Is Nigeria using Russia as an excuse for bloody crackdown?

Nigeria is on edge as individuals linked to the deadly protests that recently shook the West African country are to be put on trial on charges that carry the death penalty.

Their arrest is part of a wider dragnet that has been triggered in part by the president's fears that the demonstrations are part of a Russian-inspired plot to overthrow his government.

Adaramoye Michael Lenin and nine others were arraigned on Monday Sept. 2 at the Federal High Court Abuja on charges of treason, insurrection and terrorism. They are part of over 2,000 protesters arrested in different parts of the country during the #EndBadGovernance protests that broke out last month in response to the harsh economic situation in the country.

According to reports, the initially peaceful youth-dominated protests, inspired by Kenya's Gen-Z anti-finance bill protest, degenerated into deadly clashes leading to the killing of about 22 protesters by government security forces.

The events leading to their arraignment have been nothing short of dramatic, as security agencies fearful of a foreign plot embarked on a frenetic crackdown on anyone remotely connected to the protest. The list, which is still growing, includes journalists, bloggers, prominent trade unionists, civil society actors as well as a group of visiting Polish students and a lecturer arrested for filming a protest in the historic city of Kano.

Although the Polish nationals have since been released, their ordeal demonstrates the panic mode authorities are in as growing anger over soaring food and energy prices has evoked fears of a Russian plot to overthrow the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who came to power last year.

What has particularly piqued the interest of security agencies is the sudden appearance of Russian flags among some demonstrators in the northern States of the country where the worst violence occurred. Reports claim that some of the demonstrators were chanting, “Tinubu must go,” while calling for a military coup.

According to a court affidavit sworn by Elizabeth Ogochukwu, a litigation secretary at the Nigeria Police headquarters, “The suspects/defendants herein were found to have been carrying Russian flags, banners, placards and slogans agitating for a sovereign invasion of Nigerian territory to destabilize or overthrow the sovereign state of Nigeria by the Russian government.”

Soon after, the police put two men suspected of sponsoring the plot on their wanted list. They are Lucky Obinyan, a member of the country’s opposition, and Andrew Wynne, described by the police as a British national but with a Russian-sounding moniker, Andrew Povich.

No doubt, the prevailing geopolitical landscape in West Africa, where Moscow has recently made incursions across the Sahel to the detriment of Western powers, provides a probable cause for the government’s suspicion. Not only does Nigeria’s pro-Western president double as the head of the regional body, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which the three Sahelian pro-Moscow juntas recently exited, but Nigeria is also the largest democracy within a region that has seen a rise in military coups amid waning Western influence in recent years.

On July 26, 2023, Niger became the latest country to fall under Moscow’s growing influence when General Tchiani overthrew the democratically elected government of President Mohamed Badoum in a coup. Russian military personnel and equipment are now stationed in Airbase 101, previously occupied by some of the 1,000 U.S. military personnel who have withdrawn from Niger, near the capital city of Niamey, about 600 miles from Abuja. The Tchiani junta had previously evicted French troops as well, acting on a pattern already established by pro-Moscow regimes in Mali and Burkina Faso.

Since the coup, the relationship between Abuja and Niamey has soured mainly because of sanctions imposed by ECOWAS on the Nigerien junta. But this is not the case with the people on both sides of the 1,000-mile-long border that divides both countries who share centuries-old trade and familial relations. According to the International Trade Centre (ITC), cross-border trade, mainly in petrol, tobacco, dates, cement, cattle and other agricultural products, between Niamey and traders and communities in Nigeria’s North was worth roughly $226 million in 2022.

Five of Niger's eight regions — Zinder, Tahoua, Maradi, Dosso and Diffa — all border Nigeria’s northern states of Sokoto, Kebbi, Yobe, Katsina and Jigawa. To Nigeria’s security agencies, it is hardly a coincidence that it is in these States that calls for a military coup and the display of Russian flags emerged during the protest.

Nonetheless, the allegation of a Russian plot appears at best circumstantial. For instance, one of the protesters, Adaramoye Michael, was arrested only because his nom de guerre is Lenin, the name of the 20th-century Russian revolutionary, Vladimir Ilich. Likewise, Wynne, who runs a bookshop at the Abuja office of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), is better known in the country’s trade union and activist circles as Drew Povey — and not the Russian variant contrived by the police to bolster the allegation of a Russian plot.

Moscow has been linked to a number of undemocratic changes of government in the Sahel and for nurturing an extensive disinformation network across the region. But Nigeria’s friends in the West should not allow the state to cynically manipulate national security concerns to violently put down legitimate dissent at home. The ultimate consequence of this would be the further discrediting of the democratic values that the West wants to rebuild in order to regain influence in the region.

As it is now, Nigeria’s status as Africa’s most populous country, its largest economy, and a symbol of enduring democracy brings a lot of benefit to Washington’s agenda of regional security and stability in the Sahel. The oil-producing country is also the West’s most enduring partner in the fight against terrorism and cross-border crimes that plague the region.

As Gen. Michael Langley, Commander of the US-Africa Command (AFRICOM) noted during a visit to Nigeria earlier in January, "Cooperation and training between the U.S. and Nigerian militaries is vital in addressing the evolving security landscape in West Africa and advancing common interests.” Therefore, the maintenance of proper democratic virtues and respect for human rights and civil liberties in the country are of great importance as much as countering any threat to peace and security.

Suffice it to say, the Nigerian state’s continuous show of force, instead of dialogue with protesting groups inside the country, may backfire. African governments should define a more civil framework for managing protests and unrest — something which has become more frequent as Africa’s huge public debt crisis continues to cut into the abilities of the continent’s governments to provide basic services to the poorest and more vulnerable sectors of their societies.

If the state is allowed to utilize measures that erode civil liberties to counter a perceived Russian threat, it would be doing exactly what pro-Moscow juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso are doing to their own citizens. In that sense, the West would have lost the fight for influence over the region to Vladimir Putin.