Nigerians pass beneath a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera mounted on a pole overlooking a road in Abuja, Nigeria. Photograph by Marvellous Durowaiye.
It began like any other late summer evening.
In August 2024, Angel Innocent, her 18-year-old son, Heroe, and her son’s friend were asleep in her apartment in the Central Bank of Nigeria quarters in Wuse II, Abuja. Her son’s friend was rounding out a weekend sleepover with Heroe.
But their peaceful sleep was interrupted by a convoy of special security vehicles filled with armed men wearing black hoods. Despite Heroe’s and his friend’s appeals and cries, the security men, attached to the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), remained unperturbed. Instead, they whisked the mother and participant in the #EndBadGovernance protest off to a cold prison cell, refusing to honor either her first or last name.
“I had only one cloth on. No underwear, no bra,” she said.
ONSA did not respond to the request to confirm or deny this claim.
Days earlier, Innocent and other protesters had watched as helicopter drones hovered overhead, photographing and filming the people who had taken to the streets to voice their opposition to President Tinubu’s administration, whose economic policies, in their view, had triggered an unprecedented rise in the cost of living across the country, with inflation reaching a 28-year high in June 2024.
However, like many other protesters, she had no idea how the government would use that footage until the security agents appeared at her doorstep one week into the demonstrations.
Constitutionally guaranteed dissent is being watched and increasingly hunted while the terrorists and bandits freely operating in several corners of Nigeria’s 36 states remain elusive.
Two days before her arrest, security men had been tracking her movements and phone calls, she learned later. She told the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ) that the men who arrested her had bragged about how digital technology helped them to pinpoint her location and track her home, where she was apprehended.
After weeks of frantic searching, Heroe and some of his mother’s friends located the facility in Abuja where she was being detained. Her ordeal lasted nearly two months, she said.
She was released on bail in October, outraged by her treatment yet grateful to be alive.
Amnesty International, Nigeria, reported that the police killed at least 24 youths across the country using excessive force against protesters.
Innocent’s case is not an outlier.
CCIJ conducted a six-month investigation into how Nigerian government agencies have built what researchers call one of Africa’s most aggressive surveillance apparatuses. Critics say many of these invasive technologies, funded with billions in taxpayer money, have been acquired secretly and deployed with minimal oversight and transparency.
CCIJ’s exclusive analysis of more than a decade of governmental data has found explosive growth in security spending. Allegedly designed to counter terrorism and curb insecurity, the surveillance regimen instead has bolstered apparent violations of constitutional promises of privacy and free speech that are cornerstones of a thriving democracy.
Nigerian security agencies’ capital budgets surged in 2025
Annual capital allocations to six federal security and defense agencies, 2016–2026.
Data Source: Nigeria Budget Data, 2016–2026.
Officials from multiple agencies declined repeated requests for comment from CCIJ.
But for human rights advocates and opposition politicians, the message is unmistakable. Constitutionally guaranteed dissent is being watched and increasingly hunted while the terrorists and bandits freely operating in several corners of Nigeria’s 36 states remain elusive.
“And no one knows what’s happening except you become a victim of surveillance in itself because the whole operation is shrouded in secrecy,” said Ridwan Oloyede of the AI Skills and Compute Africa Foundation (AISCA), an African AI policy think tank.
Innocent took part in the 10-day street protest that began on August 1, 2024.
The approximately 34 percent average inflation rate and the 41 percent food inflation rate in June 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), together with the floating of the Naira, following the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) unification of the foreign exchange market under President Tinubu’s administration, were too unbearable for many Nigerians. As a result, people took to the streets to protest Tinubu’s policies.
The protest set the government on edge.
Amid concerns that the protests could escalate, President Tinubu called for their suspension and warned that his government would not allow those with a clear political agenda to tear the country apart.
“In line with my constitutional oath to protect the lives and property of every citizen, our government will not stand idly by and allow a few with a clear political agenda to tear this nation apart,” the president said to the nation in his address on August 4, 2024.
Within the first few days, media reports confirmed that the police had tracked and apprehended over 800 protesters. By the end of the 10-day protest, security forces had arrested and detained 1,200 people across the country, according to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Many of them were tracked down to their homes and places of worship with the assistance of advanced surveillance technology, according to the protesters interviewed for this report.
To spy on Nigerians daily, the government spends a huge amount of taxpayer money to procure these technologies.
According to the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Nigeria has acquired more surveillance technologies than many other African countries, including mobile and internet interception, social media monitoring, biometric ID data, and ‘safe city’ monitoring of citizens in public spaces. They also found that Nigeria permits far more government agencies to conduct surveillance than several other African states.
“Nigeria is a far bigger market for digital surveillance technology than any other country on the continent,” says Dr. Tony Roberts, Research and Emeritus Fellow at the Digital and Technology cluster at IDS.
CCIJ sighted a national security strategy document (archived here) from the Buhari administration, in which the government clearly stated its objective of promoting “deliberate programs to develop advanced communications and surveillance capabilities.” It was version 2.0 of the Jonathan administration’s national security strategy document.
This capability has enabled state security agencies such as the Office of the National Security Adviser, the State Security Services (SSS), the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the Nigerian Police Force, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to routinely intercept calls and listen to citizens’ conversations in gross violation of the privacy laws and international treaties to which Nigeria is a signatory.
CCIJ reached out to the Office of the National Security Adviser through its contact details, but it has not yet responded. An attempt to get an interview appointment was also unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, a 2021 report shared with the Center for Collaborative Journalism, CCIJ, by Spaces for Change titled “Security Playbook of Digital Authoritarianism in Nigeria” confirms the government surveillance.
“The massive financial resources, equipment, and technologies originally procured in the name of counterterrorism and curbing insecurity have been diverted to monitor the movement of citizens, to track activities of civic actors online, to intercept private communications, to restrict online civic space, and to limit the ability of civic actors to organize, associate, and assemble freely,” the report stated.
In addition, CCIJ found that Nigeria allocated at least N127 billion to surveillance and security systems between 2014 and 2017, with about N46 billion allocated specifically to surveillance capabilities in 2017 alone.
BudgIT, a civic-tech organization that facilitates budget reform, reports that the Nigerian security budget grew by more than 300 percent from N1.5 trillion to N6.85 trillion between 2021 and 2025.
Part of that budget is spent on surveillance technology to fight against terrorism and banditry, though the result is marginal, considering the rising insecurity in Nigeria, the Afrobarometer survey confirms. Rather, the technology is used more to eavesdrop on private conversations and spy on ordinary citizens in their homes, especially civil rights activists, journalists, and opposition politicians who criticize the government, said Gbenga Sesan, executive director of Paradigm Initiative, a nonprofit organization that builds capacity and defends the digital rights of Africans.
Organizers of the 2024 national protest came to this rude shock during the #EndBadGovernance campaign, which Amnesty International described as “bloody August.”
“The massive financial resources, equipment, and technologies originally procured in the name of counterterrorism and curbing insecurity have been diverted to monitor the movement of citizens, to track activities of civic actors online, to intercept private communications, to restrict online civic space, and to limit the ability of civic actors to organize, associate, and assemble freely.”
– Excerpt from the report, Security Playbook of Digital Authoritarianism in Nigeria
“When the security agents arrested me, they showed me all the phone calls I had made about the protest,” said Adaramoye Michael, popularly known as Lenin, the coordinator of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM), Abuja chapter. Michael, one of the key leaders of the #EndBadGovernance protest, realized while he was in detention that both his WhatsApp messages and phone conversations had been secretly harvested by the security agents.
The Police Force public relations officer, CSP Anietie Iniedu, has not granted an interview request as of publication. His assistants, who were also copied in the request, have not responded.
Ten other activists charged with demonstrating, along with hundreds of youths across the country, including minors, were arrested at different times by armed men from the Special Intelligence Response Team of the Nigerian Police Force (IRT), the State Security Services (SSS), and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). The charge sheet obtained by CCIJ listed them as Michael Tobilola Adaramoye, Adeyemi Abiodun Abayaomi, Suleiman Yakubu, Opaluwa Eleojo Simon, Angel Love Innocent, and Buhari Lawal. Others are Mosiu Sadiq, Bashir Bello, Nuradeen Khamis, Abdulsalam Zubairu, and Daniel Akande.
Each of the protesters was tracked down with the aid of advanced surveillance technology procured from various countries such as China, Israel, Italy, the UK, the US, and Germany.
How Nigerian security agencies track citizens
According to the Paradigm Initiative, surveillance often targets specific individuals and may rely more on account access than on sophisticated spyware. These could include SIM‑based monitoring or IMSI catchers, telephone eavesdropping devices used to intercept mobile phone traffic. Another targeting approach could be account compromise (email, iCloud, or Google) or spyware infections via malicious links or files. But most journalists, civil rights activists, and opposition politicians in Nigeria experience more SIM‑based monitoring that allows the security agents to listen to calls and read messages, said Sesan. Those monitoring methods match the surveillance technologies Nigeria has continued to procure over the years, he added.
According to the IDS report obtained by CCIJ, Nigeria regularly imports surveillance technologies such as internet interception technologies, mobile phone interception technologies, social media surveillance technologies, safe city technologies for surveillance of public space, and biometric ID surveillance technologies.
For instance, Daniel Akande, a member of the Network of Abuja Left Groups who participated in the #EndBadGovernance protest, had his mobile phone intercepted. He told CCIJ that police tracked him to his church in the Guzape District in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, after several days of hide-and-seek. Men from the IRT unit, led by an officer named Moshood, showed up during the church dedication ceremony for his four-year-old son. And before anyone could understand their mission, the men confiscated phones belonging to Akande and his wife at gunpoint and led him away.
For weeks, the police had monitored his phone calls with several others, including those who had nothing to do with the protest, before they were arrested. One was Chinedu Stanley, a driver who had worked with him seven years ago at a company in Abuja. He was apprehended three days before Akande’s arrest after investigators tracked him through their phone conversations. Investigators also tracked a female student and a pastor he interacted with during that time through their conversations. The pastor provided information that led to Akande’s arrest, he said.
“While in custody, I was constantly asked about my comrades. Although I denied knowing who they were, a policeman later told me that my call with Macaulay [another protester] was tracked two days before my arrest and that they were sure we knew each other. They tracked all of us using digital technology funded with taxpayer money, but terrorists are walking free in many parts of the country,” Akande said, highlighting the contradiction of government hypocrisy in the fight against insecurity.
General Tukur Buratai (Retd.), former Chief of Army Staff, in what seems like a Freudian slip, confirmed this claim in a recent TV interview: “If security agencies can locate ordinary citizens and influencers on social media, I don’t think they would not be able to find bandits.”
Indeed, he was right.
The Buhari government, under which Buratai served, allocated N4.8 billion to the NIA in 2021 to monitor WhatsApp messages, phone calls, text messages, and other communications. Of this amount, the government allocated N1.93 billion to the “WhatsApp Intercept Solution” and N2.93 billion to the “Thuraya Interception Solution,” a communications surveillance system that can monitor voice calls, call-related information, SMS messages, and data traffic, among other forms of communication. In the same year, a sum of N11 billion was allocated to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to purchase voice and advanced data monitoring devices and subscribe to the tactical mobile geolocation platform, according to the Nigerian Budget Office, while N1.2 billion was allocated to the police for air support drones, among other digital surveillance technologies. Over N2 billion was approved for the SSS for the purchase of covert surveillance equipment and jammers, installation, and annual subscriptions.
The spending came less than a year after the October 2020 #EndSARS protests, when millions of young Nigerians mobilized largely through social media and encrypted messaging platforms. Researchers found that the surge in surveillance spending is the Nigerian government’s response to that protest. The reaction reflected the state’s determination to strengthen its ability to monitor digital communications and track future dissent, wrote Chibuzo Achinivu, a visiting assistant professor of political science at Vassar College in New York, in The Conversation. “Foreign suppliers of these technologies are motivated by both economic gain and influence in the region,” he added.
Government officials, however, denied the claim in 2017, presenting surveillance investments as part of broader efforts to improve intelligence gathering and address Nigeria’s growing security threats.
Roberts challenged this claim. “Maybe it’s time we started asking: In how many court cases does prosecution rely on surveillance data to secure conviction? Because governments tell us that these systems are necessary for our own safety, and we should be grateful because they’re going to reduce crime and catch terrorists. And I think we need to hold them accountable for that claim. And the way to know whether it’s true or false is to see whether the use of digital surveillance tools, in fact, lead to the conviction of terrorists or serious criminals. The evidence that exists doesn’t support that thesis.”
Earlier, the Jonathan administration similarly spent billions of Naira on digital surveillance. Among them was a controversial $470 million (N75.2 billion) closed-circuit television (CCTV) project, which was widely reported in the media. The federal government contributed 15% ($70.5 million) in counterpart funding, while external borrowing covered the remaining 85% ($399.5 million). The project, designed to support the Nigeria Police Force with nationwide surveillance and video conferencing infrastructure in Abuja, was contracted to two Chinese firms, ZTE Corporation and Hikvision, recently blacklisted by the US Department of War for posing a threat to America’s national security. But the project was hatched in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny. The former Director General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, Mr Emeka Eze, later confirmed to the National Assembly’s House Committee that the contract was awarded without due process.
Yet Jonathan’s administration spent more on security than initially discovered. As it later turned out, his national security adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, was arrested over a $2 billion (N380 billion at the exchange rate of N190/$) arms deal scandal, with additional budget funding of $2.2 billion (N413 billion) and N643.8 billion.
This transaction is often a major source of corruption because of its opaque nature, Edeatan said. “An amount can be claimed as a cost, and that amount turns out to be heavily inflated. So there are again issues of corruption as officials use this contract as a means of siphoning resources.”
In January 2013, Citizen Lab researchers found installations of Blue Coat and PacketShaper appliances, both spying devices, used in government networks in Nigeria alongside other countries with a history of concerns over human rights, surveillance, and censorship. The list includes Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Others include Afghanistan, Bahrain, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. These devices have specific functionality permitting filtering, censorship, and surveillance.
A CCIJ analysis of the Nigerian budget from 2016 to 2026 shows the Nigerian government allocated N1.4 trillion in capital budget to four key agencies that reportedly spy on citizens. They are the SSS (N218.4 billion), NIA (N117.2 billion), DIA (N117.4 billion), ONSA (N551.4 billion), and the police (N386.5 billion).
An earlier IDS report found that Nigeria spent more than $2 billion (N990 billion at an exchange rate of N495/$) on surveillance technologies between 2013 and 2022, making it one of Africa’s largest purchasers of digital monitoring tools. The technologies acquired over that period include systems capable of intercepting communications, analyzing digital data, and identifying the location of mobile devices.
During the #EndBadGovernance protests, security agencies used some of these capabilities to identify and locate protest organizers and participants, according to security officials and documents reviewed by CCIJ. The Nigerian government often justifies the heavy spending as a national security measure.
But for many Nigerians, billions invested in surveillance systems have not improved security. Parents still worry when their children go to school; farmers fear attacks on their fields, and commuters remain vulnerable to kidnappers on major highways. Nigeria ranks high among the countries most severely affected by terrorism, according to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). Terrorist attacks rose from 120 incidents in 2024 to 171 in 2025, even as government security spending reached record levels. Yet the security agents are often swift to monitor and arrest activists, journalists, opposition politicians, or ordinary people who dare to criticize the government.
Omoyele Sowore’s case is a typical example.
