Nigeria's #EndSARS movement and its implication on online protests in Africa's most populous country

Abstract

Modern tools of connectivity have afforded disadvantaged youth across the globe the opportunity to collectively share and curate challenges and build up strategies to protest marginalization. This argument is however sharply divided between tech‐optimists, who argue that social media remove all forms of barrier and empower average members of society and tech‐pessimists who argue that social media discourage people from actively seeking change. This article wades into this discourse by looking at the claims of police abuse by Nigerian youth on social media. For decades, police abuse of powers has remained a subject of interest in academic and human rights circles. This interest has perhaps been amplified by online social movements. In Nigeria, this abuse is well documented in the #EndSARS campaign, which has lasted for three years with little success. In disparity to most academic studies that investigate success of online movement, this study critically inspects the limitation of the #EndSARS campaign by assessing how Nigeria's political environment can serve as a possible hindrance to successful movements. This research therefore answers two questions: What are the dominant themes in Nigeria's #EndSARS campaign? What are the limitations to activism in Nigeria?