Nigeria’s Buhari Resurrects Hard-Man Habits to Curb Dissent
- Proposed laws would regulate social media and hate speech
- Activists fear return of military-era squeeze on criticism
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Nigeria’s government is reviving old habits from its authoritarian past to stifle criticism.
Evoking memories of Nigeria’s three decades of military rule, the repression risks undoing progress Africa’s top oil producer has made since the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1999. Governance and other reforms have helped more than double average annual foreign investment since then -- a pace President Muhammadu Buhari needs to sustain to help reduce the world’s largest number of people living in extreme poverty.