TRENDING NOW: #EndSARS: Nigerian and Global Twitter, Protests, and Resistance Literature

By Treasure Ibe, Summer 2022 Barbara Harlow Intern in Human Rights and Social Justice

In April 2019, Kofi Bartels, a 34-year-old radio journalist from Nigeria’s River State, reported over a series of tweets that he was repeatedly beaten by “at least six [Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) officers], one at a time,” during which “they took turns to slap, punch and kick me while I was struggling with a swollen knee.”[1] In October 2020, about eighteen months after Bartel’s tweets, a viral video on Twitter showed SARS officers committing a similar act of violence. Officers dragged two men out of a hotel, after which they shot and murdered one of the men.[2] This video produced “an anger [that is] unrelenting, precise, reinforced every time it is rebuffed” across generations of Nigerians, and was labelled a “cosmic anger, a creative anger.”[3] Such a reaction was particularly apparent amongst the younger generations, who suffer from “unfair profiling and harassment by SARS” and whose reactions continued the “rich history of youth protests,” present since Nigeria’s independence movement.[4]

Therefore, the #EndSARS Movement and its platforming through Twitter demonstrates a rising trend within youth politics and the youth protest movement to utilize resources outside of the state and legal institutions. Such institutions work against the youth movement, with a corrupt government that hinders civic participation, a state-sponsored police force empowered through violence, and a domestic and international legal system lacking the adequate judicial power to evoke change. Meanwhile, social media sites like Twitter allow another generation of protesters to organize themselves and to share accounts of abuse at the hands of SARS, with the intention of bringing global attention to abuses perpetrated by the current Nigerian government. This article will chart the emergence of the SARS as an institution, outline its excesses and abuses, and trace the consequent rise of anti-SARS activism via Twitter. It will explore activist strategies in the following areas: international human rights law, disputes over the use of demonstrations and public protests to enact tangible change, and the deployment of Twitter as “resistance literature” as theorized by author Barbara Harlow.

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was formed in 1992 to combat “armed robbery and other serious crimes” as a part of the general Nigerian Police Force.[5] During the 1990s, covert and “combat ready SARS officers operated undercover in plain clothes and plain vehicles […] and did not carry arms in public.”[6] SARS officers worked to combat armed robbers that terrorized Lagos and southern Nigeria by monitoring radio communications and facilitating successful arrests.[7]

After ten years, the power of SARS increased to include “arrest, investigation and prosecution of suspected armed robbers, murderers, kidnappers, hired assassins and other suspected violent criminals”[8] and its operation spread to all thirty-six states of the Nigeran Federation and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. At this point, SARS began to “set up roadblocks, extorting money from citizens” while remaining in plain clothes but now armed.[9] Alongside extortion, either through the roadblocks or by requesting “excessive bail fees,” SARS has committed “extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, [and] unlawful detention.”[10] Torture carried out by SARS officers included “hanging, starvations, beatings, shootings and mock executions,” with individuals held in overcrowded cells.[11]

According to international law principles, as articulated in the Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, extrajudicial killings committed by “the State, its organs or agents,” including while in custody and through “the use of lethal force by one human being against another” are direct violations of citizens’ right to life.[12] Therefore, the state-sponsored violence of SARS towards the people constituted a direct violation of their right to life, and the continued violence was met with widespread protests by the people.

Although major street demonstrations and physical protests against SARS occurred in 2020 following the viral video of yet another act of victimization and murder by SARS, the #ENDSARS movement actually began years before it received major global attention through social media. In 2017, Segun Awosanya, a realtor and human rights activist, and his NGO, the Social Intervention Advocacy Foundation, “promoted a two-pronged social media campaign: #EndSARS, which focused on disbanding the police unit, and #ReformPoliceNG, which advocated for police reforms.”[13] Due to his advocacy for victims of police brutality in Nigeria he quickly became a popular figure, and many protesters sought his help and guidance. However, as the movement gained more supporters at the grassroots level, the leadership became increasingly decentralized. Awonsanya characterized his diminished role “as a ‘palace coup’ by his detractors and competitors to hijack the movement.”[14]

However, both Ndi Kato, a gender rights activist who participated in the protests, and Professor Chidi Odinkalu, a former chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission, disagreed with Awonsanya’s sentiments. Kato described how “young people wanted to hold the government accountable, young people needed to rise up, and young women showed up. It wasn’t hijacked from anyone.”[15] Odinkalu, meanwhile, argued that:

On social media, people can get lost in their own propaganda and begin to see the growth of others in that ecosystem as a diminution of their own worth. Someone like Segun Awosanya, for instance, began to see himself in a world entirely of his own making as the alter ego of #EndSARS.[16]

It is important to acknowledge the contributions of Awosanya, but these comments demonstrate the tendency to view social justice movements as belonging to a specific leader or generation. In reality, the conditions that once generated these movements continue across time, affecting younger generations and so requiring their participation in the struggle. For the younger generation of protesters, Twitter facilitated “engagement and mobilization” and allowed Nigerian social media influencers and public figures such as Rinu Oduala, comedian Debo Adebayo (Mr Macaroni), Folarin Falana (Falz), Runtown, Paul Okoye, Feyikemi Abudu and the Feminist Coalition to take “the protests from digital platforms to physical locations” and fundraise through social media.[17] Awosanya began to distance himself from the movement, describing “the strategy of continued protests [as] overly aggressive, unrealistic, and unsustainable” and equating it to “the old system of throwing tantrums.”[18]

Awosanya’s framing of the “old” system of protest, despite his own advocacy before the movement’s resurgence in 2020, mirrors the wavering faux-empathy of the elite, slowly becoming more annoyed as the lower classes attempt to move into positions of leadership. Awosanya’s words mirror those of President Buhari, who also discredited the movement and its demonstrations. After saying that such protests threatened “the integrity of our nations” and would lead to a “youth insurrection,” Awosanya diminished the use of “words [that] put a lot of young people in danger” by saying “they were already discredited” due to the actions of the protesters.[19] The rhetoric of elitist (and often older) groups towards organized resistance has always reflected generational differences. In addition, the older generation that comprises the elite maintains its power through the longstanding state and legal institutions, whether through policymaking or cultural capital. This distribution of power therefore renders the younger generation vulnerable and demonstrates their lack of power within the state infrastructure.

However, social media platforms like Twitter that lie outside of direct state control allow for protesters in Nigeria to publicize crimes committed by institutional powers. After a week of nationwide protests, the Nigerian government announced that SARS would be disbanded on October 11, 2020. Despite the announcement, protests continued as it was “the fifth time since 2015 that the Nigerian authorities [had] pledged to reform the police.”[20] Within the same month, on October 20, 2020, a peaceful protest with participants “dancing, having their hair styled, and [making] speeches” at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos ended with at least twelve people dead when the Nigerian army opened fire on the joyous and hopeful crowd.[21] The massacre generated a large amount of global attention and outrage from celebrities, politicians, international organizations, and citizens alike. The following quote from the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) Regional Program Director Kaqial Ramjathan-Keogh is an example of the many public statements released:

The right to peaceful assembly is guaranteed under international law, including the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which Nigeria has acceded to. Nigeria’s brutal responses to the peaceful demonstrations, including the use of lethal force on force protestors, not only violates this right but also their right to life.[22]

Despite global outcry and promises from the government to institute judicial panels in each Nigerian state to investigate SARS after its disbandment, several states including Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara did not comply with the mandate. The BBC describes the “prolonged adjournments with members of the police not showing up when called to give testimony,” and numerous assaults by previous SARS officers seeking revenge on those who participated in the protest.[23]

At this point, I will now consider how two works by academic and advocate Barbara Harlow can be adapted to frame the #EndSARS movement and its utilization of Twitter. Not only is the movement’s activity on Twitter a chronicle of the repression experienced at the hands of SARS, but also a means of organizing a social justice movement on a platform free from state control. The first work, “Extraordinary Renditions,” comprises “memoirs by detainees and lawyers, journalists’ exposés, habeas briefs, as well as novels (whodunits and young adult alike), theatre and film” about Guantánamo.[24] In “Extraordinary Renditions,” Harlow describes a “legal black hole” or a “law-free zone” that utilizes violence to enforce state-sponsored authority and the continuous extortion of capital, whether monetary or via the physical detention of another person.[25] In the context of SARS, since the inception of the squad as an answer to the rampant victimization of civilians by armed robbers and violent criminals, many of SARS’ actions were justified or explicitly concealed to maintain the “legal black hole” and “law-free zone” Harlow describes.

Furthermore, the state-backed SARS targets “predominantly males between the ages of 18 and 35, from low-income backgrounds and vulnerable groups,”[26] signaling a conversation to be had about forces like SARS that function to extort viable capital from the younger generations to fuel the state machine. However, SARS not only steals wealth or one’s right to bodily autonomy; SARS takes the right to live from the younger generation. In practice, interactions with SARS and their extortion and their violence become a common feature in the daily lives of the younger generation. This practice is then peddled by “administration officials…[who] liked to pose and posture and opine about the ‘worst of the worst”[27] for the purpose of reelection schemes promising changes and anti-corruption efforts. On the treatment of Guantánamo detainees by the Bush administration, Harlow describes how:

In its prosecution of the war on terror, the Bush administration and its minions had determined that ‘all gloves were off’, that the Geneva Conventions were inapplicable, even ‘quaint’. . . and that habeas corpus was necessarily suspended when it came to dealing with the ‘worst of the worst.’[28]

This description is equally applicable to SARS in the context of the national war on crime, and international law protecting individuals against extrajudicial killing and excessive force was similarly suspended. These practices are complemented by a constant and unfulfilled promise of change made by politicians to younger generations, which over time erodes the constructed façade of the “tolerant civilian” who over again will remain calm despite injustices hurled against them, until they finally reach a breaking point.

The second text I will consider is Harlow’s Resistance Literature, a book that surveys the literature of liberation movements from the Global South. I will situate this in the context of a generation who are not only descendants of those who witnessed or participated in youth protests, but for who social media constitutes a large part of their cultural environment. As I have already discussed, Twitter memorialized the #EndSARS movement, creating cultural artefacts for future demonstrations against state repression. Although the #EndSARS movement is directed against an independent postcolonial state (the Nigerian government), Harlow’s work on Palestinian liberation literature remains applicable. Writing about Ghassan Kanafani, the famous Palestinian author who fought for liberation from a settler colonial state, Harlow says the following:

According to Kanafani: The attempts at a history of the resistance literature of a given people are usually, for reasons that are self-evident, accomplished after liberation. With respect to the literature of resistance in occupied Palestine, however, it is necessary that the Arab reader in general and the Palestinian emigrant in particular study its persistent continuation, because it is fundamentally to be found in the language itself and speech of the Arabs of occupied Palestine. The resistance springs from these linguistic initiatives, working together with the rigidity of the conditions of the situation.[29]

Harlow suggests that Kanafani speaks of the permanence that resistance literature must have for a liberation movement to continue. Resistance literature is a source of solidarity for a liberation movement during and after its period of activity. In the context of #EndSARS, Twitter provides this permanence on a global scale.

Furthermore, just as Kanafani exemplified the importance of the Palestinian diaspora interacting with national liberation movements, individuals such as Tamara Haruna Dambo and Temple Uwakala have studied the way that diasporic engagement with social media has become instrumental in the longevity of social justice and liberation movements in the 2010s. In a study that observed Twitter activity during the Lekki Toll Gate massacre, the Nigerian diaspora was “an important arsenal for Nigerian protesters as they can be instrumental in drawing global attention to issues concerning Nigeria’s youth. This is consistent with previous research on activism in Nigeria.”[30] Twitter was used by protesters to draw global attention and specifically attention from the Nigerian diaspora, as the following tweet by Pavestones Legal, a Lagos-based law practice focused on technological innovation, demonstrates: “…3. In response to the recent deaths instigated by SARS officers, anti-SARS protests have arisen across the nation and around the globe by Nigerians both in the country and in diaspora to put an end to this injustice #EndSARS” (@PavestonesLegal, October 14, 2020).

Therefore, Twitter as a source of resistance literature provides a space for the information, events, demands, and sentiments of participants within the movement outside of “traditional mass media which historically had the power to regulate and form an opinion on issues, – arguably under the influence of the current elite.”[31] Instead, social networking sites (SNS) can reposition influence in the favor of citizens and the issues they find important.[32] Twitter as a social networking site affects the organization and mobilization of collective action by “creating deliberative fora for the people to air their grievances” through the diffusion of “protest movement literature.”[33] Tweets created during the #EndSARS movement in 2020 demonstrate in real-time Nigerian citizens and diasporic Nigerians reacting to the injustice and violence generated by SARS and the state’s denial of such occurrences, while also calling upon continuous effort across the globe. Some examples of these include:

These & many more are reasons we must not back down. The struggle for freedom & total liberation is a marathon & not a sprint. We must sustain this momentum! The sacrifice of #EndSars & those massacred by State forces must not be in vain. Justice must also prevail! #RevolutionNow (@jharmo, November 5, 2020).

Where r those that said “Nobody was killed, No fatalities, No shots fired”? @jidesanwoolu nobody was killed? @AsiwajuTinbu No causalities @HQNigerianArmy Fake News? @ChibuikeAmachi They were just having fun at Lekki right? To every lie, there is an expiry date. #EndSARS (@MrIntegrity11, October 25, 2020).

Tweets such as these are resistance literature for the movement, utilizing Twitter as “a solidarity vehicle where protesters learn, plan, venerate their offline comrades and pledge their solidarity to the offline protesters.”[34]

Alongside Ghassan Kanafani, Barbara Harlow also includes possibly the most prolific Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. After writing his most famous work Things Fall Apart in 1958, two years before Nigeria gained independence in 1960, Achebe wrote A Man of the People in 1966, “exposing the decadence and corruption of the new regime and its bureaucrats.”[35] This demonstrates that although political and social conditions may change and evolve, the practice of oppressed people producing resistance literature through books and/or social media posts provides Nigerians “with knowledge and information that necessitate the rise of protests culture in the country.”[36]

In conclusion, this essay has shown that even though SARS was dissolved by the Nigerian government, state-sponsored violence and oppression are daily characteristics of interaction between Nigerian citizens, the elite, and the state. The #EndSARS Movement, its protests, and its victims are memorialized by Nigerians across the diaspora. A new presidential election provides an opportunity for Nigerians to dwell upon the past actions of the state and consider new possibilities, promises, and changes a new administration could bring: “Some of the persons that gave the order are asking for our votes now. Dear Nigerians, for the sake of the lives lost during #LekkiMassacre and #EndSARS peaceful protest, vote wisely. #Obidatti023…” (@Murphy93_, July 25, 2022).

The use of social media through Twitter by the #EndSARS movement transformed the important tradition of protest that exists beyond the control of state power and cemented the solidarity and resistance efforts of those actively working to counter repression. The permanence of the #EndSARS movement through Twitter serves as a reminder of possibility and opportunity for the oppressed to organize themselves into an unsurmountable unit in the fight against the oppressive forces of their state and government.

Bibliography

[1] @Kofi_Bartels, April 2019, quoted in Sada Malumfashi, “Nigeria’s SARS: A Brief History of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad,” Al Jazeera, October 22, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/10/22/sars-a-brief-history-of-a-rogue-unit.

[2] Mouhamad Médoune Boye, “#EndSARS Movement: From Twitter to Nigerian Streets,” Amnesty International, July 29, 2021, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2021/02/nigeria-end-impunity-for-police-violence-by-sars-endsars/.

[3] Joshua Segun-Lean, “#EndSARS and the Making of a Movement,” Republic, October 27, 2020, https://republic.com.ng/october-november-2020/endsars-making-of-a-movement/.

[4] Oluwole Ojewale, “Youth Protests for Police Reform in Nigeria: What Lies Ahead for #EndSARS,” Brookings, March 9, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2020/10/29/youth-protests-for-police-reform-in-nigeria-what-lies-ahead-for-endsars/.

[5] Malumfashi, “#EndSARS Movement.”

[6] Malumfashi.

[7] Malumfashi.

[8] Malumfashi.

[9] Malumfashi.

[10] Malumfashi.

[11] Malumfashi.

[12] William J. Aceves, “When Death Becomes Murder: A Primer on Extrajudicial Killing,” California Western School of Law 116 (2018): 135–37, https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/fs/278.

[13] Ohimai Amaize, “How Twitter Amplified the Divisions That Derailed Nigeria’s #EndSARS Movement,” Slate, April 20, 2021, https://slate.com/technology/2021/04/endsars-nigeria-twitter-jack-dorsey-feminist-coalition.html.

[14] Amaize.

[15] Amaize.

[16] Amaize.

[17] Richmond Commodore and Osei Baffour Frimpong, #EndSARS Youth Protests in Nigeria: Lessons and Opportunities for Regional Stability (Washington DC: Wilson Center, 2021), 3, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/endsars-youth-protests.

[18] Amaize, “How Twitter Amplified.”

[19] Amaize.

[20] Boye, “#EndSARS Movement.”

[21] Boye.

[22] Asser Khattab, “Nigeria: Violent and Lethal Use of Force against #Endsars Protestors Must Cease and Officials Responsible Brought to Justice,” International Commission of Jurists, October 27, 2020, https://www.icj.org/nigeria-violent-and-lethal-use-of-force-against-endsars-protestors-must-cease-and-officials-responsible-brought-to-justice/.

[23] Mayeni Jones, “Nigeria’s #EndSARS Protests: What Happened Next,” BBC News, October 6, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58817690.

[24] Barbara Harlow, “‘Extraordinary Renditions’: Tales of Guantánamo, a Review Article,” Race & Class 52, no. 4 (April 2011): 2, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396810396579.

[25] Harlow, “‘Extraordinary Renditions,’” 2.

[26] Boye, “#EndSARS Movement.”

[27] Harlow, “‘Extraordinary Renditions,’” 10.

[28] Harlow, 12.

[29] Barbara Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York: Methuen Press, 1987), 3.

[30] Tamar Haruna Dambo, Metin Ersoy, Ahmad Muhammad Auwal, Victor Oluwafemi Olorunsola and Mehmet Bahri Saydam, “Office of the citizen: a qualitative analysis of Twitter activity during the Lekki shooting in Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests,” Information, Communication & Society 25, no. 15 (2022): 2258, https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1934063.

[31] Dambo et al., “Office of the citizen,” 2247.

[32] Dambo et al.

[33] Temple Uwalaka, “Social Media as Solidarity Vehicle During the 2020 #EndSARS Protests in Nigeria,” Journal of Asian and African Studies (June 2022): 1, https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1177/00219096221108737.

[34] Uwalaka, “Solidarity Vehicle,” 13.

[35] Harlow, Resistance Literature, 155.

[36] Uwalaka, “Solidarity Vehicle,” 13.