Socio-political transformations in the Sahel region of West Africa over the last decade have revitalized the role of civil society in shaping political processes in the region, making it an increasingly pressing and contested issue in the search for democratic consolidation. Civil society emerges as both a battleground and a bridge between power and resistance to it. Yet, two dominant and contradictory narratives have gained prominence about its prospects. On the one hand, there is the narrative of a “shrinking civic space” as presented on democracy scorecards. This narrative frames civil society as the silenced victim of state repression suffocating under authoritarianism. On the other hand,this unfolds the narrative of a “liberatory” awakening defended by neo-pan-Africanist social media discourses. This narrative imagines civil society as a willing partner of state actors, including military transitional governments, working together to reclaim sovereignty in a new fragmented, multi-polar emerging world order. The coexistence of these two narratives is nothing new, but their divergence has now reached the point where representing either one in isolation borders on the absurd. Such representations could be overly simplistic, failing to account for the nuanced, often paradoxical realities of civil society’s engagement with power. It is contended in this paper that the interaction between repression and liberation obscures the dynamic and evolving nature of civil society, which is characterized by inherent tensions and ambiguities.