Nigeria’s Young People’s #EndSARS Protest: #S?r?Sóké

Policy Document

The End SARS Protest Mobilisation and the African Union’s Response

This Policy Document was initially presented at Charles University, Prague on 14 December 2021. I am publishing this here for a revisit since next week (20 October) will make it two years since the Lekki Tollgate massacre happened.        

Executive Summary

Mobilisations for protest have increasingly become dependent on social networking sites, as more and more African citizens, especially young people, have continued to deploy platforms like Twitter to mobilise for protest across the continent. The #EndSARS protest is an example of effective online mobilisation in 2021. However, while the #EndSARS was a mobilisation to end police brutality in Nigeria, protesters were met with even more violence from security officials, most notably by the Nigerian army at the Lekki toll gate, killing and injuring young Nigerians. Given the situation that young people have found themselves in Nigeria, this paper discusses the effective mobilisation strategies dependent on social networking sites. It considered Twitter's role as the primary ground for protesters' mobilisation and coordination, Instagram's role in tracking the happenings live, and bitcoin and crypto payment platforms' roles in funds mobilisation. It also considered the decentralisation and leaderless strategy of the protest as an effective, efficient strategy. Finally, it considered the AU's response and the engagement with young people during the protest.

This policy paper proposes three recommendations as follows:

·??????First, the AU should respond to the Judicial Panel of Inquiry (JPI) findings of the #EndSars protest.

·??????Second, the?AU Youth Division should monitor trends and engage young people and their duty-bearers on digital platforms.

·??????Finally, the?AU should revise its digital transformation strategy for Africa to include AU e-governance at its supranational level.

1.?????????The #EndSARS movement mobilisation strategy

The #EndSARS protest was the peaceful protest by young Nigerians for the government to disband the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the police known for extortion and harassment of young Nigerians targeting those in the field of technology and those having advanced gadgets like iPhones (Daniel, 2020). This police unit was renowned for carrying out extrajudicial killings of young people on the unconfirmed grounds that they were fraudsters (This Day, 2020 and Amnesty International, 2020). In response to the mayhem by this unit came the protest.

The #EndSARS protest online mobilisation can be said to be the most effective young people's mobilisation the continent has seen in recent times, almost entirely dependent on social networking sites and decentralised protest mobilisation and payment systems for funds mobilisation. It also demonstrated young people speaking up (Sòrò Sóké- a Nigerian Yoruba word for speak up). Therefore, this section examines the specifics of the protest's strategies of social networking sites for mobilisation, tracking and crowdfunding and how it contributed to a sustained protest across the country.

Mobilisation and Tracking

The #EndSARS movement is not the first or only protest where coordination and mobilisation relied on social networking sites, particularly Twitter. Nigeria has had the #BringBackOurGirls protests, among others; however, the distinctive signature of the #EndSARS movement is the leaderless structure that, regardless, manifested in the largest protest the nation has seen in recent times, executed by young people. While Twitter was not the only platform for mobilisation and coordination, nonetheless, the extensive and effective use of Twitter and its hashtags system for online active engagement and promotion, mobilisation of people to the streets and strategic places, and funds mobilisation were the distinctive features of the #EndSARS protest Twitter mobilisation.

Twitter:?The #EndSARS protest, which was an organic mutation from Twitter hashtags to protests in the streets, was the manifestation of the breaking point for this generation of young people (Kazeem, 2020). Twitter was a privileged channel for protesters to sustain a "seamless transition between online and offline campaigns", using the End SARS hashtags to demand the government to disband SARS and #SoroSoke to call on other young Nigerians and appeal to their guts to speak up and actively engage in the peaceful protest for the future they want for themselves and generations to come. Using Twitter, young Nigerians observed in real-time, conversational trends on mobilisation and protests online and in the streets and disseminated and relayed information among themselves. These, in addition to the fact that young people were intentional about internationalising their claims through Twitter (given that Twitter brings together one of the most numbers of institutions, brands and figures across the world,) made protesters utilise Twitter as their primary tool for mobilisation and coordination, and for protesters to see and be seen (AfriquesConnectees, 2021).

With the protest having quickly transitioned into a street protest, Kazeem (2020) identified the primary street mobilisation strategy deployed by young people to achieve effective "online-offline protest". This strategy saw young people conveying at strategic locations like the Lekki toll gate, sharing their locations with images on social media, particularly Twitter and using the tweets and hashtags #EndSARS #SoroSoke to call for what became known as?reinforcement?from other young people. This became a highly effective strategy as people continued to multiply in smaller groups across the country, and those small groups quickly moved from a few dozens to thousands in a matter of hours.

At the core of the mobilisation was the willingness of protesters to contribute to mobilising and participating effectively in a peaceful protest, with a consensus on protest decentralisation and no leadership (Matazu & Eboigbe, 2020). These strategies of a leaderless protest and decentralisation manifested online and offline and targeted at making every young person responsible for the protest. On the one hand, the decentralisation strategy was targeted at enabling young people to mobilise themselves within their locality to signify holding authorities at every level accountable, starting from the lowest governance system. On the other hand, the leaderless structure was targeted at stiffening the willingness of the Nigerian authorities to put a face to the protest, as history has shown that the government is quick to arrest and charge protest leaders who are usually celebrities or activists (BBC News, 2014). So therefore, the aim of the leaderless structure adopted for the #EndSARS movement was to restrict the government's willingness to target and arrest any specific person for leading the protest. The protesters also resisted government officials' invitations to influential young people (whom the government thought to confer with the protest's leadership) to join the police reform newly instituted panels (Dark, 2020). This attempt by the government was considered a strategy of subversion by young Nigerians, and to this, they claimed they had no leader, as everyone was a leader. Matazu and Eboigbe (2020) noted that protesters in Lagos, Abuja and other parts of the country kept chanting, "Talk to all of us, there is no leader". This action by the Nigerian government further deepened the leaderless structure and decentralised system the protest operated on, resulting in the manifestation of pockets of protests across the country, mobilised online and led by willing young people collectively in demand for change.

State censorship was bypassed through social networking sites, especially Twitter and personalities like Jack Dorsey made commitments, and the movement even got its own emoji on Twitter. Also, Afrobeat stars with an international audience, like Burna Boy, Davido, and Wizkid, became instrumental. Moreso, the popular Bring Back Our Girls protest convener Aisha Yesufu was equally instrumental, and her image was later depicted as the stature of the #EndSARS movement. Other entertainers from the skit and film industry and other content creators like Mr Marcaroni also became instrumental in pushing video messages to mobilise young people through social networking sites (AfriquesConnectees, 2021).

Instagram:?While twitter offered the protesters a platform for monitoring in real-time, Instagram and Facebook were utilised as tools for live monitoring of happenings across the country. Instagram became symbolic after a live video on 20 October 2020 by DJ Switch, amongst others, captured the Nigerian military shouting live bullets at unarmed protesters, raising the national flag and singing the national anthem. 20 October 2020 was the day dozens of young Nigerians were killed, and the bodies of most of them were taken away by the Nigerian military (Plus TV Africa, 2021). The Nigerian military denied the actions, as seen on Instagram live. However, one year after the Judicial Panel of Inquiry (JPI), the Nigerian Army accepted that they fired live bullets at the protesters. This killing of the protesters on 20-10-20 became acknowledged as a massacre by the JPI report (Okuwobi et al., 2020).

Bitcoin and Crypto for funds mobilisation:?To fund the protest,?protesters and supporters initially donated to bank accounts via mobile transfer. However, the government froze accounts identified for this mobilisation in no time (Premium Times, 2020). So, to boycott the government, protesters began mobilising funds on social media (particularly Twitter) via crypto platforms. The Feminist Coalition, an organisation by some young Nigerian women, mainly coordinated this new payment system for donations. The donations even gained a booster when Jack Dorsey promoted the Feminist Coalition Bitcoin details for donations (Dorsey, 2020). Among all organisations that took up the responsibility to raise funds on social networking sites, the Feminist coalition raised well over 150 million Naira between 1 October to 23 October 2020 for medicals, food, and other necessary supplies for the protest (The Feminist Coalition, 2021b).

The funds realised by the Feminist Coalition were used to support 183 protest locations across the country (The Feminist Coalition, 2021a). This is asides from other locations supported by donations to other organisations. With such monetary and other material supports that young Nigerians mobilised, protesters were determined not to leave the streets and other strategic locations until the six demands of the #EndSARS protest (The Cable, 2020) were met by the government. They never left the streets until the Nigerian government launched a violent offensive majorly starting on 20 October 2020.

2.????????????African Union's Response

In response to the #EndSARS protest, the Chairperson of the African Union issued a statement on 21 October 2020 condemning the violence and acknowledging the multiple deaths and injuries and encouraged the government of Nigeria to investigate the use of violence during the protest and hold those found guilty accountable. Furthermore, he applauded the disbandment of the SARS unit and called for dialogue for de-escalation and finding concrete and durable solutions in attending to the issue of police brutality in Nigeria (Mahamat, 2020). In addition, the former African Union Chairperson's Envoy on Youth, Aya Chebbi, appealed to the continent's leaders to respect and protect young Africans' civil and political rights and respond to the #EndSARS movement with dialogue and not force (AU Youth Envoy, 2020a). Furthermore, in solidarity with the protesters, she reiterated that as the AU Youth Envoy, she called for silencing the guns and not for the government picking up the guns against young people protesting (AU Youth Envoy, 2020b).

While the responses of the African Union were targeted at ensuring the safety and protection of young people in Nigeria, their statements never got the attention intended, nor did they get social media engagement among young Nigerians. The former AU Youth Envoy's response shared on the official AU Youth Envoy Facebook page shows a like engagement of 72 and a share engagement of 27 as of 12 December 2021 (AU Youth Envoy, 2020a). The tweet also shows a retweet of 61, 4 quoted tweets and 64 likes as of 12 December 2021 (AU Youth Envoy, 2020b). This cannot be compared to the thousands of tweet engagements prominent figures in the protest had, nor can it be compared to the tweet engagement of the UN's statement issued through the resident coordinator Edward Kallon. The statement called for a continued peaceful protest from young people and reiterated the UN's support for Nigeria's stability (Kallon, 2020). The UN's statement saw 9,109 retweets, 666 quoted tweets and 9,853 likes as of 13 December 2021. The engagement with the AU cannot be compared to the UN's Twitter grassroot engagement.

A pilot survey conducted for this brief on the protest and the AU's response showed that almost 90 percent of respondents who are Nigerians at home and in the diaspora never saw the AU's statement and the Youth Envoy's solidarity statement issued at the time of the protest. Moreover, of those who saw the statement, 80 percent had the least of the best things to say about the statement and the African Union's engagement with the issue. This, therefore, signifies a vast disconnect between the African Union and the youth population in Nigeria, and this does not seem reasonable if we must build the Africa that we want. In addition, the AU has not made any follow-up effort regarding the protest and the investigations of violence, death, and injuries one year after the protest. Furthermore, given the revelations from the judicial panel of inquiry findings that a massacre happened on 20 October 2020, the AU has remained silent. This silence, however, deepens the AU and youth disconnect in Nigeria and does not affirm the stand of the AU on the protection of young Nigerians.

Recommendation

Recommendation 1:?AU should respond to the findings of the JPI

One year after the young Nigerians were killed and injured across the country, especially at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, Nigeria, the judicial panel of inquiry constituted by the Lagos state government has published its findings on what transpired on 20 October 2020. The report affirmed the claims of young people that some of their peers were killed in cold blood while on the #EndSARS protest. However, since its publication, the report has been met with counterarguments, especially on the number of deaths by the Lagos state government. This is increasingly raising conversations among young people on the unwillingness of the government to implement the recommendations of the JPI. Thus, the first recommendation is that the AU engage the Nigerian government to ensure that the claims of the young people are independently investigated again to ascertain the actual death number and offer some restitution for victims and families that lost loved ones at the toll gate shootings. This would aid the country in preventing an outbreak of another protest on the grounds of the government’s refusal to implement the JPI findings.

Recommendation 2:?AU should invest in monitoring trends and engaging young people on digital platforms

The African Union is trying to be proactive with the e-citizenship of Africans; however, the AU has low e-grassroot engagement across the different networking sites. Social networking sites are increasingly becoming the primary platforms where young people have conversations, debate and deliberate issues that concern them and even mobilise for protests and campaigns like we saw with the #EndSARS movement. It would be beneficial to have the AU monitor trends in young people’s conversations on issues that affect them in their respective countries.

Article 26a of the Africa Youth Charter calls on “young people to be custodians of their own development,” and trends have shown that the online space has become instrumental to young people achieving this. Also, the AU Youth Division agenda commits that it will provide spaces for young people to have conversations with their duty-bearers on issues that affect them. The AU Youth Division also committed to increasing the reach of online presence and engagement of young people’s voices across the continent. However, in line with these commitments, the AU, particularly the Youth Division, did not engage the young people of Nigeria at the early stages of their request for the government to end police brutality in the country to facilitate their voices. Even when the government used violence against peaceful protesters, these young people saw no engagement from the African Union, especially the Youth Division and the official statements issued by the AU barely got engagements on social media with these youths. In line with this, it must be suggested that the AU Youth Division facilitate its online youth engagement commitments, especially in crisis situations. While the #EndSARS happened over a year ago, it must be suggested that in line with the online engagement, the Youth division should monitor conversational trends in Nigeria and engage young Nigerians on social networking sites on the issues of police brutality and their general security. This would boost the AU e-grassroot engagement and equally contribute to closing the AU-youth disconnect.

Recommendation 3:?AU should revise its digital transformation strategy for Africa to include AU e-governance

The African Union adopted its digital transformation strategy for Africa (2020-2030) in the context of socio-economic development with the view of facilitating the delivery of goods and services, reducing inequality, addressing poverty, contributing to the achievement of Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals, and building an African e-citizenship (African Union, 2020). However, the scale and speed at which the traditional socio-economic sectors will be transformed by technology are highly dependent on the inclusion of the E-governance of the AU into the digital transformation strategy. As part of the African Union’s integration priorities, the digital transformation strategy only covers existing continental frameworks and initiatives, such as the Free Movement of Persons (FMP) to support the development of a Digital Single Market (DSM) for Africa, the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), the African Union Financial Institutions (AUFIs), the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA); and Policy and Regulatory Initiative for Digital Africa (PRIDA), and its only emphasis on e-governance was in relations to the performance of national governments.

As highlighted above, the African Union’s approach raises a question on the one hand about its vision for an integrated and inclusive digital society and moulding responsible e-citizens, especially when young people feel distant from the AU, particularly in times of crisis. So also, on the other hand, there are questions about the long-term achievement of the digital economy, especially when young Nigerians are killed over being technologically inclined, and this is particular as this propelled the #EndSARS movement in the first place.

Therefore, it is suggested that in order for the African Union to achieve a digital society and economy that improves the quality of life of the citizens of Africa, strengthens the economic sector of African nations, aids development and diversification, and ensures continental ownership of this digital process, it should revise its digital transformation strategy considering the possibility of including e-governance at its supranational level and for this case, a system that is close to the young people of Nigeria.

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References

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AU Youth Envoy. (2020b). I called for silencing the guns and not picking them up against protestors and youth. Twitter. https://twitter.com/auyouthenvoy_/status/1318866239016607744

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