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and you should expect diluted facts/suppressed info from Nigerian officials (to cover up), which might result in biased media reporting. (eg. I saw an Al Jazeera headline yesterday saying "armed men" opened fire on protesters... luckily 9ja twitter showed out strong in the comments to correct the record lol). Your best bet is to just follow updates/commentary directly from protesters on the ground and in the diaspora as things play out on social media.
I'll try my best to add a little context tho (damn, didn't there used to be more okafricans? lol) despite feeling a bit out of the loop having not been raised there/only spending minimal time:
Basically, young people in Nigeria have become fed up with its shitty governance.
The specific issue that sparked unrest is police brutality. *Note: the police in Nigeria are Federal, so "local" law enforcement is better understood as localized federal agents (there's also vigilante/watchmen groups people form to protect their property and neighborhoods, tho I'ved only seen/heard of this in rural areas, but that's more of a grassroots thing and def not the issue here)*
Anyway, the government thought it would be a good idea to institute a police task force dedicated to curbing armed robberies (which sounds like a petty concern, but is actually a widespread cause of insecurity over there along with kidnappings, fraud, etc. I know multiple affected families and one of my best friends was robbed at (semi-automatic) gunpoint on a hijacked bus the last time she travelled back several years ago). Like the hashtags and articles indicate, this task force was called SARS aka Special Anti-Robbery Squad - and by most accounts turned out to be a state-sanctioned gang. I guess the best way for an American to envision SARS is... all the brutally violent cops in America operating under one federally coordinated unit, ruthlessly implementing Stop-and-Frisk, and aside from grossly violating (mostly young) peoples' rights and being unnecessarily violent and sexually abusive also extorting (robbing?) people for bribes just to be freed from custody.
Some recent incidents went viral, and I guess the confluence of police harassment + corruption + covid + chronic un/underemployment + general state failure pushed people to the brink. Protesters "peacefully" (this is important) took to the streets, whch they are supposed to be allowed to do as per the Nigerian constitution - but sometimes the state doesn't give af about the constitution. A protest was happening near Lekki (which is an upscale neighborhood, and may have slightly influenced the state's extreme response in this particular instance given there's been other protests all over the country for weeks, but I don't think there's a valid class-reductionist take here) and according to protester/witness accounts: city lights were (not so mysteriously) turned off, cctv cameras were (not so mysteriously) removed, ISPs (not so mysteriously) shut down networks in the area, and protesters were (tactically) cornered in by fires set on both sides of the tollgate before the military started gunning people down. These are some less graphic recordings that were circulating on twitter:
https://twitter.com/eLDeeTheDon/status/1318637854902358017
https://twitter.com/iambennyme/status/1318719730803478529
https://twitter.com/voteandstay/status/1318643596262866946
https://twitter.com/amos_sylva/status/1318646815198240769
https://twitter.com/FabnonsoO/status/1318638630072651785
^note: I saw ppl saying the guy in ths clip with the bullet wound died, but can't confirm)
The reason I say the situation is layered is because Buhari (the current pres) is a civil war relic (the most recent in a long string of them) who literally might not be wired to function in actual democracy, and some of Nigeria's governance issues stem from the fact that it's not been able to rid these guys from revolving seats of power since the war (tho the corruption, nepotism, violent patriarchy, and general challenges in holding together a Muslim-Christian split country obviously play a role as well). State violence, coups, massacres etc is how guys like Buhari even entered politics in the first place, and it's highly likely his type views civil unrest not as peaceful assembly/free speech/democracy at work but as precursor to war or at least some kind of coup.
So again,*technically*, the protests erupted in response to police brutality, but I'd say there's also a bubbling-over happening of tensions between an archaic, barely-democratic, hyper-militarized, and hyper-patriarchal political class still anchored in the authoritarianism, tribalism, and post-colonial codes/frameworks of Nigeria's civil war era v. a more progressive, more tolerant, more tech-enabled (vs militaristic) and highly urbanized youth who want a well-functioning democracy and, frankly, a well-functioning state. I'm oversimplifying for sure, but the good news is these protests demonstrate that the younger generations are fed up, activated, organized, and will likely go to great lengths to elect completely new and (hopefully) competent leadership in 2023 (which seems ages away). Pre-massacre, I had mild hopes for Osinbajo (Buhari's VP) as at least a more sane/moderate member of the current political class after watching a couple of his talks - but he's done. No way he, other visible members of the current admin, or even anybody remotely like them survive politically after traumatizing the youth in this way --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nigeria#Age_structure.
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