Civil Society

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.

There is little sense of national cohesion in Nigeria, and protests tend to be along ethnic and religious lines rather than national. Like the 2012 demonstrations against the Goodluck Jonathan administration's efforts to reduce the fuel subsidy, current protests against the police are exceptional in that they appear to be occurring across the country, bridging the usual ethnic and religious boundaries. They also appear to be strongly supported by the Nigerian diaspora, which is linking them to Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the United States and Europe. The 2012 demonstrations collapsed in the aftermath of minor government concessions and the buying-off of certain trade unions. The coming weeks will show whether these demonstrations have any greater staying power. As in much of post-colonial Africa, police in Nigeria are widely hated for their brutality and corruption. (The Nigeria Police Service was a British colonial creation, used primarily to keep down the indigenous population.) The focus of the current demonstrations has been the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a plainclothes unit known for its abuses targeting young people. The demonstrations were triggered by the alleged SARS killing of a young man during an October 3 stop-and-search operation. Amnesty International has documented eighty-two cases of SARS extrajudicial killings and abuse over the past thirty months or so. President Muhammadu Buhari responded to the demonstrations by promising to disband SARS as a first step toward a thorough—and badly needed—reform of the police. The promise is viewed with skepticism by protestors, who have also taken aim at the new Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit, which Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu announced would replace SARS. A complication is that Nigeria is in the midst of a nationwide crime wave. SARS was initially established to counter criminal gangs operating in Lagos, the country's largest city, and later was deployed across the country. The diaspora, especially in the United States, appears to be playing a major supporting role. There have been diaspora-led demonstrations in Atlanta, Berlin, London, and New York that tie in Black Lives Matter protests. Social media is playing an important role in coordinating the demonstrations, in Nigeria and abroad. According to Western media, American rappers Chance the Rapper and Cardi B are calling attention to the demonstrations. It remains to be seen whether the demonstrations will become more significant abroad than at home.

The draft report of the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights provides a gift to despotic regimes and reveals the Trump administration’s hypocritical human rights policy.

Transparency, accountability, and trust matter now more than ever.

The sickening murder of George Floyd, and the laudable fact that the press in the United States is free to report it and to tell the story of the protests sweeping the nation, has again exposed just how much injustice persists in the United States. Some have concluded that this reality should render the United States silent on human rights abuses abroad. Without our own house in order, this argument posits, we have no standing to decry abuses elsewhere. The U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, Brian Nichols, gave powerful expression to a very different point of view in a statement he released on June 1. He acknowledged that he represents a country still working to realize its ideals, which aspires to be better for all of its citizens. Holding fast to that aspiration, he suggests, also compels the United States to speak out against injustice abroad—not from a position of supposed superiority, but in service of a mission to “meet the ideals of our founding.” To ignore human rights abuses, such as the abductions and assaults of political opponents and peaceful protesters that have occurred in Zimbabwe, would render America complicit in even more injustice. Ambassador Nichols’s statement models an American human rights diplomacy that rises above partisan takes about swagger or apologism. Confidence and pride and clarity of purpose can all coexist with humility. Representatives of the United States can acknowledge that our society is not free from oppression without suggesting that oppression is acceptable anywhere. They can acknowledge all of the truths of our own experience, even the ugly ones, without abandoning our principles or embracing a purely transactional diplomacy grounded in the most narrow idea of self-interest. They can exercise American leadership not grounded in a façade of perfection, but in a steadfast belief that our society is a partner to others around the world in the pursuit of justice and dignity for all people. Waging that struggle with humility and clarity and honesty will make for not just a stronger America, but stronger, more resilient, and more stable American partners.

Transparency International (TI) has issued its Corruption Perceptions Index. As in previous years, its citizens togerther with a selection of international organizations perceive Nigeria as one of Africa’s most corrupt countries. Nigeria’s ranking—146 out of 180 countries surveyed worldwide—is little changed from years past. TI measures the perception of corruption, not corruption itself, in the public sector. (It does not measure the perception of corruption in the private sector.) The current low ranking is no surprise. Nigerians commonly regard the state as corrupt, and President Buhari campaigned successfully for the presidency in 2015 on an anti-corruption platform. TI was founded in Berlin in 1993 to combat global corruption. Two of its founders are Nigerian, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Oby Ezekwesili. Obasanjo was jailed and nearly murdered by the notoriously corrupt Sani Abacha, who, as military chief of state from 1993 to 1998, looted the state to the tune of billions of dollars. Subsequently, Obasanjo served as president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007 and established or supported a number of anti-corruption agencies. But Obasanjo, virtually penniless when he was released from prison, has since become rich. Critics now accuse him of corruption. Ezekwesili, a minister on Obasanjo’s government, is a “good-government” activist and former presidential candidate. Among other things, she organized the #BringBackOurGirls movement to pressure the government of President Goodluck Jonathan to take action to free the Chibok school girls, kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2015. Definitions of corruption vary from country to country and reflect differing cultural values; TI does not seek to define it, nor does TI seek to analyze the political role it plays. In Nigeria, corruption has an important political dimension. Defined as the private annexation of state resources, it arguably keeps Nigeria from breaking apart. The country’s multi-ethnic elites require the state to access its oil wealth. An uneasy alliance among elites has therefore kept the country together and averted a repeat of the 1967–70 civil war. That said, there is in Nigeria an understanding of “excessive” corruption, namely the wholesale looting of state assets. That is seen as altogether different from the policeman at a checkpoint asking a motorist, “What do you have for me today?” Still, however defined and whatever its political function, corruption is “bad,” and the TI index influences Nigeria’s international reputation and reflects how at least some Nigerians see their own government.

On December 12, the Sultan of Sokoto publicly said that disobedience to court orders is “a recipe for lawlessness and chaos.” He said, “We must regularly obey and respect the laws of our land. We should never disregard the laws to avoid the consequences. If a court makes a judicial pronouncement on a particular matter, it should be obeyed to the letter.” Though he never mentioned Sowore by name, the Sultan’s audience understood that the context was the State Security Service (SSS) invasion of a court room and the re-arrest of Omoyele Sowore contrary to court order. He was speaking at a quarterly meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council in Abuja. Apparently under the sultan’s leadership, the Islamic establishment appears to be moving to oppose the SSS assault on the judiciary. The Sultan of Sokoto is regarded as the premier Islamic traditional ruler in Nigeria. In terms of formal protocol, he is usually listed first. He is the president-general of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, the paramount Islamic umbrella organization in Nigeria. Muslims in the north often accord him greater respect than secular leaders, including the president. Indeed, he and President Buhari are both supported by the northern man-in-the-street. Were the Sultan and the president seriously to diverge—and they are far from doing so, at present—it is difficult to know who would have the greater support. However, during military rule, military chiefs of state removed one Sultan of Sokoto and replaced him with another, though from within the same family. Before his enthronement, this Sultan, Alhaji Muhammad Sa'ad Abubakar III, was a career military officer. He served as Nigeria’s defense attache in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unlike many in public life, he shows a strong sense of Nigerian national identity and promotes national unity. He is known for his good relations with Christian leaders and for promoting Muslim-Christian dialogue.  The Sowore re-arrest is consolidating opposition to the president by civil society, the press, international opinion and now religious leaders. It is to be hoped that the Buhari administration is looking actively for a way to defuse the Sowore issue, perhaps by allowing him to return to the United States.

Bulama Bukarti is a sub-Saharan Africa analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, based in London, and a PhD candidate at SOAS, University of London. On October 30, the Nigerian military temporarily lifted its suspensions of Action Against Hunger and Mercy Corps, two international non-government organizations (INGOs) working in northeast Nigeria, where Boko Haram is active. Both organizations were expelled from northeastern Nigeria last September following accusations of aiding and abetting Boko Haram. This was part of a wider crackdown on INGOs accused of supporting Boko Haram. In the final months of 2018, UNICEF was accused of training and deploying spies for Boko Haram and was also suspended. Its suspension was quickly rescinded.  But the allegations levelled against INGOs and the UN are far from being resolved. Sadiya Farouq, Nigeria’s minister for humanitarian affairs, disaster management, and social welfare, made clear when announcing the government’s reversal that the measure was interim and that organizations would “continue to receive attention and scrutiny.” The organizations concerned have not been cleared of wrongdoing and fundamentally, Abuja still considers them to be a problem. Abuja’s feud with INGOS—despite temporary reprieve—is unwittingly helping Boko Haram. The federal government’s charges are already being echoed by local politicians and community leaders, damaging the credibility of INGOs. In the context of a historical mistrust of Europeans (who are locally conflated with Americans) and the currency of conspiracy theories, the combination is toxic. By sowing mistrust in the communities on whom INGOs rely to keep safe and successfully deliver projects, it puts at risk the lives of humanitarian workers—some of whom have paid the supreme sacrifice.  The services INGOs provide save millions of lives. They provide food, drinking water, and healthcare to some of the seven million people—including about a million children—that need lifesaving assistance. This helps reduce poverty and unemployment, making people less susceptible [PDF] to Boko Haram recruitment. But recent reports indicate that the Islamic State-affiliated faction of Boko Haram, the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA), is using welfare as warfare, successfully winning the hearts and minds of some locals. According to reports, it provides a modicum of governance and security, and even some public services, such as healthcare, financial support, and infrastructure.  To stand a fair chance of defeating this brutal group, both the hard-power approach of the military, and the softer approach of INGOs, must be utilised and coordinated. Steps should be taken by both parties to reset their relationship and realign their efforts. Abuja and INGOs must see themselves as partners in their decade-long effort to defeat Boko Haram.  First, the government should rapidly review the allegations against these organisations. Where charges are baseless, their names should be cleared publicly. If any of them are found guilty, they should be sanctioned in a transparent way so that those that are cleared of wrongdoing may continue their laudable work without any suspicion against them. For their part, INGOs should take the concerns expressed by Nigeria seriously and take steps to address them. In the same vein, they should address corruption allegations against them and operate in a more transparent way so as to bring both the government and communities along with them. It bears repeating that no one is more impacted by Boko Haram than Nigerians, so their concerns must be taken seriously.   Over seventy INGOs operate in the northeast of Nigeria, and there is a clear need for better communication and coordination with Abuja. They should regularly share information, knowledge and concerns, and iron out differences. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the newly created Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs should spearhead this initiative. This will improve and save the lives of those affected, deny Boko Haram leverage, and hasten the group’s defeat.

Jennifer Davis, an American anti-apartheid activist, passed away on October 15. Among her many legacies, she mobilized public pressure on the U.S. Congress to overturn President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. Born in Johannesburg and a graduate of the prestigious University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), she and her husband eventually moved to New York. Soon after, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Like other white, highly-educated anti-apartheid activists, she was strongly influenced by the racism of Nazi Germany and the subsequent holocaust.  From 1981 to 2000 she was the director of the American Committee on Africa that coordinated NGO opposition to apartheid and made it a mass movement. She went beyond the Sullivan Principles, which called on American companies doing business in South Africa to treat their South African employees the same as they treated their employees in the United States. She pushed for Americans to boycott South African goods, and for Americans to divest from companies that profited from apartheid.  Within the governing African National Congress, there is frequent criticism that the United States came late and only half-heartedly to the anti-apartheid struggle. Jennifer Davis is a reminder of the important role played by civil society in heightening public awareness in the United States of apartheid—which eventually led to real legislative action—and that the international anti-apartheid movement acquired significant American support.

A "Right to Assist" could help prevent violent conflict and ease democratic transitions. But several important questions remain unanswered. 

Several successive years of being one of the world’s fastest-growing economies have made Ivory Coast a darling of investors bullish about Africa. But the country’s strong economic performance has not been matched by political progress in overcoming the divides that have driven the country into civil war twice in the last twenty years. With elections scheduled for 2020, many of the same antagonists that featured in those earlier conflicts are jockeying for position, giving observers and citizens an unwelcome sense of déjà vu.  Current President Alassane Ouattara has stoked uncertainty as to whether he intends to step down or make the case that he is entitled to run for a third term. Henri Konan Bédié, who served as president from 1993 to 1999, is eyeing a return a power, and has allied with yet another former president, Laurent Gbagbo, to challenge the current ruling party. Gbagbo, whose refusal to acknowledge defeat in the election of 2010 tipped his country back into conflict, is still facing an appeal of his acquittal on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court. Finally, Guillame Soro, formerly a leader of a rebel movement that fought Gbagbo's government, has also announced his intention to run for the presidency. Voters could be forgiven for feeling some cynicism as they watch the maneuvering of this cast of familiar characters, with their checkered histories and shifting alliances. For years, elites in Abidjan have been so eager to drive toward a more prosperous future that they have shown little interest in a genuine social reckoning with the past. All of the old triggers for conflict—frustration around presidential succession, questions of nationality, toxic regional divides, and agitation for generational change—persist in the current political climate. Layered atop the fact that Côte d'Ivoire’s growth has not been particularly inclusive, these flashpoints can be used to manipulate and mobilize struggling citizens. Friends of Côte d'Ivoire would be wise to make conflict prevention a top priority in the year ahead and to support the efforts of civil society to bolster the independence of the electoral commission and transparency around the democratic process. Finally, investors eager to build on current successes cannot pretend that political questions do not implicate their interests. They should use their voices—not to weigh in on decisions about leadership that belong to the Ivorian people—but to warn against stoking the fires of conflict and division.

The year 2019 marks four hundred years since the beginning of African slavery in America, when Dutch privateers sold the first African slaves to the fledgling English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. The anniversary has been the occasion for much reflection on how slavery still impacts America. The New York Times’s “1619 Project” has dedicated a number of essays on slavery’s legacy in American society. Also to be welcomed is the  increased attention by African scholars and journalists to the role that domestic slavery and the international slave trade has had on African cultures. Igboland was a major source of slaves for Virginia and the American south. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, a journalist and novelist of Igbo heritage, has reported and written recently about Africa’s role in the slave trade and on the legacy of slavery in her native Nigeria, specifically among the Igbo. In the New Yorker, she shows that slavery was integral to Igbo culture even prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade, though such commerce created new incentives for slave-catching.  In her New Yorker article, Nwaubani draws useful distinctions between slavery as practiced in the United States and among the Igbo. Notably, Igbo slavery was not based on race, and there was no visible, physical difference between slave and freeperson. Rather, slavery was shaped by culture, their beliefs about the importance of lineage, and their spirituality. She explains that slaves usually came from outside the all-important local community, captured in raids or warfare, or enslaved because of a criminal act. It is estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of Igbos—amounting to many millions of people—are descendants of  slaves, and she shows that they are subject to discrimination.   The Igbo emphasis on purity of lineage goes hand-in-hand with a belief that marriage between the descendants of the free with the descendants of slaves can bring about divine retribution. She notes that Igbo slaves shared similarities of status with the dalits (untouchables) in India and burakumin in Japan.  While slavery became illegal in both the United States and Nigeria, Nwaubani notes that the abolition of slavery in the United States was a result of internal agitation that gradually brought about a (incomplete) change in the popular view of slavery and of race. In Nigeria, however, slavery, which she sees as continuing in some forms among the Igbo into the 1940s, was abolished by British fiat, not as the result of an internal, indigenous process. Hence, abolition of slavery was a colonial initiative.  However, Nwaubani reports that now underway is the internal agitation against slavery that Nigeria’s story had hitherto lacked. The focus is on community-led initiatives, often in conjunction with traditional rulers, to end discrimination against those Igbos whose ancestors were slaves.   

The bill’s future remains uncertain, but no amendments can change the ugly reality of shipping anyone off to Beijing’s incommunicado torture chambers, its denial of competent legal defenders, and its unfair trials.

The Five Questions Series is a forum for scholars, government officials, civil society leaders, and foreign policy practitioners to provide timely analysis of new developments related to the advancement of women and girls worldwide. In this interview Denise Ho, a Hong Kong-based artist and pro-democracy and LGBTQ rights activist, explains why the proposed extradition bill has triggered protests in Hong Kong.

The news out of Sudan, so recently full of fragile hope, is now deeply troubling. For over a week, the Transitional Military Council, or TMC, has been violently suppressing the very protestors whose bravery and persistence created the conditions for the security services to seize power from disgraced former President Omar al-Bashir. Over a hundred civilians have been killed, many more wounded, and the facade of shared goals and commitment to reform between citizens and security elites irreparably broken.  The resolve of the Sudanese people to resist thinly disguised military dictatorship cannot be underestimated, but they are not operating in a vacuum. Over the past weeks of halting negotiations between a mix of military and militia leaders on one side and the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces, a coalition of civil society leaders and political opposition on the other, those international forces interested in a Sudan have helped to tip the balance to the brutal reality of today—some with their actions, and others with their passivity.  The United States falls squarely in the latter camp. It’s undoubtedly a good thing that the United States has been unequivocal in condemning the latest violence, but it is equally true that statements are not enough, and that U.S. leadership has been badly lacking over the last critical weeks. While a positive development, it remains to be seen how the upcoming visit of U.S. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Tibor Nagy, and rumors of a special Sudan advisor, will play out. The TMC has been emboldened by the warm embrace it received from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt—hardly a collection of democratic champions. While their $3 billion commitment to stabilize Sudan is insufficient to address the country’s massive economic challenges, it is a concrete show of support, and a taste of what could be possible for a Sudan that is compliant with these international patrons and ruthless in its internal repression. A critical question remains on the table about other viable alternative futures for Sudan. All parties recognize that Sudan cannot climb out of its economic collapse alone. So where will help come from, on what terms, and with what timeline? Answering that question requires international leadership that is visionary, not reactive. When Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy tried to provide some direction from the African Union by stepping in to mediate talks in recent days, civilian participants were arrested in the aftermath of the meeting. The AU has an important role to play, but it needs an international ecosystem of support. The distortions in Sudan’s economy that have favored a small set of elites are part of an unsustainable system. Most Sudanese know that. But it remains very unclear who can be counted on to support true transformation. Right now the concrete international help on the table is a temporary lifeline from the Gulf straight to the TMC. The choice between something and nothing is no choice at all.