So, Nigeria’s women’s football team qualified for the World Cup. That’s nice. People in Lagos are probably celebrating, as they should. It’s a bright spot in the endless churn of `nigeria news`, with recent headlines like Wafcon 2026: Holders Nigeria and debutants Cape Verde and Malawi qualify.
But while the nation is distracted by goalposts, the government is busy moving a different set of goalposts—the ones that define basic freedom. They’re building a digital cage, and they’re using our own shiny tech toys to do it. Researchers have documented this trend; Nigeria’s government is using digital technology to repress citizens. A researcher explains how. And the most pathetic part? They’re not even being original about it.
This whole thing has a name, cooked up by academics who need something to put on their PowerPoints: “digital authoritarianism.” It’s a fancy term for a simple, ugly truth: using the internet to shut people up, spy on them, and lie to them. And it’s not some far-off threat. It’s happening right now, and the playbook is getting passed around like a cheat sheet.
The turning point, offcourse, was the #EndSARS movement back in 2020. A generation of young Nigerians used social media to organize one of the biggest protest movements the country had ever seen, and it scared the hell out of the people in power. You could almost hear the panic in the halls of government. For the first time, accountability wasn’t something they could just brush aside with a press conference. It was trending.
Their response? Predictable. Desperate. They banned Twitter. The official reason was a joke. The information minister, Lai Mohammed, claimed the platform was being used for “activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”
Let me translate that for you from PR-speak to English: “People were using it to say things we don’t like, and we couldn’t stop them.” It’s the classic cry of every regime that’s losing control of the narrative.
This is where it goes from standard-issue repression to a full-blown dystopian farce. After the Twitter ban, reports surfaced that the Nigerian government went shopping. They allegedly approached China, the undisputed world champion of internet censorship, to help them build their own version of the “Great Firewall.”
Give me a break.
They’re not just trying to block a few websites. They’re trying to build an entire, state-controlled internet ecosystem where the government gets to be the ultimate admin. An internet where dissent can be throttled, where organizers can be tracked, and where the official story is the only one you’re allowed to see. It’s like trying to put a giant, state-sponsored pop-up blocker on reality itself.
This isn’t about “internet sovereignty” or “national security.” It’s about survival. It’s about a government that saw the power of a connected populace and decided its only option was to pull the plug. But who, exactly, is selling them the hardware and the software for this? Who’s cashing the checks to build this digital panopticon in the heart of `Africa`?
The suppliers are a who’s-who of global powers: China, Russia, Israel, France, and yep, even the good old US of A. They sell these sophisticated tools for “economic gain” and “regional influence,” which is a sterile way of saying they’re selling digital shackles for a profit. They’re happy to help build the cage, as long as the check clears.
This is a bad look for the Nigerian government. No, 'bad look' is what you call a terrible haircut—this is the blueprint for 21st-century tyranny, bought and paid for by foreign interests.
Before you get too comfortable pointing fingers at some far-away government in `Africa`, let’s talk about the engine that makes all of this possible. It’s the sprawling, data-sucking corporate machine that we all feed every single day.
I stumbled across a corporate “Cookie Notice” the other day, and it might as well have been written in Klingon. It’s a masterclass in obfuscation. Here’s a little taste:
“We and third parties may associate Measurement And Analytics Cookies, Personalization Cookies, Content Selection, Delivery Cookies, and Reporting, Ad Selection, Delivery and Reporting Cookies, and Social Media Cookies with other information we have about you.”
What does that even mean? I’ll tell you what it means. It means they are taking every last crumb of your digital life—what you read, what you watch, who you talk to, where you go—and packaging it up for sale. We’ve been conditioned to click “Accept All” on these things without a second thought, because who has the time to read 10,000 words of legalese just to watch a cat video?
This is the supply chain of surveillance. Companies in Silicon Valley and beyond build the tools to track us for advertisers, normalizing the idea that having no privacy is the price of admission for using the internet. Then, governments in places like `Nigeria` just buy the upgraded, state-sponsored version of the same tech. The initial work of getting people to surrender their data has already been done for them by corporations.
They pitch these systems as tools for “modernization” or "smart city governance." They promise efficiency and development. But these systems are dual-use. The same fiber optic network that delivers high-speed internet can also be used to monitor all traffic passing through it. The same AI that helps manage traffic flow can be used for facial recognition to track protestors.
And we just let it happen. We complain about our privacy while feeding the very beast that devours it. Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe this is just the way the world works now, and the best we can hope for is a good football match to distract us from the fact that the walls are closing in.
Look, the story here isn't that some government somewhere wants more control. That’s as old as time. The real story is that we've spent the last twenty years building the most efficient mass surveillance and control apparatus in human history, and we did it voluntarily. We called it "social media" and the "ad-tech industry." Now, authoritarians are just logging in as administrators. They don't have to invent the tools of repression anymore; they just have to go shopping. And business, as they say, is booming.
