The #EndSARS protest, corruption and insecurity debates in Nigeria

The mass protest to end the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (known as the #EndSARS protest) was a decentralized social movement and series of mass protests against police brutality in Nigeria. The protest started in 2017 as a Twitter campaign using the hash tag #ENDSARS to demand the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. This paper argues that the #EndSARS protest in Nigeria was a microcosmic manifestation of the deeply rooted dissatisfaction of Nigerians with the social, economic and political situation of the country. Data was collected using secondary sources such as internet material, journal, research reports and textbooks, and were analyzed using the expository and analytical method of inquiry, the paper demonstrates that the protest was just the avenue the Nigerian youths got to ventilate their frustration, disappointment and anger with the government. The paper asserts that nepotism, tribalism, insecurity and corruption are the underlying issues that fuelled the protest. Restructuring and resource control, which underline the gross inequality in Nigeria, are other current debates that gave rise to the protest. Following the analysis, the paper concludes that nepotism, tribalism, insecurity and corruption are the bane of Nigeria’s economic, political and social ill.

Policing through the community in Nigeria: The missing link in security architecture

This study examined policing through the community as a strategy of strengthening the security architecture of Nigeria. The study adopted a variety of theories such as citizen participation and the broken window to interrogate the subject matter. The study x-rayed some empirical studies on the perception of the Nigeria police by the public and also contextualized citizens’ participation on community policing to situate the effectiveness of policing through the community. The study found out that policing through the community will improve intelligence gathering capacity of the security agencies in its fight against criminality and insurgencies in Nigeria. The study recommends that the present structure of the police should be decentralized and also take measures to reinvent itself to change the negative perception of the public towards it.

The state, EndSARS protests and human rights violation in Nigeria

In November 2017, there was an online protest against police brutality and highhandedness in Nigeria. By October 2020, the citizens’ discontent and dissatisfaction with the activities of the police led to a mass revolt against the institution, specifically against the Special Anti-Robbery Squads (SARS) of the force. The response of the Nigerian state to the protest was total repression and subjugation of the demonstrators. Given the scale of the protest and the government’s response, this momentous event has attracted scholarly attention. The extant literature has identified governance deficit, illiteracy of police officers, the dynamics of the political economy and youth activism as factors that fueled the protest. The present study, therefore, explores the character of the state in the post-colonial society as a link towards the understanding of the fundamental issues that triggered the protests. Through the use of secondary sources of data collection and content analysis, the work found out that there is a trend and pattern of authoritarian governance and violation of human rights by the Nigerian state, which seems to have emanated from the long years of military rule and colonisation. The implication of the foregoing is that the state ought to imbibe democratic ethos as a condition for upholding the fundamental human rights of its citizens.

State Anti-Robbery Squad operations and restructuring in Nigeria: Semiotics of the #EndSARS protests

End State Anti-Robbery Squad (#EndSARS) protests represent symptoms of systemic issues in Nigeria. Those issues range from ideological differences of the various ethnic nationalities to the constitutional and structural imbalance in the political and economic equation. This paper attempts to put in perspective the implications of the over-centralisation of both political and economic powers. To do this, this research examines the events leading up to the #EndSARS protest, as well as the various signs and symbols emanating from the #EndSARS movement. Semiotics Theory is employed as conceptual framework and methodology to highlight the factors that ail Nigeria at the systemic level. Semioticians engage in a search for deep structures underlying the surface features of phenomena. With Semiotic theory as framework, this paper takes seriously the social conditions that led to the #EndSARS Protests, not neglecting the role of ideologies. The research has the potential to make useful contributions to both academic and socio-political cum economic knowledge for a meaningful national dialogue among contesting ethnic groups in Africa.

Soro-Soke Polemic & the contemporary African Female Revolutionary Trend: An Ngugian Perspective

A video revealing the assault of two men who were pulled out of a hotel and the execution of one of them by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) became viral on October 4, 2020 spurring random protests across Nigeria. The protests which began as pockets of pickets snowballed into crowded rallies in the major cities comprising mainly, the youth shortly after the outbreak of a virtual protest with the hashtag #EndSARS littering the social media, and eventually, the print media, and banners. Christened, Soro-Soke, these protests can be linked with a certain history - the actuality of the #EndSARS protests against police brutality by Nigerians must have been predicted three decades ago by Ngugi wa Thiong’o whose late fictions prophesy palpable female intolerance of government ineptitude and a growing female revolutionary tendency in Africa; a fervor which is spread from Kenya through the entire continent. Ngugi’s present affinity to strong female characters can be regarded as archetypal of his late fictions and nonfictions published from the 1980s. Matigari, Wizard of the Crow and Devil on Cross will be interrogated as predictions of the #EndSARS protests from an Ngugian perspective, while Ngugi’s strongest nonfiction heroine, Me Katilili in his 2018 nonfiction, Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir will be synchronically analyzed alongside his imaginary heroines. Cultural Ecofeminism and Jungian Theory of archetypes interrogate the roles assigned by nature to Ngugi’s most outstanding women in his late fictions, as part of a collective unconscious which is urgently typical of mankind.

The #EndSARS Protest in Nigeria and Political Force of Image Production and Circulation on Social Media

For many years, the unit of the Nigerian Police Force, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was accused of violent crimes and violation of human rights of citizens. One wondered if SARS had dual operational duties – to kill and dehumanise those it ought to protect. Between October and November 2020, multitude of Nigerian youths took to the street to demand for abolition of SARS, thus #EndSARS protest. Photography was at the heart of the social movement. Employing digital methods including compositional analysis and audience interpretation, this paper examines a selection of #EndSARS-related photographs and their accompanying comments retrieved from social media in relation to the impact on the street demonstration. I investigate the modes of creating the images and how they produce political effects. I argue that the use of images in the #EndSARS protest illuminates the rising conviction among Nigerians that photography can aid in the transformation of their precarious living conditions. These include the use of the camera in the conventional sense of framing the fleeting world. Others are digital editing of photographs, staged production and appropriation of images that may have no connection with the protest. Then, I analyse as political act the sense of obligation with which the images are produced and circulated. These lines of enquiry contribute to the emerging work on how photography and social media are converging to transform the political sphere.

Transitivity and youth violence in #EndSARS discourse

, Florence O. Orabueze2 & Violence in Nigeria has reached its peak such that policies that should engage the youths positively are inevitable. This paper aims to establish that Nigerian youths should not be held accountable for #EndSARS protest. Using Halliday and Matthiessen’s Transitivity model, the paper examined the transitivity processes of the major participants in the discourse, and the circumstances implicated. Explication of images appropriated as discursive strategies were accounted for through insights from Kress and van Leeuwen’s Compositional Metafunction in Reading Image Theory. The analysis was done using a descriptive qualitative research design that supports the description of processes attributed to participants, and how social predictors that assign agentive roles to some participants as Actor, or Sayer; and stripe others of their agencies suggest that in the Nigeria’s social context, the #EndSARS protest was inevitable. Such approach was critical in exposing the undercurrents that informed the protest, which previous researches had paid insignificant attention to. From the analysis, several discoveries were recorded, namely: Nigerian government is majorly, a Sayer interested mainly in protecting its pride; the police, and the military are the Actors, while the youths are the Goal in material processes, and behaver in behavioural processes. The paper concludes that the volatility of the youths was a reaction to the processes of the government, and its agencies. The paper, therefore, recommends that government should show practical interest in the plight of the masses by initiating policies that target to engage them constructively so as to prevent future re-occurrence.

From stage to street: The #Endsars protest and the prospects of street theatre

Globally, the issues of extrajudicial killings are on the increase. From racial killings in the West to wanton human rights violations in Africa, the pains are the same. Thus, protests has always been a channel employed by many including activists, labour and union leaders among others, to press home grievances and demands against unfavourable policies and social malaise. This paper draws attention to how youths in Nigeria utilised the physical space to spark a protest, in October 2020. Notable actors, musicians, comedians, activists and the international community in their numbers, moved to the street in defiance of security orders to protest against police brutality and harassment. In view of the outcome of the protest, which was later hijacked by hoodlums, the paper examines a non-violent alternative which can be used to address societal issues. It is in this context that the paper examined the role of theatre as a tool for activism, advocacy and communication with specific reference to street theatre, a type of improvised street drama performance that addresses unfavourable socio-political and cultural issues. The data for the study is obtained mainly from the internet, print media, observations, interviews and literary works. For its methodology, the study utilises the popular theatre approach. The study concludes that street theatre has a major role to play in addressing socio- political issues without resorting to violence.