In the immediate aftermath of the State Security Service’s invasion of an Abuja court room and its re-arrest of Nigerian journalist Omoyele Sowore, the Lagos daily newspaper the Punch announced that it will prefix President Muhammadu Buhari’s name with his military rank, Major General, and will refer to his administration as a “regime,” until “they purge themselves of their insufferable contempt for the rule of law.”

In response to the proliferation of ostensibly jihadist groups in the Sahel, governments have deployed more than 20,000 international and local troops, comprising 4,500 French soldieries, 13,000 UN peacekeepers, and about 5,000 troops connected to the G5 Sahel—an initiative godfathered by France and including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. But terror groups have endured and grown more deadly.  

The plane crash May 21 killing Chief of Army Staff General Ibrahim Attahiru and all passengers and crew aboard is the fourth air tragedy in the past five months involving Nigeria Air Force aircraft. Initially, few details on the most recent crash were released, allowing conspiracy theories and falsely claimed videos of the crash to emerge on social media.

Despite the crowd’s jubilation in Bamako, the arrest of President Ibrahim B. Keita, Prime Minister Boubou Cisse, and other government officials seems unlikely to result in fundamental change in Mali.

On September 10, members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), a Shia religious and political movement, marched in different cities across the north of Nigeria to mark the beginning of Ashura, a major Muslim holiday and fasting period. In doing so, they defied the government, which, in July, had banned the group. The IMN later claimed that fifteen of their members had been killed after police opened fire on the various IMN processions. The police denied the claim.