In 1996, I discovered my favourite tourist destination in the world. It wasn’t somewhere in the Caribbean, or the South Pacific, or the Mediterranean or even the Rift Valley region of Africa, as you would normally expect. This paradise was right here in West Africa, just two borders away from Lagos in fact. The country was called Togo and its capital city, Lomé was where I have some of the fondest memories of my entire childhood – glorious beaches, 5-star hotels, gorgeous women and smiles all round.
As it happened, it was not tourism per se that brought us there, but my older sister’s education at the British School of Lomé, so overtime we started to gain a deeper insight into what Togo was beyond just a tropical paradise on the West African coast. What we found, and what would later disturb me profoundly for years, was that Togo was in fact a repressive dictatorship. It was a place where people would get arrested by the military for simply uttering a word out of turn, especially where it concerned the head of state Gnassingbe Eyadema.
You wouldn’t know it if you were only in the country for a 2-week holiday in the sun, but Togo was perhaps even less functionally free at the time than Nigeria was at the height of General Sani Abacha’s nightmarish regime. All telecommunication and postal communication was constantly monitored, the regime had a network of secret police and spies posted everywhere to monitor and report on the people, and even students at BSL were strictly warned to avoid using a particular term that could put them on the regime’s radar – “N’est pas-ism.”
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‘N’est pas-ism’: If you know, you know
The term “N’est pas-ism” came from the French phrase “N’est pas” which means “is not.” Then Togolese HOS Eyadema had a habit of appearing on television or in the news media issuing denials about things his regime had done wrong, or rationalising policy failures making liberal use of “n’est pas.” Someone got detained and tortured for criticising him? N’est pas what happened. The country’s economy outside of tourism in the capital was moribund? N’est pas his fault. An infrastructure project which he awarded to one of his proxy businesses was poorly executed or not done at all? N’est pas like that…
The Togolese literati unsurprisingly nicknamed him “N’est pas,” and soon Togolese popular culture became saturated with the use of the term “n’est pas-ism” referencing Eyadema’s consistent refusal to take responsibility or tell the truth. Eyadema responded the only way a dictator knows how – by flexing his muscles. People soon began disappearing after being heard using the term N’est pas or N’est pas-ism publicly, and the state-owned media was directed to clean every broadcast or print run of the offending term.
It soon became an unofficial Fight Club-style entry code used to differentiate between visitors who were just in Togo to enjoy the sun, sex and beaches, or people who lived, worked or school in Togo. Only those in the know understood why uttering the term N’est pas-ism was in itself a defiant act of resistance against a regime that looked prosaic and harmless to outsiders, but which was every bit the violent and economically ruinous African dictatorship of Mobutu, Abacha, Mugabe or Habre.
You could enter and exit Togo freely, unlike say Eritrea, which requires its citizens to receive entry and exit permits from President Isaias Afwerki. You could go to Lomé and have the absolute time of your life without being aware that your every move was in fact being tracked by government spooks. If you had the right amount of money and lived in the right neighbourhood, you would have no perception of Togo as anything other than a West African paradise state with warm, humble people. If you didn’t have to know, you would only know the reality if you wanted to know.
The return of 1996: ‘N’est pas-ism’ and 21st Century Africa
This idea of an African state appearing to be free and performing an elaborate simulation of freedom and openness is no longer a fringe one. Today’s Africa has dozens of countries where, like in 1996 Togo, you do not have to notice the paraphernalia of dictatorship if you do not wish to. People outside Uganda often hear reports of violent attacks on political opposition and President Museveni’s 38-year grip on power. Yet in everyday Kampala, there is no real sense of being oppressed by a ruthless dictatorship.
If you do not understand the delicate balancing act of N’est pas-ism, you would land in Kampala and wonder whether anything you have heard about Uganda is true. You will not see large political demonstrations or angry protesters being shot by police. What you will see is people going about their daily business, beautiful women chatting with each other inside trendy cafes, YouTubers and Instagram content makers shooting videos on the streets and teenagers giggling with each other on their way from school. Just like in 1996 Togo, if you do not actively keep your eyes peeled for the telltale signs of African dictatorship – the militarised police wielding assault rifles, the near-total absence of critical content in traditional media, and the brief flash of fearful tiredness in people’s eyes when you bring up the subject of their 76 year-old president – you will not think that the “dictatorship” is real at all.
Nigeria takes this performative freedom to a whole other level. In fact many African nationals who travel to Nigeria are often amazed at the level of social freedoms that citizens here seem to enjoy. It is possible here to openly and unapologetically criticise the president on national television or in a daily print or web newspaper, and do so consistently. The concept of an “internet shutdown” which several African states like Togo have experienced, seems just about impossible here. People move, transact, speak, associate and interact freely and without fear of consequence in a manner that many of our neighbours find unfamiliar, ergo we must be free right?
You can use a highly developed banking network to your satisfaction You can board a plane or take a cross-country roadtrip at will. You can buy anything you want. You can make a phone call to anyone. Your internet access is restricted only by what is left in your data package. Unlike say, the UAE or China where certain websites are not accessible, your internet experience is without restriction. If you have enough money, you can live wherever you want, eat wherever you want, send your kids to whatever school you want, and chase self actualisation in any way you see fit.
To all intents and purposes, you are visibly freer in Lagos, Yaounde or Kampala than you are in say, Doha, Beijing or Bangkok. In the UAE or Qatar, the total absence of democratic freedom is displayed openly and unapologetically – porn websites for example, simply do not load in those countries. In China, foreign visitors get pointedly followed around by men in black suits. In Thailand, it is made abundantly clear that the country is ruled by a King whom everyone is to kowtow to on the pain of prosecution. In Nigeria, Cameroon or Uganda, you feel none of these visible constraints, which can lull one into thinking that these countries are in fact free.
That would be a terrible mistake.
Nigeria: A world leader in performative freedom
Nigeria for example, has just experienced a military massacre of unarmed protesting civilians smack in the middle of its largest city. At the time the massacre was going on and immediately afterward, the telecommunication infrastructure supplying Lekki and its environs with internet access came under immense attack, slowing down and denying internet access to users. In the aftermath of this crime against humanity, the Nigerian army repeatedly attempted to gaslight the entire country and insult the whole world’s intelligence by insisting that we did not see what we all saw, and that the Lekki Massacre did not happen.
Almost as significantly, this kind of behaviour where the Nigerian state commits gratuitous violence against its people and then engages a well oiled denial machine to obfuscate and hide its criminal behaviour is decades old. Indeed the behaviour of the Nigerian police which precipitated the protest in question is the most visible symptom of the basic problem of militarised dictatorship which in actual fact did not go away after May 29, 1999. Albeit at a higher level than 1996 Togo or present day Uganda, Nigeria has become world class at performing democracy and simulating freedom while being neither free nor democratic at all.
Unlike say, Zimbabwe where the news media is openly attacked with violence regularly so as to force it to keep silent or repeat the government line, Nigeria’s government does not regularly point guns at newspaper editors or broadcast managers – because it does not need to. Instead, using legal instruments like the obnoxious NBC 6th Code Amendment championed by the odious Minister of Information Lai Mohammed, it forces the news media to self censor on the pain of losing broadcast licenses or facing heavy financial penalties. It also abuses its status as Nigeria’s largest ad spender to quietly force the print media to censor itself.
So indeed, you will sometimes see what appears to be uncompromising criticism of the government in Nigeria’s newsprint and on its airwaves. You will see articles like this appearing on mainstream platforms like BusinessDay. We do have access to a ‘free’ internet unlike elsewhere. What these pictures do not tell however, is that Nigeria’s global press freedom ranking of 115 of 180 countries is not an accident. Nigeria’s media is under fierce, immense and consistent attack by the Nigerian government – especially this government. Voices like mine are actively silenced, and only a select few platforms like BusinessDay can even dare to put me on.
Nigeria’s internet is only ‘free’ inasmuch as the government-sponsored Social Media Bill does not pass. Nigeria’s press is only as “free” as the government’s financial bullying and increasingly pernicious regulations allow it to be – which is to say, not very free at all. As the last few days of complete and unregulated military overreach have shown us, Nigeria’s patchwork of social freedoms and rights are essentially mere conventions that the government can take away at any time whatsoever that it chooses. In actual fact, we are not free or anything close to it.
We are not yet at the “N’est pas” phase of Africna dictatorship, where writing or publishing this article is a sure one-way ticket to a secret detention facility, but that train is never late. As I have already been informed in what was definitely not a threat, which was definitely not relayed by someone with close links to the security services, the SSS headquarters in Abuja has 7 storeys of underground cells where I will not be able to see anything, even with the aid of my glasses.
Ce n’est pas monsieur Buhari qui est responsable.
Absolument.
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