There is a quiet but dangerous pattern playing out across Nigeria’s civic landscape. It does not always make the headlines. It looks, instead, like a court summons, A lawsuit, A legal notice handed to someone whose only crime was speaking the truth. Sometimes it looks like a student remanded in custody for a social media post about flooding. Or a journalist detained after honouring a police invitation in good faith.

This is the reality of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) and they are becoming one of the most effective tools for silencing the very people working to make Nigeria more just.

What Is SLAPP?

A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) is a legal action filed not to seek justice, but to stop someone from demanding it on behalf of others. The targets are typically journalists who expose corruption, activists who challenge powerful interests, whistleblowers who report fraud, and citizens who dare to hold power accountable in public.

The burden imposed is deliberate: the cost of legal defence, the threat of criminal prosecution, prolonged litigation, and damage to reputation. All are designed with one goal — that the target will simply give up. In this way, the process becomes the punishment.

Some Cases We Could Not Stay Silent About

Abubakar Isah Mokwa a student at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University in Lapai, Niger State. In October 2025, he posted on social media criticising the Niger State Governor’s response to flood victims in Mokwa. For that post, he was charged with six offences, cyberbullying, cyberstalking, criminal defamation, and inciting disturbance, under the Cybercrimes Act 2024. He was arraigned before a Minna Chief Magistrate Court and remanded in custody, despite pleading not guilty. He was not a criminal, he was a  citizen asking why flood victims were being ignored.

We issued an immediate press statement condemning his arrest. We called on the Niger State Government to withdraw all charges, on the Nigerian Police Force to stop misusing the Cybercrimes Act, and on the National Assembly to urgently review and amend the Act to align it with Nigeria’s human rights obligations.

Sodiq Atanda, a Senior Reporter with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, was detained by Ekiti State Police in September 2025 after honouring a police invitation in good faith. He walked in voluntarily, he was detained. We responded immediately,  by publishing a Free Sodiq campaign and condemning his detention publicly. He has since been released. But the fact that a journalist had to be campaigned for simply because he did his job tells you everything about the environment we are operating in.

Journalism is not a crime. Criticising a government official on social media is not a crime. But in Nigeria today, both can get you arrested, and the Cybercrimes Act is the most convenient instrument for making that happen. In August 2024 alone, at least 56 journalists were assaulted or arrested while covering demonstrations, and Nigeria dropped 10 spots to 122nd in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index.Serap-nigeria

These are not isolated incidents. They are a pattern, and patterns have intentions behind them.

The Damage Goes Further Than Any One Case

What makes SLAPPs so dangerous is that their harm travels far beyond the individual targeted.

Every student remanded for a Facebook post is a generation of young Nigerians learning to self-censor. Every journalist detained for doing their job is a newsroom that thinks twice before publishing the next story. Every civil society organisation drained by legal threats is a hundred indigent people who needed representation and did not receive it.

At a time when young Nigerians are using digital platforms to advocate for justice, transparency, and reform, the arrest of a university student for online criticism is both unlawful and morally indefensible. Nigeria cannot continue to preach democracy while jailing its young voices for speaking truth to power.

Without the space for Nigerians to organise, advocate, and hold power to account, the constitutional goals of justice, dignity, and equality simply cannot be achieved. 

What Needs to Change

Nigeria urgently needs anti-SLAPP legislation, laws that allow courts to dismiss abusive suits early and require those who file them maliciously to bear the legal costs of those they targeted. Canada, Australia, and several American states have already moved in this direction. West Africa has yet to follow.

The Cybercrimes Act must be reviewed. Its provisions are too broad, too vague, and too easily weaponised. Impunity for those who abuse the courts must end. And the independence of Nigeria’s judiciary must be fiercely protected.

Justice is not handed down,it is demanded, documented, and defended. We will continue to advocate, amplify names, and refuse to let these cases disappear. But this is also a call to every lawyer, policymaker, journalist, and citizen who believes in a Nigeria where speaking truth is not a liability.

Why We Are Launching the Freedom Mic Podcast

Visibility is what kept Abubakar’s case from disappearing after his arraignment. It is what kept Sodiq’s name in public view while he was in detention. It is the only thing that consistently works.

The conversations that expose these patterns, that name the mechanisms of silence and refuse to let the public forget, need to happen consistently, in public, and at volume.

That is why we are launching the Freedom Mic Podcast, diving deep into freedom and justice through powerful conversations with remarkable guests who are living these realities, challenging these systems, and refusing to be silenced. This is not just a podcast. It is a civic act.

Catch our episodes on YouTube.

We Will Not Stay Quiet

We will continue to speak when the system tries to make silence the safer option. Because the civic space that makes all other rights possible belongs to every Nigerian, not just the ones in power.

What is shrinking can, with enough collective will and enough voices refusing to be quiet be reclaimed.