By Godwin Onyeacholem
Over the past year and a half, it’s been quite a bumpy ride for whistleblowers, journalists and civil society actors in Nigeria even as the ruling class and its associates unduly preen themselves on the country’s quarter century of a brand of democracy that the majority of citizens have long written off as a sham. Indeed, a disservice.
Yes, an unqualified disservice. Because rather than serve the people, Nigeria’s democracy since 1999 has been serving the power holders, at the head of which is usually a thin cabal comprising a small unit of the predatory political class and all stripes of devious accomplices in or outside government. Together they think up a string of opportunistic manoeuvres which enable a mindless plunder of the commonwealth that has left the country and the people high and dry.
The agencies of dissension and truth who strive to hold them to account by demanding transparency, exposing their corrupt practices in whichever way or organizing to publicly challenge evident abuse of power in diverse forms, have consistently been the worse for it. Coercive institutions of state are let loose on them to harass and intimidate, and their hired goons have not disappointed in re-inventing the zeal to further constrict civic space and freedom.
Although hounding and persecuting critical voices and fearless, truth-seeking journalists didn’t start with the Bola Tinubu administration, this extremely unpleasant approach to dealing with critics has progressively worsened under his government. An irony of some sort, considering Tinubu’s place as a frontline critic of recent past governments in his days as an opposition party leader.
He even supported public protests and demonstrations against them, and many argue that his path to the highest office in the land was significantly smoothened by an acknowledgement of his support for street protests led by activists and advocates of good governance. But he has clearly turned his back on such actions now given his bleak silence in the face of continued brutal state suppression of the voices of change actors.
On Friday 13 December, 2024, five police personnel including a woman, launched a dawn raid on the home of the Thomases in Bariga, a suburb of Lagos, where Biodun, a nurse and known whistleblower who affiliates with social movements and finds fulfilment in collective action through peaceful street protests, lives with her mother, Mrs Aderemi Thomas. They pushed through the door of the one-bedroom apartment, knocked the old woman to the floor and yanked her phone off her hand as they made for their quarry.
They dragged Biodun out of the room and drove her straight to State Criminal Investigation Department at Panti and threw her in a cell. The following day, she was whisked off to Abuja and locked up in a cell at the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID).
Biodun has had problems with the police in Lagos since the last #ENDSARS memorial march in Lekki in October where she was arrested with a handful others, beaten up and bundled into a police van. After her release, she shared her thoughts on the social media which the police deemed to be offensive to the families of President Tinubu, Kayode Egbetokun, Inspector General of Police, and Muyiwa Adejobi, Force Public Relations Officer.
From the moment she was taken from her house to the time she arrived Abuja, she became hostage to all kinds of unlawful acts including being held for more than 48 hours without letting her know the reason, without charging her to court and without an order of the court for further detention beyond the specified period.
Not until after a week in detention did the police slam Biodun with a three-count charge of cyberbullying under the Cybercrime Act. How the police are not able to understand that the provisions of Section 24 of the law they so much rely on to prosecute active citizens and journalists has been nullified by the ECOWAS court remains a puzzle. Yet, the police boast a legal department with lawyers of senior rank.
Thanks to Socio Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) which filed the case, the court held that Section 24 is “vague, arbitrary and unlawful.” It declared the provisions in that section a violation of the rule of law and human rights standard, meaning that no one can be legally charged with cyberbullying under this section.
Following the ruling, the controversial section was amended and now only criminalizes the act of knowingly or intentionally sending pornographic materials online or posting messages known to be incorrect or true for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order.
Despite the amendment to the controversial section to protect freedom of expression, the police still went on to charge a citizen with cyberbullying under the same section – a pure act of illegality that any judge shouldn’t waste a second to not only dismiss but also thoroughly lambast the police and fine them heavily.
But a judge heard the matter in his court and ordered that Biodun be remanded in Suleja prison until the bail application is heard. Knowing how the justice system operates here, that would be sometime after the Christmas holidays. Exactly what the police wanted.
In a brazen defiance of the law, the police, soon after escorting Biodun to prison, warned that citizens who criticize or abuse powerful entities on the internet would face prosecution for cyberbullying. Their targets are well known. They include those who harbour strong feelings about the Tinubu government and make them public, and journalists who expose corruption in high places.
The Nigerian police and other security agencies would rather go after journalists who expose corruption than prosecute persons and institutions whose corrupt acts are reported by the media. Their stock in trade is to go for the messenger instead of tackling the message.
It’s no surprise that Fisayo Soyombo, the investigative journalist who has been doggedly revealing massive corruption by Nigerian customs officers on the country’s western corridor, has recently alerted the public of an underground plot by the customs, in partnership with the police and the military, to arrest him. Once they succeed, predictably the job will be left for the police to complete.
The police, who have decidedly ignored Fisayo’s vivid reports of customs officials not only aiding and abetting but also neck-deep in staggering cross-border smuggling, will then slap him with an offence of cyberbullying as has just been done to Biodun. All this just to drown potential voices of truth and protect the powerful.
Is it right to say that’s the least expected of this government in all honesty? Maybe.
Godwin Onyeacholem is senior programmes manager at AFRICMIL
