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-- By EmmanuelOsayande - 22 Feb 2024

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BETWEEN ACTIVISM AND GOVERNANCE: LESSONS FROM AFRICA'S LARGEST CITY

-- By EmmanuelOsayande - 22 Feb 2024

Lagos, a coastal city in southwestern Nigeria, has been ground-zero for numerous social movements, particularly activist movements. This city, being Africa’s largest, provides a remarkable case study of how organized grassroots activism developed in African cities, and what role governance played in such development. This piece assesses how public spaces and rapid urbanization have powered Lagos-based movements, how these groups executed their campaigns, ways that the government has responded to such activism, and some lessons we can learn from all of this.

The City and Social Movements: In recent years, specific sites within metropolitan Lagos have been rallying points for the large-scale demonstrations associated with popular movements. In early 2012, for instance, a movement named Occupy Nigeria began their campaigns at sites such as Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park in the city. This movement vehemently pushed back on the removal of fuel subsidy by the Nigerian government; a policy that led to a sharp hike in fuel prices which they believed would have been detrimental to the economic lives of average Nigerians.

Historically, such sites in the city have housed movements that engaged other socio-political issues, not just economic policies. As far back as 1950, an ethnocultural movement led by the Egbé Ọmọ Odùduwà often gathered supporters at market squares in Isale Eko, in their campaign for political reform in colonial Lagos. Besides, in the 1980s and 1990s, during an era of military dictatorships, numerous sites in Lagos served as mobilization grounds for the human rights and pro-democracy movements that emerged in the city. In June 1993, for example, the Campaign for Democracy distributed leaflets at a soccer game at the National Stadium, Surulere, urging the spectators to join a planned protest against the annulment of the June 12 elections by the military head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida. The following month, thousands of protesters took the streets of Surulere in protest, even as security forces of the military state cracked down on them. This is an instance where sites in the city enabled specific kinds of campaigns and calls to action at the grassroots. It also represented how the city was a site of struggle over state power.

One question that comes to mind is why has Lagos seen such a sizeable amount of grassroots activism in its history? While we could consider any number of reasons, rapid urbanization has been a key factor that supported the rise of such movements in the city. Between 1950 and 2012, the city’s population grew from about 300,000 to over 20 million, surpassing Cairo, Egypt, as the largest city on the continent. What is more, in 2014, the UN World Urbanization Prospects named Lagos as the fastest-growing urban area in Africa. Accordingly, this swift pace of urban development has played a key role in supplying the human, financial, and infrastructural resources that have fueled activist movements in Lagos. Interestingly, social movements in the city have advocated for rights by productively using civic space, mobilizing the popular masses, and constructing collective identities. First, these movements often used public spaces such as streets, parks, and stadia for their campaigns of dissent. They became movers and shakers of these spaces, reinventing them from sites of leisure and mobility into sites of resistance. Secondly, they have mobilized participants and supporters through various techniques such as distributing flyers and posters, soliciting for foreign alliances, and using social media and online technology. Also, these Lagos-based groups, in organizing their social action, often devised creative ways of collectively identifying themselves, including as ethnopolitical, human rights, or pro-democracy movements.

The State: Successive Nigerian governments have responded to the campaigns of such movements in Lagos through several approaches that we can sum up into two: repression and concession. State repression of grassroots activists has been a relatively constant occurrence in Nigeria’s history, despite changes in the country’s political structure. Whether under a colonial, military, or even a democratically elected government, activists in Lagos have been subject to abuse, harassment, and violence by elements of the state. While there have been differences in the methods of state repression in Lagos, some similarities have lingered on. For one, numerous governments have used force and extrajudicial means to curb dissent in the city. These governments have promoted repressive policies, arbitrarily detained activists, and suspended or ignored constitutional rules. In 1984, for instance, the military junta of General Muhammadu Buhari issued the ‘public officers protection against false accusation’ decree which became a justification to oppress human rights activists and opponents of the regime. Incidentally, since Buhari became Nigeria’s democratically elected president in 2015, critics have accused his administration of pursuing a similar agenda. This is particularly regarding a proposed ‘hate speech’ bill that, if passed into law, could carry the death penalty and provide Buhari a legal basis to silence dissenting voices.

Nevertheless, such developments do not imply that Nigerian governments have always stifled grassroots activism in Lagos. They have occasionally explored avenues of compromise. Even authoritarian governments have shown that they too can make strategic compromises, albeit for ostensibly selfish reasons. To illustrate, it was ironic that the military regime of General Abacha, infamous for allegedly committing the most human rights violations in Nigeria’s history, established a national human rights commission in 1995. Although many believed that the commission was ineffective, this remains a classic example of the regime conceding to the pressure of activists, while looking to gain some legitimacy for itself.

Conclusion: With the fastest-growing cities and youth population in the world, the future of Africa is urban and vibrant. This signals that the intricate but strong link between activism and governance in cities such as Lagos could persist. As such, it behooves us to pay attention to valuable lessons of the past.

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