Pro-Russia Feelings and Disinformation Begin Spilling Into Nigeria

The military forces in three West African countries — Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — booted the democratically elected governments in their respective states, but before the coups happened, Russian flags were hoisted as symbols of resistance in each place. Some experts say that such pro-Russia sentiments are spilling into these nations’ biggest neighbor, Nigeria, potentially fracturing the region further.

During a 10-day end-bad-governance protest throughout much of Nigeria in August, some demonstrators in Kano, a major northwestern city, unexpectedly waved Russian flags while calling on Russia for assistance in pressuring the Nigerian government to change. President Bola Tinubu’s government responded by arresting several local people, including a tailor who sewed the Russian flags and a handful of Polish nationals connected to the incident. (Tinubu is scheduled to speak at the General Assembly’s annual opening session on Sept. 24.)

Russia denies involvement in the protest in Kano, which is close to the border of Niger. The Polish government said it would be unthinkable for its citizens to wave a Russian flag.

Political analysts who spoke to PassBlue, however, said the public display of pro-Russian feelings in northern Nigeria is an extension of Russian influence in Niger, a landlocked country, where Russian military trainers are providing technical advice to Nigerien forces to help fight terrorism. Although American troops have recently withdrawn from Niger and a military base there, at the request of Niger’s leadership, the US still offers technical military services.

Recently, a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress visited Niger to discuss enhancing the two countries’ security partnership, according to the newly formed Alliance of Sahel Countries, or AES, which is composed of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

In Mali, Russian militias are also working with the military-led government to push out Al Qaeda and other jihadists. A massacre reportedly coordinated by Malian Tuareg rebels with Ukrainian military intelligence killed dozens of Russian and Malian soldiers in northern Mali in July. But the jury is still out about the role Ukrainian intelligence operations may have played in the ambush.

At least five of Nigeria’s northern states share a land border spanning about 932 miles with Niger. Nigeria and Niger have a long history of a socioeconomic relationship. There is also an extensive cultural and religious affinity between Niger and northern Nigeria, based on their predominantly Muslim population and millions of Hausa language speakers.

Russia’s disinformation campaigns in many parts of the world promoting anti-Western, antigovernment and antidemocracy narratives have paved the way for Moscow’s incursion into certain African countries, experts say. In West Africa, pro-Russian leanings took root months before the series of military coups occurred in the three democratically elected governments of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger over the last few years. Pro-Russian influence preceded the arrival of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries, since renamed the Africa Corps, in Burkina Faso and Mali. Niger says the mercenaries are not operating in their country. (The Malian coup happened in 2021; Burkina’s in 2022; Niger, 2023.)

“The pattern of how Russia has been able to weaponize and hijack protests for its own political objectives is underappreciated on the continent,” said Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies of the National Defense University, in Washington.

“This is exactly the pattern we saw in Mali in the 18 months prior to the coup,” he said. “There was a concerted Russian disinformation campaign to discredit the democratic government. So, when you see Russian flags in Nigeria, there is an obvious link to what Russia has done elsewhere.”

Nigeria, with its fragile democracy and population of 218 million, has been targeted by Russian disinformation in recent years. Since the full-scale war in Ukraine began in February 2022, when Russian troops invaded north of Kyiv, the capital, misinformation about the conflict has spread across Africa. In Nigeria, manipulated videos and doctored statements claiming support for Russia have appeared on social media.

Meta, the online platform, said it deactivated accounts operated from St. Petersburg, Russia, targeting journalists in Nigeria and other African countries. 

The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, an academic institution funded by the US Congress to study security issues, reported that Russia is the largest sponsor of disinformation campaigns in the continent. In 2022, the institution found that pro-Russian actors used thousands of new, fake and hacked accounts to spread pro-Kremlin narratives and manipulate social media algorithms, producing two pro-Russian hashtags to trend on X/Twitter.

The campaign aimed to create the appearance of global support before the UN General Assembly voted in early March 2022 on a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although Nigeria voted yes, nearly half of other African countries abstained from voting.

“It’s clearly an effort to foment unrest and manipulate authentic grievances [against the government],” Siegle said. “Protests are a normal democratic act to demand change. These are the very acts being hijacked by an external actor . . . which has been Russia’s key means of entry and influence in Africa.”

In northern Nigeria, where the “end bad governance” protests were more heated than elsewhere in the country, residents have lived in constant fear of violence by Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist sect that has plagued the region since 2009. Additionally, intensifying conflict for water and grazable land between farmers and nomadic cattle herders has normalized killing and kidnapping in the region.

A four-year study by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa said that 55,910 people were killed in Nigeria in 9,970 attacks from October 2019 to September 2023. More than 21,000 people were abducted in the same period.

While Russian and other foreign mercenaries have joined Mali and Burkina Faso to fight jihadists, the Nigerian military has no such boots-on-the-ground assistance. Instead, it is collaborating with neighbors through the Lake Chad Basin Multinational Joint Task Force, which includes troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. It is mainly financed by the Nigerian government with support from the US and the European Union.

Residents and observers in northern Nigeria have bemoaned the ineffectiveness of Tinubu’s government to fight Boko Haram, with many communities accusing security agencies of not responding to SOS calls promptly. A decade after Boko Haram’s notorious abduction of Chibok schoolgirls, the sect remains a deadly threat in Nigeria and the greater Lake Chad Basin region.

While there have been no coups in recent decades in Nigeria, the deepening insecurity in the north is analogous to the situation in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, where Russia has gained major influence or is trying to do so. Russia has a documented interest in exploiting mineral resources in the African countries to which it provides military support. Notably, analysts say that Moscow’s new presence in Niger could allow Russia to exploit tensions in Zamfara, a gold-producing state in northwest Nigeria.

“One possible explanation is that the protest was infiltrated by some Nigeriens to register their displeasure with the Nigerian government attitude towards the military junta in Niger and also to embarrass the government,” Yinka Ajala, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Leeds Beckett University, in England, wrote in the online publication The Conversation.

Nigeria chairs the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) bloc, which opposes military coups and initially imposed sanctions on Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso for their government overthrows. The sanctions have since been lifted. Ecowas is based in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, and Tinubu had first threatened military action against Niger after its coup. He quickly reversed course after the junta leaders in Bamako and Ouagadougou, respectively, declared support for Niger.

Ecowas is struggling to bring these three countries back into its fold, but it looks unlikely to happen, given that they have formed their own alliance, AES. Analysts warn that Russia’s potential sway in northern Nigeria could undermine the country’s role in keeping regional peace and security, however precarious.

While the appearance of Russian flags in Kano may reflect the sentiment of disgruntled Nigerians absorbing pro-Russian rhetoric from neighboring Niger, experts told PassBlue that the Nigerian government and the 15-member Ecowas need to counter Russian disinformation in this part of Africa.

“Russia starts out by teasing its presence,” said Beverly Ochieng, a security analyst and Africa expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in Washington. “Russian flags are flown in Kano in a way to suggest Russia sentiments, but it’s just more of taking advantage of a pre-existing sentiment, rather than fueling it.”

Ecowas, which was established in 1975, has been accused of being under the grip of Western powers. Russia has been exploiting this perception, experts note, to weaken the bloc’s standing. The junta governments in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso argue that the organization has strayed from its founding principles and allowed itself to be beholden to foreigners.

“Extreme vigilance across the Ecowas zone will be crucial in countering misinformation with proactive and timely information,” Ochieng said. “They should provide civic education so people are not vulnerable to such influence and campaigns, as it’s all too easy to fall prey.”