A 28-year-old man named Mene Ogidi sat on the ground in Effurun, Delta State on April 26, 2026. His hands were tied behind his back with a rope. He was not running. He was not fighting. He was begging.

“Officers, abeg, I go tell you everything. Na my friend deceived me. E dey Sapele. I will carry you to the place.”

Someone filmed what happened next.

ASP Nuhu Usman cocked his rifle and shot Mene Ogidi at point-blank range. In broad daylight. With the man’s hands still tied behind his back. The officers then lifted the body into a police Toyota Sienna and drove off.

This is not a war story from Sambisa Forest. This happened on an ordinary street in Delta State. And if not for the camera phone of an ordinary Nigerian, it would have been filed under “suspected criminal neutralised” and we would have moved on.

That is the part that should disturb every one of us deeply. Mind you, I am not saying Mene Ogidi was a saint. The police claimed he was caught trying to ship a Beretta pistol with four rounds of ammunition. Maybe he was. Maybe he was not. Maybe, as he was screaming in that video, a friend truly set him up. We will never know now, because ASP Usman decided to become judge, jury, and executioner in one trigger pull.

This is the very foundation of what a justice system is supposed to prevent. You arrest a suspect, you produce him in court, you present your evidence, and a judge decides his fate. That is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is the difference between a functioning state and a killing field.

Now, in fairness, the Inspector-General of Police, Rilwan Disu, moved relatively quickly. ASP Usman and three other officers have been recommended for dismissal and criminal prosecution. The Force Disciplinary Committee has sat. The case is before the Police Service Commission for ratification. I give the IGP some credit for not circling the wagons this time. But credit only goes so far.

Because here is my real question. Why does this keep happening?

The #EndSARS protests of October 2020 shook this country to its foundations. Young Nigerians, armed with nothing but phones and anger, took to the streets and told the government Enough is enough. The Special Anti-Robbery Squad was dissolved, at least on paper. Panels were set up in every state. Reports were written. Recommendations were submitted. Governors received findings. And then what? Nearly six years later, a restrained man is shot dead on camera in Delta State by a serving police officer and we are back to the same outrage cycle, the same official condemnations, the same promises.

What did we actually reform? I want someone to answer that question with specifics, not press releases.

Let me be precise about the pattern here, because treating Mene Ogidi’s death as an isolated incident is dishonest. There is a recurring category of security force killing where the victim is not a combatant, not an armed suspect in flight, not posing any imminent threat at the moment lethal force was applied. In the cases of Kehinde Alade, Ibrahim Usman, and the unnamed pregnant woman in Abraka, the two passers-by cut down in Alag do in each of those incidents, the victims were either bystanders or already under some form of state control when they were killed. Mene Ogidi fits squarely into the worst sub-category of this pattern: physically restrained, hands literally tied behind his back, pleading cooperatively, and still shot. That is not a split-second field decision gone wrong. That is the deliberate execution of a man in custody.

And before anyone tries to make this a regional story, the geography of documented cases from the past two years stretches from Delta to Lagos, from Abuja to Akwa Ibom, from the north-east to the south-east. This is not a southern problem or a northern problem. The common thread is not geography. The common thread is impunity, the settled belief among some officers that a poor, unconnected Nigerian’s life carries no real cost.

There is also something in this Delta case that I am surprised official commentary has not pressed harder on. Mene Ogidi, in that video, was actively cooperating. He was offering the officers a lead, a friend in Sapele, a specific location, a potentially bigger arrest. That is exactly the intelligence any competent officer would want to follow. So what was ASP Usman so eager to bury that he shot this man mid-sentence, mid-cooperation?

I am not accusing anyone of a specific crime beyond what the video already shows. But the question must be asked. When a suspect is willing to talk and an officer silences him permanently, the logical inference is that the officer had a reason to prevent that information from surfacing. The IGP’s disciplinary process must go beyond the mechanics of the shooting and probe what Mene Ogidi might have known that made him dangerous to someone in or connected to that patrol. Cover-ups in Nigerian law enforcement are not conspiracy theories. They are a documented, recurring feature of how certain bad actors within the system operate.

The wider problem resolves to three things: training, culture, and accountability infrastructure.

On training, a Nigerian police constable typically receives between three and six months of instruction before being handed a firearm. In jurisdictions that take professional policing seriously, that period runs between eighteen months and two years. You cannot build proportional force judgment, human rights instincts, and de-escalation reflexes in six months. What you produce is someone who knows how to operate a weapon but has received no serious grounding in why restraint is the harder and more disciplined calling.

When that person faces a tense situation, muscle memory beats judgment every time. On culture, the rot is generational. For decades, sections of the Nigerian police have operated on an unspoken premise that poor, unconnected citizens are not quite rights-bearing individuals but problems to be suppressed. That culture does not die with a memo from the IGP. It requires new supervisory norms at the divisional level, consistent mentorship from senior officers who model different behaviour, and most critically  a track record of consequences severe enough to alter the calculus for the next officer tempted to cross the line.

On accountability infrastructure, the Mene Ogidi case does show something: when leadership chooses to act, the system can respond with some speed. The IGP moved. Good. But accountability cannot be a function of how viral a video went. It cannot be selective. The families of Kehinde Alade, Ibrahim Usman, and the unnamed pregnant woman from Abraka have the same rights as Mene Ogidi’s family. If the state cannot show them equivalent resolve, then what we have is not accountability it is brand management triggered by embarrassing footage.

And that is the uncomfortable truth underneath all of this. The reason that the camera phone mattered is that without it, nothing would have moved. How many Mene Ogidis were never filmed? How many families received a phone call, a body, and a story about how their son was a dangerous criminal who gave officers no choice? The documentation gap in Nigerian law enforcement accountability is not an administrative oversight. It is the gap through which most of the impunity escapes, unchallenged and uncounted.

So what must happen now? First, the IGP must drive this case to its full legal conclusion, criminal prosecution, trial, and conviction, not a quiet administrative dismissal that allows ASP Usman to eventually resurface somewhere in the system. The family of Mene Ogidi deserves justice completed, not justice begun.

Second, the National Human Rights Commission, working with police oversight bodies, should establish and publish a running public register of extrajudicial killing cases  dates, locations, officers named, charges filed, and verdicts reached. We cannot manage what we refuse to measure, and right now the true scale of unlawful killings by Nigerian security forces is masked by the absence of systematic public record-keeping.

Third, state governors cannot continue hiding behind the federal structure of the Nigeria Police Force. The police operating in Delta State operate in a political environment shaped in part by the Delta State Government. Governors have the platform, the relationships, and the public authority to demand higher standards from the commands in their states. The silence of most governors after incidents like this is its own form of complicity.

Mene Ogidi was 28 years old. Whether guilty of the charge against him or entirely innocent, we may never know which he deserved to live to see a courtroom. He did not. And if we exhaust our outrage on social media and then move on to the next scandal, we have no right to be surprised when the next restrained man is shot on camera and the cycle begins again.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

Kaka:

 What kind of people gather to water another man’s private Strait of Hormuz?

Koko:

Sick people.

Kaka:

 What kind of men leave their so-called businesses to watch women’s breasts and buttocks?

Koko:

 Sex-starved, sex-deprived men who are not really busy.

Kaka:

You mean those who do those things are really not well, and uncivilised?

Koko:

 Trust me, they need all kinds of therapy and mind resets.

 I know, Kaka, I saw that video. A Nigerian woman, stripped of dignity, assaulted in broad daylight. Not in a war zone. Not in a red light district. The kind of violence we see these days belittles our morals and demeans us all.

Read Also: Xenophobia Crisis: Nigerians fleeing South Africa to pay their own way home – FG

Kaka:

At first, I thought it happened in South Africa.

Koko:

Oh no, whatever it is that ails South Africa is not that bad yet. Their cold is not yet Covid.

It would have sat in the mouth like bitter kola.

Read Also: When justice fails…

Kaka:

But those shameless lazy bones are okada riding blacks stripping women naked, forcing their legs open, in search of God-knows-what, and filming it.

Koko:

Other people’s wives o.

Kaka: Those women have children, parents, siblings.

Koko:

And the sick men parked their ‘okada’ to watch the show of shame.

Kaka:

Real shame of shameless people. But let’s not allow perverts to distract us from calling out evil doers who forgot their roots and helpers. Who would have thought a day would come when South Africans would turn to bite Nigeria with teeth we spent sweat and money to shape and sharpen?

Koko:

It’s sad and Nigerians are asking: why? What have we done? Why are our children being cut down in their prime? Why are our promising sons being returned home in the cargo cabins of planes that flew them in premium cabins to Johannesburg? Why are our hard-earned businesses being destroyed by those we once called brothers? Are we the cause of everything that is wrong with South Africa?

Kaka:

Ah! The eternal Nigerian question—what did we do wrong? As if a man must commit a crime before he is lynched.

Koko:

In other words, we are being lynched just because we are not South Africans? They just hate our faces?

Kaka:

Your faces are enough problem, really, along with your colourful lifestyle. However, seriously, this thing called xenophobia is a disease that has South Africa by the jugular.

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, xenophobic violence in South Africa has killed at least 669 people, displaced over 127,000, and led to the looting of thousands of businesses, according to Georgetown Journal

In just the first half of 2025, there were 26 recorded incidents and 14 deaths.

Koko:

As we speak in 2026, reports confirm renewed attacks, including the killing of two Nigerians and widespread violence in cities like Pretoria and Durban. Killing Nigerians seems to have become a sporting event.

Kaka:

Morbid sport by sick people.

Koko: And they have refused to seek help for the unfortunate recurring disease. 2008, 2015, 2019—each wave was worse than the last. Like malaria that refuses to die because the swamp is still there.

Koko:

But why Nigerians? Why always us?

Kaka:

Sit well. There are reasons. Not excuses—reasons. Let us start with economic frustration. South Africa is battling unemployment. Angry young men look around and see foreigners hustling, trading, surviving and conclude:

“They are taking our jobs.”

That narrative repeated like a broken record leaves them angry but at the wrong people.

Koko:

South Africa needs a scapegoat, someone to blame for their malfunctioning polity.

When a country struggles, it needs a villain. Foreigners become the convenient enemy and are being blamed for economic woes.

Kaka:

There is also the issue of stereotypes about Nigerians. Let’s not lie to ourselves.

Nigerians carry a reputation—some earned, many exaggerated.

Drug trafficking. Fraud. Flashy lifestyles.

Even when only a few are guilty, the whole community is branded.

Koko:

I believe jealousy is another demon in the matter.

A Nigerian opens a shop, works 18 hours, including Sundays and public holidays and succeeds.

Next thing, the sons of the soil who slept till noon and went clubbing twice a week suddenly go green with envy.

“Burn his shop.”

“ He is corrupt.”

“ He stole my customers.”

“ All of them should go back to their country.”

Suddenly, hard work becomes a vice and envious laziness becomes a virtue. South African would choose violence every day and twice on Sunday instead of learning how Nigerians’ resilience and hardworking ways.

READ ALSO: Chidimma Vanessa, The Ugly Side Of Perceived Xenophobia In South Africa

Kaka:

A nation elects leaders they do not like and the voters hold foreigners responsible for their bad choices. Then, the inhuman opportunistic politicians also blame the foreigners for their ineptitude.

They stir pots of trouble.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric is used as campaign slogans even as they increased tension because nothing wins votes like blaming outsiders.

Koko:

That is like an impotent man blaming his noisy neighbor for his inability to walk with his third leg.

Kaka:

Or a man with a small staff of office envying the strength and length of his more endowed brother. That is why they concoct misinformation and rumours to demarket and demonise everything Nigerian.

One minute, it is “Nigerians installed a king”, and boom, riots. How does a leader chosen by Nigerians to direct Nigerians’ affairs become other people’s headaches? We have not forced South Africans to worship at our shrines or prostrate before our kings. Why is our boil giving them pains?

Koko:

But Nigerians sef! Must an endowed man fling and flaunt his endowment in the presence of a man struggling to satisfy his wife?

Kaka:

Yeah, I heard that because of this famed endowment, some South African women have left their small-sized men for Nigerian men.

Koko:

Women, do they not know that such choices can start a war?

Kaka:

Well, now that they have started the war, everyone is suffering.

 Koko:

But I’m sure, there is more to this sickness than a Strait of Hormuz and who has the best ocean-going vessels.

Kaka:

Nigerians don’t hide success. We spray it like perfume. When we ‘arrive ‘, nobody is left in doubt. We arrive with drums roll, aso ebi that announces established steeze.

In a struggling society, that attracts anger.

Koko:

 It’s not our fault that they don’t understand us. And we do not force our aso ebi on them. We are just different. Is being different a sin?

Kaka:

There’s also the issue of poor integration. Some Nigerians form tight communities, speak their languages as if it is the host country’s lingua franca, speaking at the top of their voices and running their networks like cults.

To locals, that feels like:

“They came, but they didn’t join us. Instead, they are building another nation within our nation.”

Koko:

For people who still have PTSD from Apartheid, that definitely will rile them up.

Kaka:

Then there are the bad eggs who took their criminal minds along to other people’s domains. The big consequences are now haunting us all.

A few criminals can destroy the image of millions and Nigerians—let’s be honest—have produced some very smelly bad eggs abroad.

Kaka:

There is also the way our can-do attitude is perceived as arrogance. Our

confidence is our strength but to others, it can look like arrogance.

Koko:

So, are you saying Nigerians are the cause of their own misfortunes?

Kaka:

No. Don’t twist it.

There is no justification for violence, rape, or killing. Understanding cause is not excusing crime. The real problem is the festering disease called xenophobia.

It is even bigger than Nigerians.

Xenophobia in South Africa is described as “deep-rooted” across society—even institutions.

It is not just about strikes or mob actions. It is about a nation’s economic failure. It is about frustrated a people taking their anger out on others. It is about the identity crisis of a people who are not sure if they are fully Africans or half-white men.

Koko:

 Maybe the solution question is, should Nigerians not just leave that toxic space, pack their bags and come home?

Kaka:

 No, it is not that simple. Those people are not there on vacation.

Many Nigerians in South Africa run businesses. Their children are in schools. They have dependants

and families back home.

Leaving would mean starting life from zero. Though staying may mean continued risking their lives.

Koko:

What about self-defence?

Kaka:

Careful. The moment Nigerians retaliate violently, it becomes foreigners vs citizens war.

Guess who the big loser will be?

Not the mob. Not the politicians.

The foreigner.

The most realistic way out is stronger Nigerian diplomacy, legal protection, better community bond. Nigerians living in South Africa must document the abuses because silence can invite more violence.

Koko:

Let’s come back to our own house.

Where is Abuja in all this?

Kaka:

Abuja is summoning envoys, issuing statements and writing strongly-worded letters as usual but the time is ripe for reactions that are faster, louder, and stronger. We can no longer speak diplomatese at violence.

Koko:

Otherwise, Nigerians abroad will feel abandoned?

Kaka:

Exactly. A citizen without protection is like a goat tied in a lion’s den.

Koko:

Whatever happened to “Africa for Africans”?

Kaka:

That slogan started dying years ago. Today, it is fully dead. Each baby now must carry his mother’s breasts himself. Every man for himself, God for us all.

What we have now are borders in the mind, unhealthy competition in the stomach, fear in the heart even when asleep.

Pan-Africanism sounds sweet in speeches but on the streets, it is about survival of the angriest.

Koko:

Let us hope this new pattern of s3xual assault, public stripping will not be added into the xenophobic mix before Nigeria does something to protect its own abroad.

Kaka:

When a mob strips a woman, they are not just attacking her. They are saying:

“You are not human.”

It is the final stage of hatred.

Koko:

So what do we do?

Kaka:

There are four things we must do urgently.

 Nigeria must protect its citizens globally and I mean going beyond nice-sounding speeches.  South Africa must enforce law, not mouth excuses that sound like they are condoning this nauseating nonsense because impunity breeds repetition.

 Nigerians abroad must be strategic by building alliances and avoid unnecessary exposure that is often mistaken for arrogance.

All Africans must confront this hypocrisy. We cannot shout  “down with colonialism” and still practise tribal hatred.

Koko:

But seriously, Kaka, are Nigerians in South Africa doing something wrong?

Kaka:

Some things, yes.

But nothing—nothing—justifies being hunted like animals.

Koko:

Should they leave?

Kaka:

Some will. Some can’t.

Koko:

Should they fight?

Kaka:

They must survive first.

Kaka (quietly):

The real tragedy is not that foreigners are attacked.

The tragedy is that Africans have learned to hate Africans with the efficiency of former oppressors. And that, Koko,

is the most dangerous import we never paid for.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

Just days before thousands of activists, technologists, policymakers, and civil society actors were due to converge in Lusaka, the Zambian government abruptly cancelled RightsCon 2026, the world’s leading summit on the intersection of human rights and technology. The official explanation was bureaucratic: the need to ensure “alignment with national values” and unresolved administrative clearances.

But beneath this carefully worded justification lies a far more complex and troubling story. Evidence from organisers and multiple reports points to geopolitical pressure, particularly from China, linked to the participation of Taiwanese civil society groups.

What happened in Lusaka is not merely the cancellation of a conference. It is a signal event, one that exposes the entanglement of digital rights, global power politics, and Africa’s contested place in the emerging technological order.

RightsCon is not just another international conference. It is a convening space where some of the most contentious issues in global governance are debated: internet shutdowns, surveillance, AI governance, data protection, online gender-based violence, and the future of digital democracy. That alone makes it politically sensitive.

According to organisers, Chinese diplomats exerted pressure on the Zambian government due to the planned participation of Taiwanese delegates, reflecting Beijing’s longstanding insistence on isolating Taiwan internationally. The stakes were heightened by the expectation that discussions at the summit would include China’s global digital influence, surveillance technologies, and models of digital authoritarianism.

Zambia, like many African countries, maintains deep economic ties with China, including infrastructure financing and development loans. The conference venue itself had links to Chinese support, further complicating the political calculus.

In this context, the decision to cancel RightsCon reflects more than domestic policy considerations. It reveals how external geopolitical pressures can shape internal decisions even in matters as seemingly apolitical as hosting a conference.

Neoliberalism and Digital Neocolonisation

The cancellation of RightsCon must also be understood within the broader framework of neoliberal globalisation and its discontents. African economies, including Zambia’s, have long operated within systems of dependency shaped by external capital — first from Western institutions under structural adjustment programmes, and increasingly from emerging powers like China. This shift has not dismantled dependency; it has diversified it.

What we are witnessing is a form of digital neocolonisation where influence is exercised not only through trade or infrastructure, but through control over narratives, platforms, and spaces of discourse.

When a global human rights conference can be halted because of discomfort from an external power, it raises uncomfortable questions: Who controls the agenda of digital rights in Africa? Whose voices are allowed to be heard? And at what cost does economic partnership come?

The irony is stark. A conference designed to defend openness, participation, and accountability in digital spaces was itself shut down through opaque, unaccountable processes. All this without any recourse to the cost of such a decision. As far as we know, the immediate consequences of the cancellation are both tangible and intangible.

First, there are financial losses. Thousands of participants, over 2,600 by some estimates, had already committed resources to travel, accommodation, and logistics. Airlines, hotels, local vendors, and service providers in Lusaka stand to lose significant revenue. Beyond direct losses, Zambia forfeits the economic boost that accompanies large international gatherings.

Second, institutional damage. For Zambia, the reputational cost may be even greater than the financial one. Hosting RightsCon was a milestone, the first time the summit would be held in Southern Africa. Its cancellation “dents the image” of the country as a reliable host for global events and Africa as a continent.

Third, disruption of global collaboration. RightsCon is a critical space for cross-sector collaboration. Governments, tech companies, activists, and researchers use it to build coalitions, shape policy, and share knowledge. Its abrupt cancellation disrupts ongoing initiatives, delays advocacy efforts, and weakens already fragile networks working on digital rights.

Fourth, loss for marginalised voices. Perhaps the most profound loss is borne by those already on the margins, including women and activists from the Global South who rely on spaces like RightsCon to amplify their voices.

A Dangerous Precedent for Africa and Global Reverberations

The implications of this incident extend far beyond Zambia. If governments can cancel international gatherings at the last minute due to political pressure, it introduces a new level of uncertainty into Africa’s role as a host for global events. Civil society organisations may begin to reconsider hosting conferences on the continent, fearing instability or interference.

This is a profound setback. Africa has been steadily positioning itself as a hub for global dialogue on technology, governance, and innovation. The cancellation of RightsCon risks reversing that progress.

Moreover, it reinforces a troubling trend: the shrinking of civic space. Across the continent, there has been a rise in laws and policies that restrict assembly, expression, and digital freedoms. The RightsCon cancellation fits into this broader pattern, raising concerns about the future of democratic engagement in Africa.

The disruption caused by the cancellation is not confined to Africa. RightsCon is part of a global ecosystem of governance conversations. Its cancellation has ripple effects across international institutions, including events tied to World Press Freedom Day, some of which had to be relocated or restructured.

It also sends a chilling message to global civil society: even established, internationally recognised platforms are not immune to political interference. For organisations already grappling with funding constraints, political hostility, and digital threats, this represents an “existential” challenge.

Between Sovereignty and Influence: The Way Forward

To be clear, states have the sovereign right to determine what events take place within their borders. But sovereignty, in this case, appears entangled with external influence. However, the RightsCon episode forces a deeper reflection on what sovereignty means in a globalised world. Is it the ability to make independent decisions or the ability to resist pressure from more powerful actors?

For many African countries, the answer is complicated. Economic realities often constrain political choices. Yet, the long-term cost of compromised autonomy, particularly in areas as critical as digital governance, may far outweigh short-term gains.

The incident should not be seen as an isolated incident, but as a warning. Africa stands at a crossroads in the digital age. The continent has an opportunity to shape global norms on technology, governance, and human rights. But doing so requires safeguarding the spaces where these conversations happen. Three priorities emerge.

One, protecting civic space: governments must reaffirm commitments to freedom of expression and assembly, particularly in digital contexts. Two, strengthening institutional independence: host countries need mechanisms that insulate international events from undue political interference, whether domestic or external. Three, rebalancing global partnerships: African states must engage global partners, both Western and Eastern, from a position that prioritises long-term autonomy over short-term dependency.

The cancellation of RightsCon 2026 is more than a logistical failure. It is a moment that lays bare the tensions shaping our world: between openness and control, sovereignty and influence, collaboration and coercion.

For Africa, it is a test. Will the continent assert itself as a space for free and open dialogue in the digital age, or will it become a terrain where global powers dictate the terms of engagement?

For the global community, it is a reminder that the fight for digital rights is not only about technology, it is about power. And in Lusaka, that power spoke loudly by ensuring that others could not speak at all.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.