has the largest number of poor people in the world (i.e., exceeding India, which has a population several times greater). Protesters are shouting “we want change” and have expanded their complaints to “government corruption, economic mismanagement, and nepotism.” I have argued in several documents during the past year that Nigeria was confronting possible existential challenges. Commentators who use such expressions as “Nigeria is falling apart” or “burning to the ground” are not being alarmist. Here are further considerations: The multiparty democracy inaugurated in 1999, following fifteen years of military government, has stalled. The costs to maintain it are high while its output in development policies is meagre. Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s current president, was also its first military leader after the overthrow of the Second Republic on December 31, 1983. At seventy-seven years of age, and after many years in government leadership positions, he appears diminished in authority, vitality, and responsiveness. State excesses are reminiscent of abuses during the first Buhari era in 1984–1985. (SARS, held responsible for the early October killings, is reminiscent of a mobile police unit during the 1980s and 1990s nicknamed “Kill-and-Go”.) A respected former minister of education and World Bank vice president, Dr. Obiagele Ezekweseli, estimated in January 2013 that “$400 billion of Nigeria’s oil revenue has been stolen or misused since the country’s independence in 1960.” Over 80 percent of these revenues, she contended, “ended up in the hands of 1 percent of the population.” Moreover, “as much as 20 percent of the entire capital expenditure [of government] will end up in private pockets annually.” Tens of billions more have likely been diverted from government revenues since 2013. Landry Signé, of the Brookings Institution and Stanford University, and his colleagues argue that illicit financial flows are equivalent to two-thirds of foreign direct investments in Africa. Matthew Page has tracked the laundering of “fugitive funds” from Nigeria in substantial property holdings overseas. Violent conflicts in Nigeria are perennial: militant groups in the southern, oil-producing Delta; Boko Haram and other self-declared jihadis in the northeast; cattle raiders and teams of bandits in the northwest; and armed herders in the midwest now involved in conflicts with farmers in the upper southwest. Insecurity, accompanied by distrust of federal police and army units, is pervasive. Amb. Campbell calls, in Nigeria and the Nation-State, for a “rethink” of what is Nigeria. Nigerian public commentators contend that “the country is not working” and that a fundamental “redesign” should be contemplated. The October 21 declaration by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a New York Times op-ed that “Nigeria could burn to the ground” should be taken seriously. Amb. Campbell’s 2011 book, Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink, did not elicit an appropriate response, especially from Nigerian politicians and political analysts. The country has since fallen far from the “brink”. The brutal killings and wounding at the Lekki Toll Gate, after being thoroughly investigated, should not be ribbon-wrapped along with the enunciation of grand reforms. Such gestures are no longer adequate. A country of over 200 million is in distress. Moreover, several states in the region no longer enjoy legitimacy or effective capacity. The 2023 national elections are “in the beyond”. Party political gamesmanship, replete with the “underground” campaign (i.e., thuggery, vote-buying, and ballot-box snatching) cannot be relied on to get Nigeria out of the Dismal Tunnel. Calls for a “national conference” and “restructuring” have repeatedly been brushed off by government leaders. I have suggested concrete steps to finding an exit from the Dismal Tunnel: a national non-partisan government; distilling the values and practices in institutions of legitimate and effective governance; a multi-year campaign—similar to the anti-colonial, anti-apartheid, and anti-racism movements—to mobilize organizations across Nigeria, and its diaspora, to identify ways to transform destructive behaviors; and the deliberate nurturing of institutions of capacity and integrity in state and society. Nigeria, I suggested a decade ago, is a “toll-gate society”. (This expression refers to the bribery that occurs in everyday transactions and which impede economic growth and development.) These words have now acquired sacral meaning. The number who reportedly died on October 20 appears small compared to those who fell in Sharpeville, Soweto, Tiananmen Square, and Tahrir Square. But the manner in which they perished—in a hail of soldiers’ bullets, under the cover of darkness, while peacefully protesting—should shake this proud nation to its core. Never to be erased from memory is a police dog straining at the leash to attack a civil rights demonstrator in Birmingham, Alabama; or a Vietnamese girl, clothing stripped, screaming from burns caused by a napalm attack; or a single man standing in front of a line of tanks at Tiananmen Square. Although no pictures of the killing and maiming at the Lekki Toll Gate have surfaced, the horror was globally experienced. The atrocity of October 20, 2020 is a signal to rewind the Nigerian clock and redesign a polity whose agents can wantonly extinguish the lives of innocent citizens. Learn more about John Campbell's upcoming book, Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World, out in early December 2020.

Western media is reporting that violence in Lagos—initially connected to protests against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit—is intensifying. Lagos is under a twenty-four-hour curfew, and, for the first time, a state in the oil patch, Delta, has also imposed a curfew. Media also reports that in Lagos the violence has spread to Victoria Island and Ikoyi, upmarket neighborhoods. President Muhammadu Buhari addressed the nation on October 22, calling for protesters to consider “the various well-thought-out initiatives” his administration has put forth as an alternative to protests “being used by some subversive elements to cause chaos.” He, however, made no mention of those killed thus far—Amnesty International has documented at least twelve deaths in Lagos and fifty-six nationwide, but there really is no definitive number. On social media, fears are being expressed that the Buhari administration could move to severe repression. Many Lagosians, in particular, recall Buhari's brutality when he was military chief of state in the 1980s. Learn more about John Campbell's upcoming book, Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World, out in early December 2020.

Protests that initially called for the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), an elite police unit credibly accused of rampant human rights abuses, now seem less focused—but are accelerating. In Lagos, "security services" have fired on "peaceful protesters." Exactly how many have been killed is unknown, but media, citing the reliable Amnesty International, report at least ten deaths as of October 20. The governor of Lagos State has set a twenty-four-hour curfew, with markets and banks shut. Governors in Ekiti and Edo States have taken similar steps. In Edo, a jailbreak led to the flight of over 1,900 prisoners, described by the state governor as "criminals," some of whom were awaiting execution. Meanwhile Nigerian celebrities in the diaspora (e.g., Manchester United footballer Odion Ighalo) and Black entertainers (e.g., Beyonce and Rihanna) are denouncing the violence against protesters. So, too, have U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.  Social media is having a field day and the rumor mill is in overdrive, but much is unknown: how many have been killed? Who are the "security services" doing the killing? The army denies it was even present at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, site of at least some killings, and myriad private security services operate in Lagos. How long can a twenty-four-hour curfew be sustained in Lagos? People must buy food, and Lagos has an estimated population of more than twenty million. And who exactly are the demonstrators? Initially, reports were that the protesters were predominantly young, peaceful, and often equipped with laptops and cellphones, making them part of a Westernized or modern youth elite: their focus appeared to be SARS. Now, however, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, governor of Lagos State, is saying that the protests have been hijacked by criminal gangs that are taking advantage of the general breakdown to loot. The governor's charge cannot be dismissed as implausible. Gangs and criminal groups—"area boys“—have long been active and contribute to the high levels of violence in Lagos even in normal times.  The bottom line is that for the time being, in some places things are breaking down. Nevertheless, it remains too soon to say whether the protests pose a threat to the Buhari administration or to the broader political economy. Though reports show demonstrations in Kano and Abuja, the phenomenon still seems most widespread in the more developed and Yoruba part of the country with social media playing a key role. If there have been significant protests in the oil patch, they have not caught media attention. The demonstrations appear largely inchoate and spontaneous without a centralized leadership or a charismatic figurehead. President Muhammadu Buhari has been silent since announcing the disbandment of SARS. The military leadership appears to be firmly behind the administration. But there has been violence, and that lets the genie out of the bottle. All this on top of COVID-19, low oil prices, and radical Islamist groups bent on destroying the state—Nigeria was in trouble even before the SARS demonstrations. Learn more about John Campbell's upcoming book, Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World, out in early December 2020.