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This article investigates how the Nigerian state is implicated in police brutality and clampdown on the #EndSARS protesters and its implications for democracy, development and national security. The article used primary data comprising 38 telephone interviews, 19,609 Facebook posts/reposts and 24,799 Twitter tweets/retweets, complementing it with a wide range of secondary data. From the analyses of data, it shows there is an obvious mutual trust deficit between government and the citizens. This is supported by one-third of the 36 states in Nigeria which witnessed sporadic #EndSARS protests and destruction of government establishments. Use of heavy firearms against unarmed protesters escalated the conflict from civil disobedience to a demand to a change of government. Thus, establishment of institutional mechanisms and disciplinary measures that control the excesses of security agents during civil protests is imperative to protect civil and human rights of protesters.

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While the activities of multinational oil corporations contribute significantly to oil pollution and environmental degradation in most oil-producing countries, the extent to which illegal artisanal refineries contribute to the environmental problems in Niger Delta remains unclear. Extant literature attributes this to the expanding activities of the artisans as well as the use of crude technology in illegal oil refining. Given the widespread nature of the artisanal oil-refining economy in the Niger Delta region, we assess its contribution to the growing environmental pollution in the region. By artisanal oil refining, we mean small-scale crude oil processing or subsistent distillation of petroleum that is often outside the boundaries of the state law. This study links the continual failure of the clean-up programme in the Niger Delta to the booming artisanal crude oil-refining economy in the region. Using predominantly qualitative methods of data collection and content analysis, we adopted the enterprise value chain analysis to underscore the underlying local economic interests and external economic opportunities that sustain oil bunkering, oil theft and petro-piracy. We conclude that these illegal refining processes significantly undermine the Ogoniland clean-up project and make the remediation programme unsustainable in Nigeria.

Applications of Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-driven innovations are profound in the electoral cycle. Among them, biometric technology is currently sweeping across developing countries. It is, however, only poorly adopted among rural voters. Does the use of biometric technology in the conduct of elections reconstruct rural voters’ behaviour, amid prevailing social challenges? The links between these realities and their consequences are currently less understood, and lacking in supporting literature. I argue that the public perception of bio-metric technology, the availability of proper infrastructure, and the distance between polling stations and the dwellings of rural voters all affect the latter's level of adoption of biometric technology. These interactions combine to produce specific modalities that shape voting behaviour and general political culture. I elicit primary data from voters in Nigeria's remote villages, so as to predict the implications and consequences of glossing over the dimensions and magnitude of the biometric technology adaptation challenge by policymakers. I conclude by reflecting on how these interplays and interactions create “spatial differentials” in electoral outcomes/credibility, and proffer possible strategies for institutional intervention.