By Akande Daniel

Once again, on April 7th,2025 the Nigerian state security apparatus revealed its usual violent character, descending forcefully on peaceful protesters demanding an end to the weaponization of the Cybercrime Act. This law initially intended to combat online fraud, is now being used as a repressive tool to silence dissent, target state critics, and persecute journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens who dare to speak out against the corrupt capitalist regime.

Under the APC-led Tinubu administration, this repression has reached new heights. More than at any other point in Nigeria’s history, protesters are being met with brutal force, and over 100 individuals have been charged and prosecuted under the Cybercrime Act — in most cases, falsely and vindictively. Even TikTok content creators and NYSC members have not been spared. A corps member, Ushie Rita Uguamaye (@talktoRaye) who criticised the Tinubu regime narrowly escaped severe punishment; it took mass outrage, legal intervention, and public mobilization to secure her from being victimised. Her resistance became a rallying point for other young Nigerians to express discontent with the regime’s handling of national affairs.

Ironically, this incident led to one of the few material gains: after prolonged refusal, the Tinubu regime was compelled to reluctantly pay the new NYSC allowance to ₦70,000, following several months of delay in implementing the new minimum wage it had signed into law. This concession was not a gesture of goodwill, but the result of sustained agitation, particularly a 30-day social media outcry spearheaded by angry youth on platforms like TikTok.

However, this is far from an isolated event. The April 7th attack adds to a growing list: from the historic #EndSARS uprising to the more recent #EndHunger and #EndBadGovernance protests — all of which have been met with militarized crackdowns. The corrupt Nigerian elite increasingly sees peaceful protests not as expressions of democratic rights, but as threats to their grip on power—often labeling them as security risks in order to suppress and crush genuine dissent. The members of the Take It Back (TIB) Movement who recently took to the streets to demand an end to these attacks embody the growing resistance. They protested the escalating repression against journalists, activists, and everyday Nigerians who oppose the Tinubu regime’s political, economic, and social mismanagement.

This authoritarian tendency of the state aligns clearly with Lenin’s analysis in State and Revolution, where he argues that the state is not a neutral body, but “an organ for the oppression of one class by another.” The state, according to Lenin, is “a special body of armed men” — complete with prisons and coercive institutions — used to maintain class rule. The law, despite its proclaimed universality, is designed to protect the interests of the ruling class, not the masses. The Nigerian security architecture — from the police and army to the Department of State Services (DSS) — functions precisely in this way: defending the interests of the ruling elites while violently repressing the poor and working class. It’s in this light that the militarization of protest is not an anomaly, but a deliberate and systemic expression of capitalist class power. To dismantle this oppressive system, Lenin insists that it is not enough to seize the existing state machinery; it must be smashed and replaced with a state of the working class. This is the dictatorship of the proletariat — a transitional state where the working class arms and organizes itself to suppress capitalist counterrevolution and build a socialist society.

What we see today in Nigeria is not just state repression but the unfolding logic of a capitalist system in crisis. Whenever young people, students, or workers rise in opposition, the state’s response is not dialogue, but violence — bullets, tear gas, arbitrary arrests, and media blackouts. Security agencies act not as defenders of public interest, but as enforcers of elite privilege. So again, we must ask: Whose security is the Nigerian state protecting? Certainly not that of the masses who endure rising inflation, fuel price hikes, joblessness, and deteriorating living standards. Rather, the state protects the corrupt political class and foreign-backed capitalists profiting from privatization and resource plunder. The classification of protesters as “threats to national security” is a political tactic meant to delegitimize resistance and justify authoritarianism. Yet, protesters are demanding basic needs: living wages, education, healthcare, an end to police brutality, and accountability — none of which are crimes, but necessary demands for survival and dignity.

The DSS, in particular, has evolved into a political police force, harassing organizers, infiltrating movements, and shrinking civic space. Its actions mirror the function of the capitalist state as defined by Lenin: protecting the ruling class through coercion and violence. This repression must be condemned and resisted. If left unchecked, it will radicalize even broader layers of society who conclude that peaceful protest is futile. But that, too, presents an opportunity.

The growing political consciousness among youth, students, workers, and oppressed communities is not a threat to society — it is the beginning of liberation. As Lenin notes, the working class must organize, arm itself, and build its own institutions of power to dismantle capitalist rule. We must urgently build a formidable revolutionary party of the working class to coordinate this struggle — not only to resist repression but to lead a complete transformation of society. The real threat to national security is not the unarmed protester calling for justice. The real threat is the capitalist state that refuses to protect and provide the basic life necessities for its people.