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African Studies Volume 81, 2022 - Issue 2
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Articles

‘We're now the Walking Dead’: Predatory Policing, Youth Agency and Framing in Nigeria’s #EndSARS Social Activism

Emmanuel AdeniyiFederal University Oye-Ekiti, NigeriaCorrespondence[email protected]
ORCID Iconhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2517-3333
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Pages 149-169 | Received 20 Sep 2021, Accepted 14 Oct 2022, Published online: 16 Nov 2022
 
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ABSTRACT

The #EndSARS protests swept through Nigeria in October 2020 providing opportunities for Nigerian youths to demonstrate against police violence, poor governance and daunting socio-economic challenges plaguing their country. Drawing on the protesters’ collective sentiments on Twitter, this article interrogates youth agency, ethics of force in policing and collective action of #EndSARS protest actors against predatory policing. It examines the deployment of digital affordances in protest movements and discusses how #EndSARS protesters initiated frames of collective action, agency and injustice to identify problems, ventilate their grievances, attribute blame, mobilise themselves and articulate solutions. Using the cultural theory of social movements, it argues that the protesters enacted frames through discursive strategies to express ideological views and achieve specific purposes. The article further employs Ruth Wodak’s discursive paradigms to investigate the dynamics of in-group and out-group categorisations in #EndSARS protest movement. The discursive mechanisms are also employed to study the creation of stereotypes, legitimisation of protest acts and mobilisation of aggrieved Nigerians against police brutality.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all my anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. My sincere appreciation goes to Dr Paul Onanuga of Federal University, Oye-Ekiti and Dr Stephen Temitope David of Stellenbosch University for editing the initial draft of this article.

Notes

6 Umenyilorah Uzodinma Chukwukelue, Twitter post, October 2020, 2.24 pm, https://twitter.com/Chukwukelue/status/1317456538089541636?s=20&t=gsTMTMZJlGg8ZiBtJZPedQ

8 Audu Maikori, Twitter post, October 2020, 11.41 pm, https://twitter.com/Audu/status/1317959071622901763?s=20&t=HwjaMm_m6AS5XA7p2kibDQ

14 Samuel, Twitter post, October 2020, 12.03 am, https://twitter.com/samuel22313432/status/1317964578869989381?s=07

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