By Kolawole Olaniyan
It is happening again. Under President Bola Tinubu, Nigerians are facing an increasingly repressive political and legal environment. Like the Muhammadu Buhari government before it, the Tinubu administration is making an utter mockery of Nigeria’s constitutional and international obligations to respect human rights and uphold the rule of law.
There is something deeply troubling about a country in which the security agency created to protect the state and its people increasingly finds itself in court seeking to restrain citizens from speaking, organising, and criticising those in power. Nigeria has been here before.
But under Tinubu, threats, harassment, and intimidation of human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and civil society organisations are being compounded by the growing weaponisation of the criminal justice system, particularly by the Department of State Services (DSS), to silence peaceful dissent and intimidate critics.
