Politics
Cyberbullying: The Digital Pandemic
12 min read.Global emerging trends suggest that cyberbullying is now recognised as a serious threat not just to the physical health of people, but also to their emotional well-being. Social network spheres in Kenya and around the world have become the new frontiers for not just gender-based and sexual violence, but also for the expression of toxic, patriarchal and violent masculinities.

Throughout the world, cyberbullying (the use of the internet and/or mobile technology to harass, intimidate or cause harm to another person) and online harassment have emerged as a new pandemic with devastating consequences for a wide spectrum of people, including children and adults, the powerful and the powerless, celebrities and media personalities.
The ever-growing and fast expanding reach of the internet, coupled with the rapid spread of information and communication technology (ICT), as well as the wide diffusion of social media globally, have presented new opportunities and challenges to online users. In fact, technology as we know it today is fraught with the good, the bad and the ugly. This technological revolution could rightly be described as a “double edged” sword, where the user is continuously balancing between risks and opportunities.
On the one hand, this technological revolution has shrunk our world into a global village where people can easily connect, share, and engage in conversations about issues that concern them. It can be used to support and fundraise for important global and national causes, create and inspire social movements like the blacklivesmattermovement, Metoomovement, Bringbackourgirls for the public and global good, and mobilise the world for humanitarian action, such as coming together to help the Haiti earthquake victims.
On the other hand, it has exposed the invisible evil world of cyberbulling and online harassment that have wrecked lives, caused deep pain and hurt to millions of online users, destroyed relationships, and affected people’s integrity, health, well-being and career development. It is increasingly becoming apparent that cyberspaces have become violent and ungovernable civic spheres.
Technological advancements have led to the emergence of new forms of violence, such as online trolling, sexual harassment and gender-based technologically-driven violence against both men and women, although women and young girls are particularly on the receiving end because they are more vulnerable. Cyberspaces are today characterised by online anonymity. Technologically-mediated violence nowadays is performed using electronic devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and computers.
While gender-driven sexual violence is viewed as the norm by many people, this traditional form of violence has recently gained a new space and currency and is now part of the online violent experience. Traditionally, bullying had been a preserve of school compounds and sports arenas, but it has now moved to media spaces where online anonymity allows bullies to hound their prey with their predator tactics unperturbed. Bullying is a form of abuse that is based on an imbalance of power. In fact, it can be defined as the systemic abuse of power.
Bullying is often defined as an aggressive, intentional act or behaviour that is carried out by a group or an individual repeatedly over time and space, against a victim who cannot defend himself or herself.
Cyberbullying, on the other hand, is a form of bullying that has recently become more apparent as the use of electronic gadgets continues to expand. Here, it is defined as the intentional use of the internet and social media platforms to degrade, demean, belittle and embarrass another person. It employs electronic forms of contact and can take many forms that include, but are not limited to, unwanted trolls, sharing of unwelcome content, sexual harassment or threats of sexual violence, such as threats of rape, cyberstalking, body shaming, sending or publishing or sharing of nude pictures, death threats, hate speech, and professional sabotage with the aim of stripping someone of their sexual or personal integrity.
Bullying is a form of abuse that is based on an imbalance of power. In fact, it can be defined as the systemic abuse of power.
Global emerging trends suggest that cyberbullying is now recognised as a serious threat not just to the physical health of people, but also to their emotional well-being. Yet, despite much awareness about this serious challenge, it seems that the problem will continue to grow if no concerted effort is taken by the relevant authorities.
Cyberbullying in Kenya
In the past one and half decade or so, Kenya has undergone a significant ICT revolution. Kenya has been ranked as the second leading innovation hub in sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa, according to the 2019 Global Innovation Index. Similarly, internet penetration in Kenya currently stands at 90 per cent, according to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA). Broadband internet take-up, as of September 2017, rose by more than 14 per cent. Consequently, the number of internet users has increased from 45.5 million to 51 million users, with the popularity of mobile internet being the biggest factor behind this meteoric rise and expansion.
Thanks to increased internet connectivity across the country, more Kenyans than ever before are using social media platforms to share, communicate, interact and generate important conversations on topical issues in the Kenyan public sphere. According to a survey conducted by the Google Consumer Barometer, about 90 per cent of Kenyans go online to visit social networks platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, Linked-in, Snap Chat and Twitter, among others. In addition, 80 per cent of Kenyans use the internet to check emails and access instant message services.
The ever-growing and expanding appropriation of the internet and other communication technologies in Kenya and across the African continent has, unfortunately, led to the proliferation of cyberbullying. While cyberbullying is on the rise globally, in countries with weak policies like Kenya, it is becoming a nightmare for many people.
In April 2020, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) ranked Kenyans as “the worst bullies on Twitter”. In the UNODC survey, Kenyans were described as having the capacity to “come together and attack their common enemies, as well as deconstructing both real and perceived enemies”. The survey stated that Kenyans on Twitter (#KOT) will attack anybody – the famous and the-not-so-famous “with little regard for truth, fact or any benefit of doubt that can be given”.
The survey further observed that “various brands like CNN and New York Times now have to think twice before they tweet about Kenya”, and noted that “today no country dares start an online feud with Kenyans unless they have a well-functioning mental healthcare system”. Countries that have suffered the wrath of the #KOT army include China, Nigeria and South Africa.
Like all other forms of violence that are prevalent in Kenya, including gender-based, sexual and political violence, cyberbullying is not only rife, but continues to thrive in Kenya’s ungovernable online space, even as it keeps evolving.
The survey further observed that “various brands like CNN and New York Times now have to think twice before they tweet about Kenya”, and noted that “today no country dares start an online feud with Kenyans unless they have a well-functioning mental healthcare system”.
Academics, business leaders, the clergy, female leaders, judicial officers, media personalities, politicians, performing artists and senior government officials, among others, have all been cyberbullied by faceless predators who hide behind their anonymous identities.
#KOT cyberbullies are notorious for having harassed a wide spectrum of Kenyans. Some of the more well-known Kenyans who have been victims of cyberbullying include Chief Justice David Maraga, who has been trolled and bullied online. Chief Justice Maraga recently shared his frustration about trolls and bloggers who torment public figures by portraying them negatively with a view to destroying not just their integrity, but also their careers. #KOT also ran President Uhuru Kenyatta out of town, forcing him to close his Twitter and Facebook accounts.
While oftentimes such trolls and memes on public personalities tend to be hilarious, even entertaining, much of the bullying take the form of personalised attacks, which are humiliating and vicious. Hence, cyberbullying crosses the line between freedom of expression and human rights and ethics.
Why are people so mean?
Current research suggests that the youth, especially young women, are most vulnerable to cyberbullying, with 6 to 10 per cent of women and men in developing countries aged between 18 to 24 years who regularly use the internet indicating that they had suffered online abuse at one time or another.
Why are cyberspaces becoming such violent, unsafe and ungovernable arenas? Why are people being so mean to each other? How can we understand and explain cyberbullying?
Firstly, bullying and violence are a normalised part of our public and private culture. As bullies used to be found in schools, they now seem to have relocated to cybernetics, where the anonymity of this space has enabled these “keyboard warriors” to wreck peoples’ lives. The motivating factors of cyberbullying could be anger, boredom, frustrations, jealousy, revenge, or the fact that some bullies derive pleasure from hurting other people.
With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns that have trapped many people in their homes, cyberbullying seems to have spiralled. Therapists and psychologists are pointing to the increased mental health issues relating to anger, anxiety and stress that are being experienced by a wide spectrum of people cocooned in their houses. Already the UN, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Kenya Police have sounded the alarm about increased levels of domestic and sexual violence.
Cyberviolence against women and girls could be considered a pandemic that now affects one in three women who are said to have experienced some form of cyberbullying and online harassment, according to recent studies. A study commissioned by the African Development Bank suggests that up to 70 per cent of women have endured cyberviolence and that women are 27 times more likely than men to be harassed online.
Studies further suggest that while more males are exposed to cyberbullying related to physical aggression, more females are victims of cyberbullying that includes non-consensual sharing of intimate images, unsolicited sending of sexual and pornographic images and other forms of cyberbullying that entails sexualised behaviour.
Of the several women that I interviewed between the ages of 20 and 35, more than half of them said they had been, in one way or another, victims of cyberbullying and online harassment. They said people, both unknown to them as well those they knew (mostly ex-partners) posted their pictures online without their consent. Others intimated that men solicited for sexual favours online and when they were refused, they verbally and sexually abused or threated their victims online.
A study commissioned by the African Development Bank suggests that up to 70 per cent of women have endured cyberviolence and that women are 27 times more likely than men to be harassed online.
The young men I interviewed also spoke about being cyberbullied sexually and verbally by their jilted female lovers, who either threatened or actually published their intimate photos for revenge. One told me that he actually paid his ex-girlfriend money to take down what she had published, but this only helped to open up a new avenue for extortion and threats of further postings every time she needed money, forcing him to finally report her to the police.
Sexualised cyberbullying
Why are women’s bodies sexualized and demeaned not just by Kenyan society but globally? More importantly, why is this oftentimes not just tolerated, but also increasingly normalised?
There are several explanations for this: Violence against women is gendered as it is rooted in stereotypes about gender roles, sexuality and sexual norms for women. For example, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images or the threat to share such images is meant to humiliate and intimidate women. This occurs in the context of the patriarchal sexual double standard, which unfairly judges women – but not men – for enjoying their sexuality. It is often a coercive method used for controlling behaviour in on-going relationships that is breaking down or has ended.
Secondly, the underlying cause of violence inflicted through cyber-meditated violence lies in the hierarchical nature of how gender is socially structured. More importantly, it is disdain for women with voice, power and agency. At the same time, men’s disdain for feminism, which most of them do not critically understand, has pitted them against women. In short, violence and bullying are generally strongly linked with gender dynamics and sexuality and their construction and on-going contestations in the public sphere. The normalisation of male violence against women and girls, as well as the restrictive expectations about women and girls, are some of the key drivers of sexualized cyberbullying and online harassment of women.
There are clear gendered differences in the harassment itself. Men are largely attacked for their opinions but women are attacked for their gender, sexuality and appearance. The recent cases of Brenda Cherotich and Brian Orinda, who were alleged to have survived COVID-19 and became the face of survival in a pandemic that has scared the hell out of many people, were both heavily trolled on Twitter. Brenda’s case immediately assumed sexual overtones with sexual and nude pictures of Brenda circulated online. When TV personality Yvonne Okwara Matole spoke against this sexual violence against Brenda, she too was personally and sexually attacked. She was body shamed, trolled and bullied for speaking up against the rampant sexual violence against women and girls in Kenyan society.
Why is the cyberbullying and online harassment of women and girls sexualized? Well, it is simply a question of power relations and who holds the power at the time. It is not only men who are responsible for gendered harassment and it is not always directed at women; it is about one group experiencing loss of status and power to another group. Kenyan women are emerging and contesting not just political power, but economic, social and cultural power as well.
Bullying someone in a sexual manner is a typical and highly effective master oppression technique. Threats of sexual violence have always been about power, as well as a sign of a change of status between men and women. Today, many women are increasingly gaining a voice and agency, and are participating in public debates and conversations on various issues, such as governance, human rights and leadership. This certainly has given them visibility in the public sphere, including in media spaces, to the chagrin of misogynists.
These prejudices hinder women’s participation in public discourses and processes as many cower, self-censor, and in some instances, totally withdraw from public, civic and social media spaces. To properly combat cyberbullying, the government needs to recognise that technology-based violence is the new arena that is preventing women from achieving their full potential.
The experience of bullying is intensified in cyberspace because the perpetrator can hide behind a screen name and can act unhindered without fear of reprisal. In addition, the arena for the bullying is not just a playground, but part of a huge cyberspace spanning countries, cultures and even times.
A sharp rise in technology-related violence against women and its normalisation have made the internet a gendered space. Social network spheres, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snap Chat, are the new frontiers for not just gender-based and sexual violence, but also for the expression of toxic, patriarchal and violent masculinities. These social network spaces have become a nightmare for many people, especially women and girls.
A baseline report by the Kenya ICT Action Network on the challenges faced by Kenyan women on the internet lists non-consent, distribution of intimate images, sexual harassment, stalking, hate, offensive comments and body shaming as some of the most prominent violations of women’s rights and well-being. Female journalists between the ages of 25 and 35 are twice as exposed to cyberbullying and threats than their male counterparts.
Bullying someone in a sexual manner is a typical and highly effective master oppression technique. Threats of sexual violence have always been about power, as well as a sign of a change of status between men and women.
A 2016 study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) indicated that online societies judge women politicians more harshly than they do male politicians. The study suggested that on social media, women politicians were at the receiving end of sexual comments, with their appearance and marital status often being the subject of discussions on gauging their fitness for public office.
Cyberbullying puts a premium on emotional health, personal and workplace time and resources. The impacts of cyberbullying on women are psychological, social, physical, emotional, and economic. Anxiety and self-esteem affect young women in particular. For one, many younger women internalise this by self-objectifying themselves as either beautiful or ugly, or as an object to be looked or evaluated on the basis of their appearance. This has many consequences for the mental and emotional well-being of young women and girls who more often than not grapple with issues of self-esteem and confidence in a heavily patriarchal society that does not value women very much.
Enlarging women’s online engagement
Digital technologies offer people innovative ways to get involved in politics and governance issues. From receiving instant news notifications on political developments to engaging in online debates and discourses and expressing personal opinions on a wide array of issues, social media can enhance the political and civic engagement of women in a way that traditional media cannot.
Social media platforms allows women to speak up. They are the only forum where women have control and space. Other spaces for civic engagement may not always be welcoming of women’s voices. Thus digital spaces can be both empowering and dangerous for women. They can be spaces for mobilisation, for the formation of voice and agency, but they can also be spaces fraught with abuse and violence.
Cyberbullying, therefore, restricts the civic opportunities offered by digitisation. It restricts women from having a voice and agency online. Young people, especially young women, are hence discouraged and put off from taking part in political discussions and online debates and conversations.
In contrast, young men are more politically active online, posting their comments liberally, and reading and sharing articles on social networks, thus contributing to robust conversations on social and political happenings and discourses. Social media allows women and men to voice their opinion on a wide array of socio-economic political and cultural issues. With thousands of online resources posted every minute, social media could be a potential educatiional platform, especially when used responsibly.
However, cyberbullying or abuse has to be prevented so that women can fully participate in conversations about governance and human rights, among other topics affecting them. Participation of women, especially young women whose voices are less heard, could be important, not just for their visibility, but also for civic engagement. Women will only navigate their voice and agency if civic spaces like social media are made safe for them.
There is no gainsaying that social media has become an important tool for social and professional advancement, more so for women. Many women have built their businesses online and in the process have learned how to connect with others. Many find clients to buy and sell their products online. Others find platforms to incubate ideas, leading to hundreds if not millions of social enterprises that not only spur economic growth but directly empower young men and women economically. They have also learned how to improve their entrepreneurship skills online. No doubt then, social media has emerged as a great space to do business. This is important for women’s economic empowerment and visibility.
But the internet needs to be a safe place to enable young people to express their opinions and build their careers and social enterprises. Given that it is nearly impossible to govern gender- and sexual-based cyberviolence, such as cyberbullying and online harassment, without stepping on peoples’ civic liberties, including freedom of expression, it is important to rethink safe civic spaces for everyone, especially women and girls.
Cyberbullying and online harassment must not be normalised but must be fought to create a safe place for respectful, civil, ethical and lawful online conversations. However, this can only happen if online spaces could engender conversations that rethink the toxic masculine, patriarchal, and hypersexualized social and gendered norms about women and girls that currently prevail in Kenyan society.
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Politics
Nigeria: A Messiah Will Not Fix Country’s Problems
In Nigeria’s recent election cycle, many citizens looked to Peter Obi for change. But the country needs people-led social transformation, not saviors.

On February 25, Nigerians once again took to the polls with a determination that their votes could change the fate of a country in deep despair. For the seventh time since a civilian dispensation began in 1999, Nigerians hoped that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would conduct a free, fair, and credible election. This hope was reinvigorated by the emergence of technology that would ensure, purportedly, a transparent process. Yet, once again, voters had their dreams crushed with an election marred by violence, ballot box snatching, forged results and, of course, voter intimidation and buying. In the days that followed, despite mounting evidence of irregularities and international outcry, INEC declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the winner of the presidential poll. The continuation of a gerontocratic oligarchy was solidified.
Although media attention focused on a young class of voters and the uniqueness of this historical moment, a deeper analysis is necessary. If nothing else, this election provided an opportunity to examine the shifting landscape of Nigeria’s elite electoral politics, and the increasingly complex voting patterns of citizens, while understanding these voters are increasingly a minority—less than 30 percent of the registered voters (about one-tenth of the population) cast their vote.
The dizzying rise of Peter Obi as a “third force” candidate over the last nine months was largely due to a movement of emergent and middle-class youth, the so-called “Obidients,” who used technology to galvanize a youthful base to push forward their candidate. That the Obidient movement was formed, ironically, off the back of the EndSARS movement, is in many ways a direct contradiction. The generation that was “leaderless” now suddenly had a leader. The rate at which young people chose this candidate still gives me whiplash. But there was no shaking their convictions. Obi was their candidate, and no one could shake their belief that a new Nigeria would be formed under his presidency, despite the evidence that he was directly endorsed by the same ruling class that has led to the country’s demise.
Obi is not a revolutionary, a social welfarist, nor even pro labor, but he became the savior many youth were looking for to “rescue” Nigeria. Ironically, the millions of youth that fought the EndSARS battle, and named themselves the leaderless soro soke (“speak up” in Yoruba) generation, did not seek elective office themselves. Rather, many put their eggs in Obi’s basket in supporting an older, veteran politician whose clean cut and soft demeanor led to his near deification. Other EndSARS activists, including Omoyele Sowore, were mocked for running in the election and were seen as not experienced enough for the job. In the end Sowore performed abysmally at the polls, despite his demonstrated commitment to Nigerian youth and human rights record and involvement in the EndSARS protests (Sowore’s African Action Congress polled only 14,608 votes, faring worse than in the 2019 election).
This absolute faith in Obi was demonstrated when his followers patiently waited for five days after the election to hear from him. Instead of sending them into the streets, he advised them to wait for him to challenge the electoral irregularities in the courts. Why did a leaderless generation need a hero?
The contradictions in the EndSARS ideology and the Obidient campaign will be tested in the years ahead. After the Lekki massacre on October 20, 2020 brought the massive street protests of the EndSARS movement to an abrupt halt, many of the sites of protests shut down completely and groups that were loosely organized dismantled into relative silence for almost two years. In fact, there was little indication that EndSARS would evolve into a mass political movement until Peter Obi emerged on the scene in May 2022. The first- and second anniversaries of the Lekki massacre were marked by smaller protests in Lagos and a few other cities, which paled in comparison to the numbers at the 2020 protests. Still, efforts to free many of the prisoners arrested during EndSARS are proving difficult, with some protesters and victims still in jail today. There was no direction, no cohesiveness, and no willingness to move forward at that point. But in May 2022, seemingly out of nowhere, things began to shift. A candidate emerged that many EndSARS protesters seemed to think would be the savior.
Understanding the youth divide
While often lumped into a sum, the category of “youth” is not a single class of people. When Obi was said to carry the youth vote he actually only carried the vote of a particular category of young people, an emergent middle and professional class, who were also some of the most vocal in the EndSARS movement. However, if we are to use the discredited election geography as a proxy for representation, it is clear that this demographic is both well defined and narrow. Major urban areas like Lagos and Abuja pulled towards Obi, as did a few Eastern states. The North Central states including Plateau and Benue asserted their own identity by aligning with Obi, perhaps in a rejection of the Northern Muslim tickets of the Peoples Democratic Party (with whom Atiku Abubaker ran) and the APC.
The 2023 election also forces us to re-examine the dynamics of class, ethnic and religious divides and the deepening malaise of the poor and their disengagement with politics. What is clear from this election, like many before, is that Nigeria has yet to come of age as a democracy; indeed, the conditions for democracy simply do not exist. It is also quite evident that the Nigerian elite are adept at changing the political game to suit the mood of the Nigerian people. Electoral malpractices have shifted over time in response to the increasing pressure of civil society for accountable elections. Strong civil society advocacy from organizations focused on accountability and transparency in government have pushed against electoral practices. While these practices continue, there are significant shifts from previous elections where vote buying was brazen. However, it begs the historical questions: has Nigeria ever had a truly free and fair election, and is the process with which democracy is regenerated through the ballot the path for emancipatory politics? These questions become more relevant as the numbers of voters continue to dwindle, with the 2023 election having the lowest turnout in Nigeria’s electoral history, despite the social media propaganda around the youth vote and the turning tide of discontent that was predicted to shape the election.
Lessons from history
The fact that young people were surprised by the events on February 25 may be indicative of youthful exuberance or a startling lack of knowledge of history. The idea that a ruling class, who had brought the EndSARS struggle to a bloody end, would somehow deliver a free and fair election, needs more critical scrutiny. For those that remember the history of the June 12, 1993 elections—annulled after the popular rise of MKO Abiola—the election is no surprise. But for young people deprived of history education, which has been removed from Nigeria’s curriculum for the past 30 years, the knowledge may be limited. When a young person says they have never seen an election like this, they also cannot be faulted, as many young voters were voting for the first time. Given that many youth seem to underestimate the long history of elections and electoral fraud, the question of intergenerational knowledge and of a public history that seems to be absent from electoral discourse cannot be ignored. It is also hard to fault young voters, in a land where there is no hope, and whatever hope is sought after can be found in the marketplace.
Many of the young organizers were adept at reading their constituencies and mobilizing their bases, but some of the elephants in the room were ignored. One of these elephants, of course, was the deep geographic and ethno-religious and class divisions between the North and the South. This is evident in the voting patterns in the North West and North East where Obi’s campaign did not make a dent. Though Obi ran with a vice president from the North, the majority of votes in Northern zones were divided between PDP, APC and New Nigeria People’s Party while two of the North Central states, Plateau and Nasarawa, went to Obi’s Labor party. Kano, the largest voting population in the country went to Rabiu Kwankwaso’s NNPP, an outlier who was ignored to the peril of opposition parties (Kwankwaso was the former governor of Kano).
Obi’s campaign also focused on the emergent middle class youth, as well as appealing to religious sentiments through churches on a Christian ticket and ethnic sentiments appealing to his Ibo base in the South East, where he swept states with more than 90 percent of the vote. The North is largely made up of the rural poor with poverty rates as high as 87 percent and literacy rates among young women in Zamfara state as low as 16 percent. Tracking Obi’s victories, most of the states where he won had lower poverty rates and higher literacy rates; states like Delta and Lagos have the lowest poverty counts in the country. While Obi used poverty statistics to bolster his campaign, his proposed austerity measures and cuts in government spending do not align with the massive government investments that would be needed to lift Nigerians out of poverty. While the jury is still out on the reasons for low voter turnout, deepening poverty and the limited access to cash invariably impacted poor voters.
Historically, Nigeria’s presidency has swung between the North and the South, between Muslims and Christians, and this delicate balance was disrupted on all sides. In 2013, an alliance between the Southern Action Congress (AC), the Northern All Nigeria’s People’s Party (ANPP), and Congressive People’s Alliance (CPC) to produce the Action People’s Congress (APC) was able to remove the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who had dominated the political scene. Another important historical note is that of the legacy of Biafra that lives on, as an Igbo man has never taken the helm of the Presidency since the Civil War. While Obi ran on the promise of a united youth vote, the lingering ethnic and religious sentiments demonstrate the need for his campaign to have created a stronger alliance with the North and the rural and urban poor.
The failure of the youth vote is also a failure of the left
The other factor that we must examine is the failure of the left to articulate and bring into public critique the neoliberal model that all the candidates fully endorsed. Many young Nigerians believe if Nigeria works, it will work for everyone, and that “good governance” is the answer to the myriad problems the country faces. The politics of disorder and the intentionality of chaos are often overlooked in favor of the “corrupt leader” indictment. The left was divided between the Labor Party, whose presidential flag bearer ran on a neoliberal rather than pro worker or socialist platform, and the African Action Congress, who ran on a socialist manifesto, but failed to capture the imaginations of young people or win them over to socialist politics and ideology. In seeking to disrupt the two party power block, young Nigerians took less notice of the lack of difference between the three front running parties, and chose to select the lesser of three evils, based on credentials and the idea that Obi was “the best man for the job.” In fact, the Nigerian youth on the campaign trail emphasized experience in government as a criteria for a good candidate, over and above fresh ideas.
The left also failed to garner the EndSARS movement and channel it into a political force. The emergent youth middle class, not the workers and the working poor, continued to carry the message of liberal rather than revolutionary politics. Unfortunately, just as the gunning down of Nigerian protesters caught young people off guard in October 2020, so too the massive rigging of this election. However, there is no cohesive movement to fight the fraud of this election. The partisan protests and separate court cases by the Labor Party and PDP, demonstrate that the disgruntled candidates are fighting for themselves, rather than as a single voice to call out electoral fraud and the rerun of the election. The fact that there is acceptance of the National Assembly election outcomes and not the presidential election, points to the seeking of selective justice, which may eventually result in the complete disenfranchisement of the Nigerian people.
At this time we must seek answers to our current dilemma within history, the history that we so often want to jettison for the euphoria or overwhelming devastation of the moment. The question for the youth will now be, which way forward? Will we continue to rely on the old guard, the gerontocratic oligarchy that has terrorized Nigerians under the guise of different political parties for the past 24 years? Or will we drop all expectations and pursue the revolution that is sorely needed? Will young people once again rise to be a revolutionary vanguard that works with millions of working poor to form a truly pro-people, pro-poor party that has ordinary Nigerians as actual participants in a virbrant democracy from the local to the federal levels, not just during election time but every day? Will the middle class Nigerian youth be willing to commit class suicide to fight alongside the poor to smash the existing oligarchy and gerontocracy and snatch our collective destiny back?
It is a time for truth telling, for examining our own shortcomings. As young people, as the left, and as civil society, we have relied too long on the oppressors for our own liberation.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
Politics
Africa in the New World Disorder
The war in Ukraine indicates a new world disorder, where great powers fight for primacy and Africa continues to be exploited.

There are some of us in Africa who believe that we should not invest any serious thinking in the war in Ukraine as it is one of the “European tribal wars.” The logic of that belief is that in Africa we have too many of our own problems to invest energy and effort in European problems. The trouble of being African in the present world order, however, is that all problems and wars end up African in effect if not in form. In the sense in which one who knows it feels it, every war in the world is an African war because Africans have, for the longest time, felt and known wars that are not of their creation. The African condition itself can be understood as a daily experience of war.
Over centuries Africa has been structured and positioned to be on the receiving end of all world problems. As such, Africa is not only the storied cradle of mankind, but also the cemetery of the human condition where every human and world problem comes to kill and to die as well. The worst of the human condition and human experiences tend to find final expression in Africa. It is for that reason that Julius Nyerere once opined that the Devil’s Headquarters must be in Africa because everything that might go wrong actually goes wrong in the continent.As the world tiptoes precariously from the COVID-19 pandemic, at the same time it seems to be tottering irreversibly towards a nuclear World War III. The countries of the world that have the power and the privilege to stop the war pretend to be unable to do so. Even some powerful and privileged Western thinkers are beating the drums of war. For instance, Slavoj Zizek, considered “the most dangerous philosopher in the West,” wrote for The Guardian in June 2022 to say: “pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine,” and “the least we owe Ukraine is full support, and to do that we need a stronger NATO.” Western philosophers, not just soldiers and their generals, are demanding stronger armies and bigger weapons to wage bigger wars. In Ukraine, the conflict is proving too important to be left to the soldiers, the generals and the politicians. In that assertion Zizek speaks from the Euro-American political and military ego, whose fantasy is a humiliating total defeat of Russia in Ukraine. Zizek, the “dangerous philosopher” takes his place as a spokesperson for war and large-scale violence, agitating from a comfortable university office far away from the horrors of Bakhmut.
United States President, Joe Biden, spoke from the same egopolitics of war before the Business Roundtable CEO Quarterly Meeting on March 21 last year: “And now is a time when things are shifting… there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.” Clearly, an “end of history” fantasy of another unipolar world led by the US and its NATO allies has possessed Western powers that are prepared to pump money, weapons and de-uniformed soldiers into Ukraine to support the besieged country to the “last Ukrainian.” During a surprise visit to Kyiv on the eve of the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden hawkishly said the US will support Ukraine in fighting “as long as it takes,” dismissing diplomatic alternatives. Suggestions for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine that have come from influential figures, such as Henry Kissinger on the right and Noam Chomsky on the left, have been dismissed with the sleight of the left hand, and this is as Ukraine is literally being bombed to dust. African countries that have for years been theaters of colonial invasions, proxy wars, sponsored military coups, and regime changes can only see themselves in Ukraine. What Ukraine is going through is a typical African experience taking place in Europe and the first victims are Europeans this time.
Being Africans in Africa, at the least, should equip us with the eyes to see the war in Ukraine for what it is, a war driven by a Euro-American will to power, a spirited desire for world dominion against the Russian fear of NATO encirclement and containment, and nostalgia about a great Soviet empire. It is a war of desires and fears from which the belligerents will not back off. The envisaged “new world order” can only be another “world disorder” for an Africa that has for so long been in the periphery of economic, political, and military world affairs.
Destined for war: The Thucydides trap
Well before the war, the Singaporean diplomat and scholar Kishore Mahbubani described how the “world has turned a corner” and why “the West has lost it” in trying to maintain its economic and political dominion by any means necessary and some means unnecessary. Power is shifting under the feet of a young and fragile Euro-American empire that will not lose power peacefully, hence the spirited desire to force another unipolar world without China and Russia as powers. Taiwan and Ukraine are the chosen sites where the Euro-American establishment is prepared to militarily confront its threatening rivals. That “from AD 1 to 1820, the two largest economies were always those of China and India” and that “only in that period did Europe take off followed by America” is little understood. That the Euro-American empire has not been the first and it will not be the last empire is little understood by the champions of the “new world order” that Francis Fukuyama, in 1989, mistakenly declared as “the end of history and the last man;” a world ruled by the West, led by the US and its European allies had arrived and was here to stay in Fukuyama’s enchanting prophecy. Ensuing history, 9/11 amongst other catastrophic events, and the present war in Ukraine, were to prove Fukuyama’s dream a horrific nightmare. Mahbubani predicts that the short-lived rise and power of the Euro-American Empire has “come to a natural end, and that is happening now.” It seems to be happening expensively if the costs in human life, to the climate and in big dollars are to be counted.
In the struggle of major world powers for dominion of the globe Ukraine is reduced to a burnt offering. While, on the one hand, we have a terrified Euro-American empire fearing a humiliating return to oblivion and powerlessness, on the other hand we have the reality of an angry China and Russia, carrying the burden of many decades of geopolitical humiliation. Such corners of the world as Africa become the proverbial grass that suffers when elephants fight. The scramble to reduce Africa to a sphere of influence for this and that power is a spectacle to behold and the very definition of the new world disorder; a damaged and asymmetrical shape of the world where the weaker other is dispensable and disposable.
In its form and content, this new world disorder is ghastly to ponder, not only for Africa, but also for the rest of the world. Graham Allison pondered it in 2015 and came up with the alarming observation that “war between the US and China is more likely than recognised at the moment” because the two powerful countries have fallen into the Thucydides Trap. The ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, described the trap when he narrated how avoiding war becomes next to impossible when a ruling power is confronted by a rival rising power that threatens its dominion. Thucydides witnessed how the growing power and prosperity of Athens threatened Sparta in ancient Greece, driving the two powers to war. The political and historical climate between China and the US captures the charged political temperatures that punctuated the relations between an entitled and proud Sparta confronted with the growth and anger of a frightening Athens. The proverbial chips were down.
For the US and China to escape the Thucydides Trap that is luring both superpowers to war, “tremendous effort” is required of both parties and their allies. The effort is mainly in mustering the emotional stamina to see and to know that the world is going to be a shared place where there must never be one center of power; that political, economic and military diversity is natural, and the world must be a decolonial pentecostal place where those of different identities, and competing interests can share power and space, is the beginning of the political wisdom that can guarantee peace. President Xi Jinping of China seems to have read Allison’s warning about the Thucydides Trap that envelops China and the US because on a visit to Seattle he was recorded saying: “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might make such traps for themselves.” The world is sinking deeper into new disorder and violence because rival powers cannot resist the Thucydides Trap and keep repeating “strategic miscalculations” based on their will to power and desire for global dominion.
The problem with China (the Athens of our present case) that troubles the US as the Sparta of the moment is that, as Allison observes, “China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.” The problem with world powers, past and present, seems to be that they cannot live with difference. In fact, political, economic and cultural differences are quickly turned from competition to conflict, from opposition to total enmity. How to translate antagonism to agonism, and to move from being enemies to being respectful adversaries that can exist among each other in a conflictual but shared world is a small lesson that seems to elude big powers, whose egopolitics drives their geopolitics into a kind of militarized lunacy. One would be forgiven, for instance, to think that playground toys are being spoken of when presidents of powerful countries talk about monstrous weapons to be deployed in Ukraine. Observing from Africa one can hazard the view that big powers might be small and slow learners, after all. The death-drive of the superpowers is perpetuated by the desire to force other countries, including other powers, to be “more like us” when they are formidably determined to be themselves. To break out of the Thucydides Trap and avoid war, for instance, the US has to generate and sustain enough emotional stamina to live with the strong truth that China is a 5,000-year-old civilization with close to 1.5 billion people and in its recent rise is only returning to glory and not coming from the blue sky. And that the world has to be shared with China and other powers, and countries. China, and allies, would also not have learnt well from many years of decline if they dreamt and worked for a world under their sole dominion.
Any fantasy of one world ruled from one mighty center of power is exactly that, a fantasy that might be pursued at the dear cost of a World War. Away from that fantasy, the future world will be politically pentecostal, not a paradise but a perpetually in the making and incomplete world where human, national, cultural, political and religious differences will be normal. From Africa that future world is thinkable and world powers should be investing thought and action in that and not in new monstrous weapons and military might.
Africa in the new world disorder
The symptoms are spectacular and everywhere to be seen. It can be the Namibian President, Hage Geingob, on live television having to shout at a German politician, Norbet Lammert, for complaining about the growing Chinese population in Namibia. Geingob asks why Germans land in Namibia on a “red carpet” and do “what they want” but it becomes a huge problem for the West when the Chinese are seen in Namibia. That Namibia should not be reduced into a theater of contestation between the West and China because it is a sovereign country was Geingob’s plea to the German politician. It can be President Emmanuel Macron of France, in May 2021, asking President Paul Kagame of Rwanda for forgiveness for France’s role in the genocide of 1994—the bottom line being that African conflicts and genocides bear European footprints and fingerprints. Africa is reduced to the West’s crime scene, from slavery to colonialism and from colonialism to present coloniality.
Coloniality is brought to life with, for instance, the US Republican lawmakers launching a bill “opposing the Republic of South Africa’s hosting of military exercises with the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and calling on the Biden administration to conduct a thorough review of the US-South Africa relationship.” Africa as an object that does not have the agency to act for itself but is acted upon in the new world disorder, is real. It is Africa as a child in the world system that must be protected from other relationships and that must be told who to relate with and who not to relate with. It is also Africa as an owned thing that must be protected from rival owners. Behind the myth of African independence and liberation is the reality of Africa as a “sphere of influence,” about which world powers are still scrambling for control and ownership, including Russia and China. When in January 2018, Donald Trump referred to African countries as “all these shithole countries,” he meant that Africa still metaphorized the toilet of the world order, where disposable waste and dispensable people were to be found. Looking at the world disorder from Africa is a troubling view from the toilet of world affairs.
Looking at the world disorder from Africa with African eyes and sensibility makes it obvious that it is Africa that should be against war and for a decolonial, multipolar world order where differences are legitimated, not criminalized; where economic competition, political opposition, and rivalry are democratized from antagonism to agonism; and where political opponents are adversaries that are not necessarily blood enemies that must work on eliminating each other to the “last man.” Such a world order may be liberating in that both fears and desires of nations may play out in a political climate where might is not necessarily right. From long experiences of being the dominated and exploited other of the world, Africa should expectedly be the first to demand such a world.
World powers need to be persuaded or to pressure themselves to understand what Mahbubani prescribes as a future world order that is against war, and liberating in that it is minimalist, multilateral, and Machiavellian. Minimalist, in that major countries should minimize thinking and act like other countries are minors that should be changed into their own image. Multilateral in the sense that world institutions, such as the United Nations, must be pentecostal sites where differences, fears and desires of all countries are moderated and democratized. Machiavellian in that world powers, no matter how mighty they believe they are, must adapt to the change to the order of things and live with the truth that they will not enjoy world dominion alone, in perpetuity. The world must be a shared place that naturalizes and normalizes political, economic, cultural, and human diversity.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
Politics
Understanding the Crisis in Northern Kenya
The violence plaguing the North Rift region in Kenya is complex, as it is caused by a multiplicity of factors

On the 14th of February 2023, Kenya held a national prayer day in accordance with our government’s habit of holding ‘prayers’ when certain stressors reach an unbearable level on a national scale. Currently, there are many factors triggering national stressors, and one of them is a complex security issue loosely termed “banditry”, for which our government has no viable solution. So, we pray, declaring war on our people, instead of reflecting on and addressing the root causes of the crisis.
Over the years, these theatrics, which reflect the inadequacy of the government’s policies in dealing with our challenges, have occurred in different forms including ‘prayer breakfasts’, ‘national prayers’, ‘crusades’, and other forms of supplication. And while these functions are met with a wide spectrum of reactions ranging from approval to derision, depending on people’s spiritual or political leanings, it is crucial for us as citizens to realize that as much as these may be expressions of faith at our leaders’ personal level, at the political level they are basically ‘time-outs’ or pressure release valves. Where one has a strategy, time-outs create room for the implementation of plan ‘B’ or ‘C’. However, in the absence of a strategy, time-outs are called in the vain hope that the adversary or adversity at hand will somehow lose momentum.
There is more to the “banditry” phenomenon than meets the eye
There have been violent conflicts of many kinds in northern Kenya for many decades, some driven by terrorism, ethnic animosity, resource conflict, cattle rustling and other factors. Since 2017, however, many Kenyans have had greater awareness of the fact that the violence in northern Kenya isn’t just mere disorder; people have come to terms that there are definite geographical, economic and social patterns to, and causes of, the violence. The ongoing sporadic skirmishes of violence and cattle rustling in the North Rift area are exacerbating the difficulties that the communities there are already facing as a result of a debilitating drought. Most tragically, the violence in the region has led to the death of 16 security personnel and over 100 civilians in 6 months, a period largely overlapping with the first 5 months of H.E. President William Ruto’s time as the president. Sadly, over the years, Kenya had become largely inured to this slow-burning war due to its long duration and the boorish mentality that made the majority of us see certain parts of the country and pastoralists as somewhat ‘backward’ or ‘lesser’ beings. The most harmful effect of this attitude has been the inability or unwillingness of Kenyans to understand the root of this problem.
Things came to a head on the 11th of February 2023 when a group of security personnel on patrol were ambushed on the Lodwar-Kitale highway resulting in the death of 3 officers and the loss of guns, ammunition and patrol vehicles. This daylight highway attack was a huge affront to the authorities, resulting in instant opprobrium from citizens all over the country who wonder why our much-vaunted security agencies still couldn’t subdue these “bandits” after all these years.
Such attacks were turning into exasperating feelings of déjà vu because we see the same places, roughly the same seasonal conditions, the same kind of weapons, and even the same meaningless terminology and knee-jerk government reactions time and again. In every other part of Kenya, when laws are broken, they are investigated and addressed all along the chain from perpetrators, enablers, participants and beneficiaries. Most of the time, cases are brought to logical conclusions, but not in this case. Why?
Insights into the depth of this particular problem came from a very knowledgeable (if unexpected) source. The Governor of Trans-Nzoia County, Mr George Natembeya, came out at the National Prayer Day with a hard-hitting statement, asking the President not to let people around him “shield” him from the realities on the ground concerning the “banditry” in the North Rift areas. He went on to detail the woes of the security personnel working in the area, claiming that they were being sent into a veritable war zone without adequate allowances, equipment and even food supplies. I was personally taken aback because the previous operation took place when Mr Natembeya was the Rift Valley Regional Coordinator (RC), a position he held until last year when he resigned to run for a political office. Ironically, the office of RC is a very senior position in the executive arm of the Kenya Government that placed Mr Natembeya in direct charge of deploying the security personnel who suffered the same deplorable working conditions he was now lamenting about. In a show of cognitive dissonance that is so typical of Kenyans, the Governor was widely praised for his ‘straight talk’ and honesty in ‘speaking truth to power’. Obviously buoyed by this newfound adulation, he went on to hold a press conference where he robustly advocated military involvement in the operation against bandits, firmly stating that the civilian security apparatus (where he spent the majority of his career before moving into politics) is inadequate to protect Kenyans. This advocacy was worrisome because the use of the loose term ‘banditry’ betrays a lack of knowledge of the identity or objectives of the adversaries.
The first major cause for alarm was the haughty ‘pre-devolution’ tone with which Mr Natembeya pronounced himself on the deployment of the military. He proceeded to even give recommendations on the orders that need to be issued, stating that they should be instructed to “decimate” the bandits. This is a startlingly cavalier term when used by a senior public servant in reference to citizens who haven’t been positively identified in any way. It is a term that could be useful in the primitive theatre of war, where opponents are positively identified by uniforms, positions or other means, but sustainable solutions to the security problems in the North Rift region invariably require more sophisticated approaches that would ensure that innocent citizens are protected and not “decimated” alongside. It would have been much easier for us ‘spectators’ to dismiss these statements as hot air emitted by someone who failed in his earlier responsibilities, but we lost that option when the government moved with speed to implement these external ‘instructions’.
The main cause of a complex issue
The violence plaguing the North Rift region in Kenya is complex, as it is caused by a multiplicity of factors. If it was simple, it would have been solved a long time ago through any of the heavy-handed responses deployed by successive governments against it. My work as a conservationist has given me unique insights into one aspect of it which seems to have been ignored by many.
Northern Kenya has a roughly 5-year drought cycle, and 2017 was a drought year. As a consequence, pastoralists moved south into Laikipia county in search of pasture. They invaded private ranches and provoked an inevitable state response, which resulted in the death of many ranchers, pastoralists, security personnel, and hundreds of livestock.
I headed a team of consultants tasked by an indigenous rights NGO to study Marsabit, Isiolo, Laikipia, and Samburu counties in a research project aimed at uncovering the dynamics and drivers of the southward transhumance and the resultant conflicts. We collected data from hundreds of respondents, including ranchers, pastoralists, government personnel and NGO practitioners. Three things stood out in our findings. The first was the sheer distances covered by the pastoralists with their animals, and the second was the fact that almost all the (government-designated) livestock movement routes have been blocked by private landowners. The most compelling finding, however, was that a vast majority of the pastoralists were from homelands that were now ‘wildlife conservancies’ controlled by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT),( -a conservation NGO. The pastoralists had lost access to their dry-season grazing areas.
After completing our fieldwork and analysis, we planned and held a validation workshop in Nanyuki on the 14th of June 2017. The findings of our report presented at the workshop resonated well with the community members who attended the workshop, some of whom provided us with further insights into the crisis. Our views on NRT were also ‘validated’ by a dramatic moment when my presentation was interrupted by their Laikipia county director, Mr Richard Kasoo, who literally screamed at me to stop vilifying NRT and had to be ejected from the room by the elders present. The top NRT management later called a more cordial meeting at a Nanyuki hotel, asking me as the team leader to expunge certain items from the report, which they felt portrayed them in a ‘negative light’. Much to their chagrin, I declined to do so, out of respect for my team and our respondents. This entire experience was a cameo of what ails us in this arena. Man-made stressors are routinely met with deafening silence and frantic inactivity until we invariably take ‘ruthless’ steps to ‘decimate’ the people we should have engaged before the fighting broke out. As such, those of us who observed the violent resource conflict in 2017 know that it wasn’t brought to an end by any human intervention. The drought ended, the rains came, and people who were fighting simply went back home.
These findings and my views have since been shared with several senior state officials and several non-state actors as well (including the protagonists), but have been invariably met with deafening silence and frantic inactivity. This is not to suggest that this is the only set of causes because the bloodletting certainly predates wildlife conservancies, which only started around 2004. Ethnic animosities that exist in this and other parts of Kenya are realities that we must factor in. The displacement and loss of access to resources also eliminated a lot of the geographical space that typically limited contact and conflict between some communities, resulting in more frequent flare-ups. However, the negative impact of conservation practices on the communities’ ways of life is definitely one of the easier drivers to deal with, so it is difficult to imagine that anyone is dealing with the more intractable and socio-politically fractious ones.
Most notably, the alacrity with which government authorities have embraced the advice of a former RC with a less-than-stellar record to handle a crisis is a worrying indication of not having a plan. One doesn’t need to be an expert to know that militaries aren’t trained to investigate, arrest or prosecute, so we could be courting numerous extrajudicial killings. The Interior Minister speaking in January, added his voice to the frightening miasma, saying that the Government will be ‘ruthless and brutal’ in this operation. We don’t seem to have had a plan for what we are doing now, so it cannot be easy to envision any plan for managing the inevitable fallout of such violence either. We are at war with ourselves in pitch darkness, struggling to finish ‘the other’ before dawn because the light of day might reveal who we really are.
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This article was first published by The Pan African Review.
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