LAGOS, Nigeria — Sodiktaiu looks out of the window in his Lagos bedroom and watches the kids play and play vickers in his backyard. One of their favorite games is “The Police and the Thief,” where the heroes chase after criminals and utter “Pew Pugh” as if shooting down a cheating person.
Taiwan laughs sarcastically while waiting online for Grand Theft Auto V (GTA). This is an extension of the game franchise that allows players to role-play as criminals and ends the installation on your computer.
That day, the 29-year-old digital marketer, tech content creator and gamer was on Uber on his way home when he came across a Tiktok video from Nigerian video game streamer Tacticalceza. With over 308,000 followers on Tiktok, Ceza has become one of the most important faces of Nigeria’s GTA roleplay.
Using FIVEM, GTA changes allow players to create or participate in customized multiplayer servers without changing the game’s core framework – using Ceza Playact as a cop character in “Made in Lagos” Roleplay Community Server Masu.
There, his character dresses in Kevlar’s vest decorated with “Nigerian police,” flags his car and interacts with other characters who role-play as scammers and drivers.
“Park your car! …Off the engine!” Ceza characters instruct the driver character who pulls to the side of the road. “Who owns this vehicle?!… What do you do to make a living?!” Seza says, “Another police character gives a gun to the driver standing by the car. I’m asking because it’s pointing. The two grab the driver’s cell phone, then place him behind the police car and drive to a nearby ATM machine, where he demands to take it from him. I’ll drive.
In Taiwan, the roleplay was hit close to home, sitting behind Uber and watching the video.
Within 30 minutes of the real world, armed Nigerian police had flagged the taxi he was traveling with, in a general disability encounter.
“Parquet! Park!” cried out. It was a daily thing that Taibo knew so well. At previous stops, officers asked him for a token “for the water” – commonly considered a bribe-ri e-music representation, but otherwise delayed traffic and guilty. I was looking for something I had committed. On this day they asked Taiwo to open his bag and search for Takuro, searching for the taxi before asking him for money to eat something. “Find something for me,” the police officer told Taiwo.
But then, returning home to his workstation, Taiwan sees Progress Bar filling his computer screen, indicating that the GTA game is installed. After that, we’ll open a tutorial video for Ceza on YouTube and show you how to run the game using Fivem and Made in Lagos Server. He follows the instructions step by step, and his curiosity is mounted. He approaches a familiar but surreal virtual Lagos filled with encounters that don’t resemble what he just experienced.
The weight of satire
For the children outside the Taiwo home, “play” opens up a world bound only by their imagination, the edges of the backyard, and the careful gaze of their older brothers.
Their “police and thieves”, or police and robbers, the game is innocent entertainment. But, unknown to them, they reflect the harsher reality of police harassment in Nigerian cities.
These living experiences reached boiling point in 2020 during the #Endsars protest. What began as a isolated grievance with the daily profiling and abuse of Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) has escalated into a nationwide movement demanding accountability, reform and dignity. Millions of people took them to the streets and considered the light letter of Nigerian youth to the world.
But five years later, it hasn’t changed much. Over 2,000 complaints about police misconduct have been recorded between 2020 and 2024, according to Nigerian media reports citing various government agencies. Last year, three men were victims of a million naira ($666) shakedown. This is an incident that only emerged when an officer was secretly recorded with a glasses camera, and the footage later surfaces in X.
For Ceza, his decision to use the game as a medium for storytelling means he wants to share and comment on these general struggles.
“I experienced it firsthand and have a close friend who I lived with,” he told Al Jazeera. “That’s a big part of why these stories can be authentically told. The stories I encounter online also help shape my perspective.”
The popularity and success of Ceza’s Tiktok lies in his fusion of social commentary and games. By overlaying Call of Duty Stream with gameplay and responses to trending topics, he carved out a unique niche in Nigeria and fused it with the game to amplify pop culture and comedy personas.
However, his famous rise was not without controversy.
When he posted a video apologising to the Nigerian president for laughing in the fall of his 2023 inauguration, viewers noticed what looked like a gun nozzle in the frame, and then he was forced at the muzzle. I guessed it was. Ceza later made it clear that it was his microphone, but the incident underscored the instability of Nigeria’s right to criticize – even through satire.
“that [using satire] It’s a more interesting way to shine a light on the issues surrounding the abuse of power that are happening in the country,” says Ceza. “Knowing your rights is not enough to survive in Nigeria.”
His work, he says, is trying to reassure the audience, not only that he is trying to educate his education, but that he says, “What you’ve experienced, you’re not alone, you’re all solace.”
The game has steadily gained traction in Nigeria, but Ceza remains idiosyncratic in his approach, emphasizing the absurdity of everyday injustice, with GTA roleplay as both a mirror and a megaphone.
However, his work is not unprecedented. Between music and film, Nigerian artists have long been waving their crafts around as tools of resistance. While rapper Falz’s Johnny and this is Nigeria, serving as a poignant indictment of police brutality, the musician Burnaboy monster saw with the right rage of the oppressed. Nollywood did that role too. Films like Orotulle and Black November strip the layer of institutional corruption and expose the state’s accomplices in the suffering of its citizens.
Cesa’s work not only aligns with this tradition, but also points to its evolution. So are the ways in which Nigerians resist, criticize and drive change as the medium of storytelling evolves.
Game as Activism
Globally, video games outperform both film and music in revenue and reach. According to NewZoo’s Global Gaming Market Report, the gaming industry generated over $18.7 billion in 2024, combining global box office revenue with the music industry. The Nigerian gaming scene is still emerging, but its rapid growth is driven by the expansion of mobile gaming and the internet user base, indicating an increased cultural relevance.
Globally, digital platforms have emerged as a tool for activism, with Roblox having examples of hosting protests to highlight political causes such as Palestinian pro-solidarity during the Gaza War. Hong Kong’s democratic activists and supporters of the Black Life Matter movement also used virtual space to amplify their messages and turn gameplay into the power of change.
In Nigeria, this medium reflects the reality of many young people, providing space to confront real-world issues such as police brutality and systematic profiling.
Joost Vervoort is a scholar specializing in how a digital environment like a game can reconstruct social norms, empower communities, and challenge established systems, saying, “Video Games, Ceza.” If anything, creates a cultural phenomenon that people can reflect. It is storytelling. It plays with community identity.”
His research provides insight into why Nigerians are attracted to revealing serious problems, as does Ceza, and reveals how severity and playfulness can coexist. .
“The deep playful wisdom lies in taking things too harshly, with ironic distance and perspective. Play allows you to reject normal interpretations, accept the absurdity and complexity of life, and the infinite number of change. You can imagine the possibilities,” he tells Al Jazeera.
As Ceza explains, perception is shaped by the society in which it arises. And that’s not what I place on them. ”
When game players and Tiktok viewers look at their own mirrors of reality in Seza’s work, Vervoort is intimate that this familiarity forces players to invest their identity, values and interest in the game, and the time. It describes building communities that change social norms over time.
Some people fear that humor is intertwined with serious issues will put the severity of losing a message at risk. However, Vervoort is confident in its ability to encourage change. “Space is gradually transforming into a platform for cultural and political criticism,” he says.
As streaming grows and games become a more powerful medium of activism, Ceza believes it could reach global audiences and bring new visibility into Nigerian issues. “It’s going to change the world and put Nigerians on the map,” he says. “It’s a new field and I’m happy to be grown.”
For Taiwan, the power of this growing game is tangible as he wears the role of a con man in GTA, and soon a virtual encounter reflects the harassment he faces in real life Find yourself in.
On-screen Ceza demands that, in her police officer personality, the rise “drops something for the boy” or risks being carried to the station.
Regardless of how many times Taiwan attempts to escape, the rules of the game (like the system he lives in) are challenging and its power is indomitable.
But for him, the game is both cathartic and community, a space where you can handle frustration without real-world consequences while connecting with others who understand reality.
“That’s strange,” he admits. “You’d want to get away with it, but playing it like this makes it feel so bad. At least here, I know that it’s not true. And maybe it’s The point is, we all start laughing about things that are not interesting because what else can we do?”
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