By Elizabeth Osayande

Dr. Nwachukwu Egbunike is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Media and Communication, and Head of Pan-Atlantic University Press. His research focuses on digital media, youth political participation, and freedom of expression.

He holds degrees from the University of Nigeria and the University of Ibadan and has worked as a journalist, editor, and publishing consultant. Dr. Egbunike has also held roles at Global Voices and African.

In an exclusive chat with Vanguard, Dr Egbunike shares his insights on thematic areas such as youth development, digital rights, the inherent power of Africa owing the space on history and research, and the importance of freedom of expression in the growth and development of Africa.

Excerpt of the interview:

Starting your career as a cub reporter to becoming a Senior Lecturer and Head of Pan-Atlantic University Press?

Between 1995 and 1997, I was a cub reporter in the Enugu Bureau of the now-defunct National Light/Spokesman newspaper published by Anambra Newspapers and Printing Corporation. It was an amazing experience, as I was just fresh from secondary school and awaiting entrance into the university. Most times, I was the youngest journalist present during an assignment. I recall one of these assignments, a UN body had invited journalists to tour their public health interventions in a rural part of Enugu. I joined the team for the inspection in the morning from our office in Edinburgh Road, Ogui, Enugu and we only returned to Enugu around 10 pm. Unfortunately, my parents were thrown into panic, thinking the worst. There were no mobile phones then, so there was no way to inform them about my whereabouts. Aside from that, this experience grounded me at an early age for my professional journey into journalism.

The irony was that I resigned to study medical laboratory sciences at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus. But fate had a way to pull me back to my love for words. Upon graduation, while waiting for my internship, I took on a placeholder job as an editor at Spectrum Books, Ltd, Ibadan. I never went back to biomedical diagnosis. While I gained considerable mileage in Praxis as a book publisher, I continued to write op-ed for newspapers. This culminated in over a decade of being the Nigerian contributor of Global Voices (GV) – an independent online platform for digital rights and advocacy. I rose in the ranks to become GV’s Community Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa from 2021 to 2022. In that capacity, I travelled within the region while coordinating journalistic writing, research and advocacy. I resigned from GV as the Co-Regional Editor for Sub-Saharan Africa in 2022.

While my practice in digital rights was ongoing, I earned two master’s and a PhD degree from the University of Ibadan, with a special focus on the intersection of digital rights, social movements and youth political participation. I guess, with hindsight, I can say that this uncharted course prepared me for my double role as a senior lecturer in the School of Media and Communications and the head of Pan-Atlantic University Press.

Your research focuses on digital media and youth political participation. What specific trends or challenges have you observed in this area across Sub-Saharan Africa

Scholarship focusing on the digital landscape in Africa has increased over the past decade. But it still has not fully grown to tell the full story. A lot of African digital civil society organisations have done tremendous weight-lifting in this regard with their annual reports. This is commendable considering the commitment of time, energy and resources this has entailed. However, it is about time a shift in the research direction takes place for maximum impact. What does this even mean? The demerit of activism is that time is always a grave competition. Or academic scholarship by non-Africans who, despite their good intentions, end up with a one-sided narrative. This explains why much of the scholarship around digital rights in Africa is mostly reactionary and descriptive.

Firstly, the nuance and contextual aspects which would ordinarily give a more robust impact are usually ignored. One of the greatest advantages that some of us have is that we are participant observers in Africa’s digital landscape. In other words, this ethnographic insight can help, together with the quant findings, in predicting future occurrences and/or directions.

Secondly, it’s about time scholarship in Africa moves from producing mere descriptive research to pulling the global theory-driven conversation in digital rights. For instance, we have seen that current literature around digital authoritarianism in Africa is neither hinged on the Western concepts of Liberation Technology (Diamond, 2010) nor the Liberation in Turmoil (Tucker, 2017). Rather, it is simply an issue of media control – with pseudo-democratic political leadership. The same is evident in Privacy & Surveillance scholarship – where the historical precedence of colonialism and later military dictatorship was a major predictor in the continent.

Thirdly, what insights and how are they relevant to the digital landscape in ten years? That’s the suffocating gap in digital knowledge production in Africa, which African scholars must fill. To produce literature that bridges the gap between peer-reviewed scholarship and policy. How do we aggregate this research that is currently scattered within impregnable silos into top-rated world-class journals/books which will provide direction for future policy interventions? These are both the challenges and possible directions for future trends.

As an advocate for digital rights and freedom of expression, what are some key issues you believe need to be addressed to enhance online freedoms in Africa?

Over the years, African governments have consistently tightened their control over digital freedom of expression. Tactics such as internet blackouts, social media restrictions, and suppression of dissent have become commonplace. These digital authoritarian measures have violated digital rights and press freedom and stifled dissent.

One of the earliest examples of digital authoritarianism in Sub-Saharan Africa occurred in 2014 when nine Ethiopian bloggers were arrested on terrorism charges. They were eventually released a year later. These bloggers were ordinary citizens who expressed their dissatisfaction with their country through their writing. Their imprisonment sparked global outrage as it demonstrated the lengths to which an African government would go to silence online freedom of expression.

In 2017, the Cameroonian government imposed a three-month internet shutdown on two Anglophone regions of the country. In 2018, the Tanzanian government introduced a law requiring bloggers to pay an annual tax of over USD 900. On July 1st, 2018, Ugandans were required by law to pay a tax for using social media and mobile money. In 2020, there were either total or partial internet shutdowns in five diverse African countries. That same year, several African governments introduced regulations under the pretext of combating the COVID-19 pandemic that limited digital rights and freedom of expression. For example, legislation in Tanzania, Chad, Uganda, Nigeria, Niger, and Ethiopia targeted press freedom by imposing punitive sanctions that restricted free access to information for both journalists and the public. However, the suppression of digital freedom in 2020 was not limited to violations of digital rights or authoritarian measures.

On January 13th, 2021, just hours before the presidential election in Uganda, the Ugandan Communication Commission, UCC imposed a social media blackout in the country. Later that same day, at 7 pm EST, a total internet shutdown was reported across the country. Additionally, seven Southern African countries – Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and Malawi – introduced license and accreditation fees for journalists and bloggers. This legislation made the cost of expression prohibitively expensive and had a chilling effect on the free flow of ideas and meaningful discourse.

In June 2021, the Nigerian government suspended Twitter (now X) indefinitely after the social media platform deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari. On January 13th, 2022, the Nigerian government lifted the suspension of Twitter. The ban had significant social, emotional and financial repercussions for Nigeria’s young population.

To this day, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia are using surveillance software to monitor their citizens. This has increased online harassment, mass and targeted surveillance, data storage vulnerabilities and digital attacks, including hacking, that have compromised the safety and integrity of journalists and their sources. On the other hand, surveillance legislation in Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria has greatly hindered digital rights.

While the cases mentioned above are concerning and problematic, they are merely symptoms of a deeper issue. The never-ending attempt by African governments to control the media violates digital freedoms and the flow of online information. Until governments stop their attempt to gag digital rights, online freedom of expression in Africa will continue to be a pipe dream.

You have authored several books, including “Digital Youth and Social Movements.” What motivated you to write this particular book, and what insights do you hope readers will gain from it?

One key motivation for writing Digital Youth and Social Movement (Perspective from Nigeria) came from my observation of the sparse literature on this significant subject. As a digital scholar and practitioner who has been a participant-observer and has conducted individual cold clinical post-mortems on these movements for more than a decade, I knew that this story had to be told. It was, therefore, a sense of responsibility that I owed to our collective history and driving our national narrative that spurred me on to document this in a book for posterity.
The core narrative that sets this book apart from other works is that it shows the progression of youth movements in the last decade (2012 to 2023) – specifically #OccupyNigeria, #EndSARS and the #Obidient political movements. This book also shows the interconnectivity of young digital Nigerian natives who have driven these separate but highly intertwined movements. Hence, it would be an illusion for anyone to think that these movements were merely sporadic. They may look so, but in fact, they are tied to the deeply rooted frustrations afflicted on young Nigerians and the attendant broken promises of their governments.
It is trite to repeat that without digital media, the spread of #OccupyNigeria would have been limited to the typical trade union strikes. It was the sweeping frenzy of the Arab Spring that pushed young Nigerians to try to replicate it as their own Nigerian Harmattan Storm. #EndSARS, on the other hand, did not try to mimic anything. Rather, it was a gradual maturation of an already steaming anger about the constant harassment and intimidation of young people by the special police unit called SARS. The unleashing of hoodlums and killing of protesters by their government further exacerbated the angst, which was now transferred into the #Obidient movement. I must reiterate that without the adoption of digital media by these young Nigerians, these three movements would have been both ineffectual and unimpactful.

You have been actively involved in Nigeria’s book publishing industry since 2005. How has the landscape of publishing changed in Nigeria during this time?

There has been a significant improvement in the Nigerian publishing industry. One has witnessed more local publishing houses with a global focus on promoting Nigerian literature. These publishers have engaged prominent Nigerian authors, with stories that have won international acclaim. This generation of publishers has ignited a renaissance of Nigerian literature with an intensity and exposure exceeding the country’s post-independence Mbari movement. These publishers expanded their audience reach through the adoption of digital transformation using e-books and sales through online platforms like Roving Heights. This has also enabled them to cut production costs while ramping up their distribution network. However, the industry still faces significant challenges like high inflation and unstable exchange rate, migration (japa) of competent staff, inadequate infrastructure and book piracy. Nonetheless, the publishing landscape has equally witnessed initiatives that have boosted literary appreciation since 2005. Some of these include the Nigerian International Book Fair, Lagos Book and Arts Festival, and Abuja International Poetry Festival. Similarly, the annual Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas Prize for Nigerian Literature has provided Nigerian authors and publishers with an incentive to showcase their work and gain local and global validation for their labour. That said, Nigeria’s publishing industry remains the least profitable within the wider creative industry. This is worrisome.

Can you share some of the initiatives or programmes you implemented while leading the Irawo University Centre that contributed to the development of young people in character and learning?

Irawo University Centre is a private hall of residence for students at the University of Ibadan. This Centre is one of the numerous educational and social welfare projects promoted by the Educational Co-operation Society, a non-profit-oriented body. Irawo was established in 1969, admitted its first resident in 1972 and moved to its definitive site in 1990. That same year, the University of Ibadan recognised Irawo University Centre as “a private hall of residence associated with the university” – the first to be thus acknowledged in the Nigeria University System. The key aim of Irawo is to contribute to the academic, professional, human, and cultural formation of the student. To do this, emphasis is placed on creating in Irawo an atmosphere conducive to serious academic work.

Under my watch, as the 10th Director of Irawo University Centre, we aided the development of young people in ‘character and learning’ as stipulated in the Act of Parliament establishing the University of Ibadan. This entailed a voluntary mentoring process with emphasis on personalised accompanying of students throughout their studies. Some of which have continued to date. My team also celebrated Irawo’s 50th anniversary with the publication of a poetry anthology with contributions from young people across the country. My team instituted a residential scholarship fund to cater for indigent but deserving students to reside in the centre. The centre also increased its visibility as a private hall of residence within the University of Ibadan community with numerous educational and cultural programmes. Some of these are seminars and workshops, tutorial programmes, study weekends, work camps and other community service projects. Others were informal evenings of conversation with leading professionals and the university academia, leadership camps: students/residents are offered courses on anthropology, etiquette, public speech, etc. All these were in line with the dream of the founding fathers of Irawo to invest in the human capital of young Nigerians.