In July 2024, Bayo Onanuga, an advisor to Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, launched another diatribe against one of the major opposition figures in Nigeria, Peter Obi. Onanuga accused Obi of partnering with supporters of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a separatist group proscribed in Nigeria, to forcibly remove his principal. When Onanuga used the terms ‘anarchy’ and ‘civilian coup’, he was referring to calls for nationwide protests in August 2024. He was not alone. Around the same time, responding to calls for an anti-corruption demonstration at the Ugandan parliament, President Yoweri Museveni accused protesters of conniving with foreigners to cause chaos and warned them not to ‘play with fire’. More prominently, President William Ruto of Kenya denounced protesters in his country as treasonous following a violent police crackdown on demonstrators who marched on the parliament. 

Clearly, the common thread in the responses from the Nigerian, Ugandan, and Kenyan governments to calls for protests is to delegitimize them by characterizing the protesters as agents of chaos and instability. On the other hand, when the main opposition party of Tanzania, Party for Democracy and Progress (commonly known as Chadema), announced it would be rallying for constitutional reforms, the regional commissioner of Dar-es-Salaam, Albert Chalamila, didn’t directly attack protesters. Chalamila simply announced that the army would be holding a sanitation exercise in the city on the same day. Nonetheless, his action was tantamount to the same purpose of delegitimizing protesters. How effectively a government discredits dissent influences its ability to justify crackdowns on its opponents (real and perceived), thereby shutting down rightful conversations on critical national issues. Fortunately, unlike other countries, the Tanzanian demonstrators enjoyed police protection, and the rally was peaceful. Markedly so, for a country where political demonstrations had been banned for six years until 2023 when President Samia Suluhu Hassan lifted her predecessor’s ban on protests as part of reconciliation strategies.

In a previous essay, I argued that harsh responses by governments to protests are a matter of shame. Those at the helm of affairs, so concerned about their public image and reputation, strive to avoid any semblance of an inability to keep citizens in check. They do not hesitate to ignore the consequences when the alternative is bowing to public pressure. Sometimes, they accede the demands of protesters, but usually only after trying and failing at the violent route. For example, it was only the day after Kenya’s June 21 attack against protesters (which saw several reportedly killed) that President Ruto finally conceded on the controversial bill that had spurred the protests in the first place. Following the killings, protesters trended the hashtag #TupataneThursday, vowing to continue demonstrations regardless. In Nigeria, President Tinubu heard the protesters ‘loud and clear’ and called for ‘dialogue’ only after demonstrations across the country took a violent turn, no thanks to police repression. Meanwhile, as calls for nationwide protests received wide publicity for weeks prior to the demonstrations, his administration and party chose instead to demonize protesters intending to assert their right to free expression.