Lagos, Nigeria – Sodiq Taiwo seems out of his bed room window in Lagos, observing the youngsters under as they play games and bicker within the again backyard. One in all their favorite video games is “police and thief”, the place heroes chase indisposed intended criminals, mouthing “pew pew” as though to explode indisposed the wrongdoers.
Taiwo chuckles on the irony past looking ahead to Magnificent Robbery Auto V (GTA) On-line – an extension of the sport franchise that permits gamers to roleplay as criminals – to complete putting in on his laptop.
Previous that pace, the 29-year-old virtual marketer, tech-content author and gamer was once in an Uber at the method house when he stumbled upon a TikTok video by means of Nigerian online game streamer TacticalCeza. With greater than 308,000 fans on TikTok, Ceza has change into one of the most fundamental faces of GTA roleplay in Nigeria, as tens of 1000’s music in to observe him navigate the sport.
The use of FiveM – a amendment for GTA that permits gamers to develop or connect customised multiplayer servers with out changing the sport’s core framework – Ceza playacts as a policeman personality within the “Made in Lagos” Roleplay folk server.
There, his personality, clad in a Kevlar vest emblazoned with “Nigerian Police”, flags indisposed vehicles and connects with alternative characters roleplaying as fraudsters or motorists – as they re-enact the real-life encounters many younger crowd face with the police.
“Park your vehicle! … Off your engine!” Ceza’s personality instructs a motorist personality he pulls over to the facet of the street. “Who is the owner of this vehicle?!… What do you do for a living?!” Ceza calls for, as every other police officer personality issues a gun on the motorist now status beside the auto. The 2 snatch the motorist’s mobile phone, upcoming which they playground him behind their police automobile and power to a close-by ATM device the place they call for he pull out cash, which additionally they snatch from him earlier than in any case permitting him to go back to his automobile and power off.
For Taiwo, sitting behind the Uber observing the video, the roleplay accident similar to house.
Not up to part an moment previous in the genuine international, armed Nigerian police had flagged indisposed the cab he was once travelling in, in a familiar roadblock come upon.
“Park! Park!” one shouted. It was once a regimen Taiwo knew all too smartly. On earlier stops, officials would ask him for a token “for water” – in most cases thought to be a euphemism for a bribe – past alternative occasions they’d prolong site visitors, on the lookout for one thing incriminating. In this pace, they requested Taiwo to seen his bag and searched the cab earlier than one requested him for some cash for one thing to consume. “Find me something,” the police officer instructed Taiwo.
However then, again house at his workstation, Taiwo watches the advance bar fill on his visual display unit, indicating that the GTA recreation is put in. He later opens Ceza’s educational video on YouTube explaining the way to run the sport the use of FiveM and the Made in Lagos server. He follows the directions step-by-step, his interest mounting, as he will get nearer to stepping right into a usual but surreal digital Lagos – stuffed with encounters now not too dissimilar from what he had simply skilled.
The burden of satire
For the youngsters outdoor Taiwo’s space, “play” opens an international certain most effective by means of their creativeness, the perimeters in their again backyard, and the watchful gaze of an used sibling.
Their “police and thief”, or police officers and robbers, video games are an blameless hobby. However unbeknownst to them, they reflect a harsher truth of police harassment in towns throughout Nigeria.
Those lived studies reached a boiling level in 2020 right through the #EndSARS protests. What started as free grievances in opposition to the Particular Anti-Theft Squad’s (SARS) regimen profiling and abuse escalated right into a national motion difficult duty, reform and dignity. Thousands and thousands took to the streets, forcing the arena to reckon with the plight of Nigerian early life.
On the other hand, 5 years on, tiny has modified. Greater than 2,000 court cases of police misconduct had been recorded between 2020 and 2024, in keeping with Nigerian media experiences bringing up diverse govt companies. Simply extreme 12 months, 3 males fell sufferer to a 1 million naira ($666) shakedown – an incident that most effective got here to sunny when the officials had been secretly recorded with a glasses digital camera, the pictures then surfacing on X.
For Ceza, his resolution to utility gaming as a storytelling medium stems from short of to percentage and touch upon those familiar struggles.
“I’ve experienced it firsthand, and so have close friends I lived with,” he tells Al Jazeera. “That’s a big part of why I’m able to tell these stories with authenticity. The stories I come across online also help shape my perspective.”
Ceza’s TikTok recognition and luck lie in his mix of social remark and gaming. By means of masking Name of Accountability streams with gameplay or reactions to trending subjects, he’s carved out a novel area of interest in Nigeria, fusing popular culture with gaming to magnify his comedic personality.
On the other hand, his get up to prominence has now not been with out controversy.
When he posted a video apologising to the Nigerian president for guffawing at his fall right through the 2023 initiation, audience speculated that he have been coerced at gunpoint upcoming noticing what looked to be the nozzle of a gun within the body. Ceza then clarified it was once his microphone, however the incident underscored the precariousness of critiquing authority in Nigeria – even via satire.
“It [using satire] is a more entertaining way to shed some light about the issues with the abuse of power going on in the country,” Ceza says. “Knowing your rights isn’t enough to survive in Nigeria.”
His paintings seeks to coach but additionally reassure his target market, he says, reminding them: “What you’ve experienced, you’re not alone, and that alone gives comfort.”
Regardless that gaming is ceaselessly gaining traction in Nigeria, Ceza residue singular in his manner, wielding GTA roleplay as each a reflect and a megaphone to underscore the absurdities of on a regular basis injustice.
But, his paintings isn’t with out precedent. Throughout song and picture, Nigerian artists have lengthy wielded their crafts as tools of resistance. Rapper Falz’s Johnny and This Is Nigeria grant as scathing indictments of police brutality, past fellow musician Burna Boy’s Monsters You Made seethes with the righteous arouse of the oppressed. Nollywood, too, has performed its section – movies like Oloture and Dull November peel again the layers of institutional rot, exposing the order’s complicity within the struggling of its crowd.
Ceza’s paintings aligns with this custom but additionally issues to its evolution: as storytelling mediums evolve, so do the techniques through which Nigerians withstand, critique, and push for alternate.
Gaming as activism
Globally, video video games surpass each movie and song in income and achieve. In step with Newzoo’s International Video games Marketplace Record, the gaming trade generated greater than $187bn in 2024, dwarfing the worldwide field administrative center and song trade blended. Past Nigeria’s gaming scene remains to be rising, its fast expansion – pushed by means of cellular gaming and an increasing web consumer bottom – indicators its expanding cultural relevance.
Globally, virtual platforms have emerged as gear for activism, with examples like Roblox web hosting protests to spotlight political reasons, equivalent to pro-Palestine team spirit right through the Gaza warfare. Professional-democracy activists in Hong Kong and supporters of the Dull Lives Subject motion have additionally worn digital areas to magnify their messages, turning gameplay right into a power for alternate.
In Nigeria, this medium displays the truth of many younger crowd, providing a territory to confront real-world problems like police brutality and systemic profiling.
Joost Vervoort, a student specialising in how virtual environments like gaming can reshape societal norms, empower communities, and problem entrenched methods, observes, “Video games, in the case of what Ceza does, create a cultural phenomenon people can reflect on. It’s storytelling. It is playing around with communal identities.”
His analysis finds how seriousness and playfulness can coexist, providing perception into why Nigerians are drawn to creating sunny of great problems, as Ceza does.
“The wisdom of deep playfulness lies in taking things less rigidly, with ironic distance and perspective. Play allows us to reject normal interpretations and embrace the absurdity and complexity of life, while imagining endless possibilities for change,” he tells Al Jazeera.
As Ceza explains, belief is formed by means of the folk it arises in: “When everyone hears a different story, I believe they have the free will to either take it as a joke or a deeper message. And that is not for me to impose on them.”
As recreation gamers and TikTok audience see a reflect of their very own truth in Ceza’s paintings, Vervoort explains that this familiarity compels gamers to speculate their identification, values and pursuits into the sport, construction communities that, over hour, backup shift societal norms.
Some fear that having humour so entwined with severe problems dangers the gravity of the message being misplaced. On the other hand, Vervoort is assured in its energy to suggested alternate. “The space is gradually transforming into a platform for cultural and political critique,” he says, “and though the risk of not being taken seriously exists, it’s unlikely to derail the impact.”
As streaming grows and gaming turns into a extra tough medium for activism, Ceza sees its doable to achieve international audiences and convey fresh visibility to Nigerian problems. “It’s going to change the world and put Nigerians on the map,” he says. “It’s a new field, and I’m glad it’s growing.”
For Taiwo, this rising energy of gaming turns into tangible as he dons the function of a fraudster in GTA, and shortly unearths himself in a digital come upon that mirrors the harassment he faces in genuine existence.
On-screen, Ceza, in personality as a police officer, calls for that Taiwo “drop something for the boys” or possibility being taken to the station.
Regardless of how repeatedly Taiwo tries to retirement, the sport’s laws – just like the device he lives in – stay unchallenged, its energy unyielding.
But for him, the sport is each cathartic and communal – a territory the place he can procedure his frustrations with out real-world aftereffects past connecting with others who perceive the truth.
“It’s weird,” he admits. “You’d think I’d want to escape it, but playing it like this makes it feel less maddening – at least here, I know it’s not real. And maybe that’s the point. We all get to laugh about something that isn’t funny, because what else can we do?”