This week in Nigeria, we witnessed a viral video of a TikToker explaining her encounter with a Youth Service Corps administrator after she had posted a video complaining about the cost of living in Nigeria. In the video, the girl explained that she had received a threatening phone call from a member of the Youth Service Corps, and she played a few seconds of the encounter, where you could hear the TikToker being berated for daring to criticise the President by the Youth Service Administrator.
This controversy first started after she had originally posted a video where she was complaining about the state of the Nigerian economy and how difficult life has become for so many around the country. In her original video, she reportedly described Nigerian President Bola Tinubu as being a “terrible President” due to the state of the economy. Which led to an administrator from the Youth Service calling her and berating her over the phone for supposedly insulting the president.
This sort of interaction is far too common for people in Nigeria and, to an extent, around the African continent as a whole. While many of our countries would like to claim to be democratic nations, the reality on the ground tends to be quite different. Journalists, members of opposition parties and even regular citizens can often find themselves in the crosshairs of law enforcement or other government officials for expressing any kind of criticism towards the government.
These sorts of crackdowns take place very frequently despite the fact that in many of our countries, it is enshrined in the constitution that we have a right to freedom of expression. However, these constitutional guarantees typically end up just being nothing more than a bunch of words on a piece of paper, as they tend to struggle with their practical implementation in the real world.
“every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference”
Section 39 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution
Our governments would typically just pick and choose to follow the laws when it is convenient for them. Moreover, we frequently see laws that contravene the right to free expression being passed, despite it being a constitutional guarantee. For example, we frequently see laws that prohibit people from insulting elected politicians or posting content that could cause harm or even supposed ‘hate speech’ laws being passed in our countries, which go against the right to free expression.
Perhaps in a perfect world, it would be nice to not have anyone insult an elected politician or spread harmful content online or use hate speech. However, these laws are typically written in a manner that is so broad they can very easily be used against anyone for even the most minor cases. This is very typically the very reason such laws are passed in the first place, for the government to be able to silence its critics or its opposition.
One such infamous law in Nigeria is the Cybercrime Prohibition Act 2015. Last May, we saw journalist Daniel Ojukwu, a reporter with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, arrested by the Nigerian police, accusing him of violating the cybercrime law. Only after days of protests and international media attention did the Nigerian police eventually release him from their custody. This is not the only case of this Cybercrime prohibition act being used against citizens for their speech, either. Cases like this is why the right to free expression must be protected for democracy to be maintained.
The unfortunate reality is that many of our governments are really only ever interested in one thing, which is maintaining their power. And they have no problem silencing their critics in such a manner. That is the reason these laws restricting speech are often passed is not because of a desire for there to be no hate speech, for example. In fact, typically some of the most hateful comments about other tribes or ethnicities usually come from government officials themselves. The reason these laws are there is so the government can have a convenient tool to silence any criticism or any form of accountability.
In this instance, we had a girl receive a threatening phone call from a government official from simply lamenting the current disastrous state of the Nigerian economy. However, there are many worse cases that take place around the country and around the continent as a whole. If the government is to face any accountability for its actions, the right to free expression must be maintained. We simply cannot claim to be a democracy if even just complaining about the state of the economy can lead to the government coming after you.
