From traditional to technologically-mediated state surveillance: Experiences and circumvention tactics of Nigerian activists.

Social movements in Africa can be argued to have evolved through different phases since the Arab Spring in 2011. This evolution partly responds to tactics deployed by African governments to repress protests and expressions of dissent by African publics. In more recent times, new forms of repression manifest through state surveillance against activists, with technological privileges being a major enabler of law enforcement agencies’ capacities to track and identify activists. Although, recent academic research have demonstrated the several impacts of technologically-mediated surveillance, they have not sufficiently explored the combined patterns of traditional and digital surveillance, especially in Africa.

Pre-existing technology gaps between Africa and other technologically advanced continents makes it important to account for the manifestation of surveillance in these forms. In Nigeria for example, the diffusion of several digital technologies and heightened technology consciousness which accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic plus the 2020 #EndSARS protests provided a unique gateway through which the government unleashed its surveillance arsenal against political activists. During and following the #EndSARS protests, there were reports of the Nigerian Police identifying activists through their friends and families, by unfounded profiling of young people, telecom surveillance and by disguisingly joining Telegram and WhatsApp Channels to identify opinion formers of the movement. Digital surveillance systems were combined with traditional or non-digital tactics to clamp down on activists, leading to some reportedly wrongful arrests and detentions. Interestingly, same technological affordances cannot be divorced from the ways talented youths and activists in Africa circumvent state surveillance.

Although it is insufficiently theorised if these are done in defence of democracy or as statements of youthfulness in a digitising Africa. While studies have extensively interrogated the implications of authoritarianism (through defiance of the rule of law and speech censorship) on democratisation in Africa, or the repression of social movements through the instrumentalities of state instruments of surveillance, it is yet to be explored how activists themselves circumvent those surveillance systems. As such, this study asks, ‘what are the experiences of victims of state surveillance in post-pandemic Nigeria, and how are technologies shaping how activists counter different state surveillance tactics?’ This study draws primarily on the #EndSARS protests as case, and interviews with #EndSARS activists, victims of state surveillance, and technology experts among the protesting divide who were and have been on the frontlines of counter surveillance.