There was a time when governments alone possessed the power to silence citizens. They shut down newspapers, proscribed organisations, banned public meetings, confiscated publications and imprisoned critics.
Today, a different centre of power has emerged. In many respects, it appears to exercise an influence that exceeds that of the State in one critical domain.
Without a police officer, a courtroom or an Act of Parliament, a single decision by a digital platform can erase years of work, disconnect a journalist from hundreds of thousands of followers, cripple a business, remove a human rights advocate from one of the world’s largest public squares and silence a political voice painstakingly built over many years.
As part of our POLI-DUCATION, it is time we began to interrogate and elucidate this phenomenon. This is no longer merely a technology issue. It is a democratic issue. It is a constitutional issue. It is a jurisprudential issue. Above all, it is a political issue because public square has changed and political debates no longer occur only in newspapers, legislative chambers or public rallies. They now take place on Facebook, X, YouTube, TikTok and other digital platforms. Elections are debated there. Governments are criticised there. Journalists break stories there. Lawyers educate citizens there. Human rights defenders expose abuses there. Businesses survive there. Communities are built there.
The digital platform has become one of the most important arenas of democratic participation. Yet something equally significant has emerged. Increasingly, those who express courageous, unpopular or dissenting opinions complain that they become targets of coordinated reporting by persons who disagree with them. Whether every such complaint is justified is not the immediate point. The deeper concern is whether a digital mob can, intentionally or otherwise, trigger processes capable of silencing voices before any meaningful opportunity exists to challenge the decision.
That possibility should concern every modern citizen. Certainly, social media companies have the right and indeed the responsibility to establish Community Standards and remove genuinely harmful or unlawful content. No serious advocate of free expression argues otherwise. Every responsible digital platform must also ferret out terrorism, organised fraud, child exploitation and other serious abuses that threaten the safety of its users.
But every power must have limits. Can a digital platform permanently disable an account built over many years without identifying and verifying the alleged misconduct? Can it disconnect a citizen from hundreds of thousands of friends and followers without giving adequate reasons or notice? Can it remove a journalist, lawyer or activist from his or her reach or business owner from his or her business world and lifeline, which the modern public square is without providing a meaningful opportunity to be heard?
These are no longer mere contractual questions between a company and its users. They are questions about the relationship between private power and democratic freedom.
For decades, constitutional lawyers have focused on preventing the abuse of public power by public office holders. But now the history of constitutionalism teaches us that liberty is not threatened only by governments. The digital age now invites us to ask whether private power, where it profoundly shapes public life, should also be exercised according to principles of fairness, transparency and accountability.
This conversation is bigger than any individual whose account has been suspended or disabled.
Today it may be a journalist. Tomorrow it may be a lawyer. The next day it may be a political activist, a business owner, a student or an ordinary citizen.
The challenge before Nigerian jurists, legislators and judges today is not whether social media companies should moderate content. They should.
The real challenge is to nail down the constitutional and jurisprudential principles that should govern the exercise of such enormous digital power without undermining innovation or digital safety; principles that preserve community protection while safeguarding democratic participation, fairness and freedom of expression.
Constitutional history teaches us that every generation encounters its own moment of natality, its opportunity to begin anew by rethinking inherited assumptions in the light of new realities.
Perhaps the rise of digital power presents Nigeria with such a moment today.
To be continued next Monday.
Tope Temokun
3 August 2026
A Weekly POLI-DUCATION Series
Political Education for the Thinking Citizen.
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