CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Citizens of many states are still deprived of the ability to exercise their basic human rights (D. Cingranelli & Filippov, 2018), namely, physical integrity rights that ensure freedom from extrajudicial killing, disappearance, torture, and political imprisonment. Limiting or eliminating abusive state behavior is, at least at a rhetorical level, part of the economic and diplomatic policies of Western governments. A plethora of international governmental and non-governmental organizations espouse as their core mission, or include among their main goals, advocacy for the rights of those suffering under repressive regimes. Although many states still engage in egregious acts of human rights violations, there exists significant variation among states in terms of the level and type of repressive behavior (Dreher, Gassebner, & Siemers, 2012; Hafner-Burton, 2005a).

        The interest lies in examining why some protests escalate into violence whereas other stay peaceful, with the hope that new pathways will emerge for how the risk of armed conflict can be reduced. The question is grounded in the immense literature on the causes of armed conflict, where escalation of violence is described as one of the causes (see Pruitt and Kim, 2004). However, escalations of protests are understudied in previous research as the main focuses has concerned the onset and the main outcomes of protests. Hence, this study set out to examine why some protests turn violent and if the violence escalates. If the latter is the case, that would mean that protest violence can be a potential cause of armed conflicts. Therefore, it is important to study why protests turn violent. Many scholars have studied how protests turn violent, and the evidence found that the government’s actions played an important role. Moreover, other literatures studied the regime type in relation to the likeliness of state repression, meaning the coercive actions the government use to respond to dissent, such as protests.

        Political regimes typically engage in repressive behavior in order to maintain the power and privileges of the elite (De Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, & Morrow, 2005). Human rights violations can be carried out by various state and state-affiliated agents, at times for the preservation of incumbency and political power and at other times simply in abuse of power without relevance to maintaining the political status quo: state and state-sponsored groups and individuals can commit egregious acts for personal enrichment or simply due to a general lack of strong oversight by higher levels of political power (Vreeland, 2008). As such, state repression is understood to entail actions and practices by governments and government-sponsored groups or agents that affect citizens’ ability to exercise this most basic human right of physical integrity (Fariss, 2014). To be sure, governments are not the only cause for violations of citizens’ rights. Gangs, rebels, terrorist organizations, and corporate or other private entities can and do engage in egregious acts of violence and infringement on fellow citizens’ ability to freely exercise their human rights (D. L. Cingranelli & Richards, 2010). However, the focus of the research program presented in this dissertation is on human rights violations by governments and governmentaffiliated groups or agents. Moreover, it is important to highlight that the present research undertaking focuses on so-called first-generation human rights – that is, physical integrity rights – and does not attempt to evaluate the relative importance of factors affecting states’ respect of second- and third-generation human rights, which include economic, social, and cultural rights, or the right to a clean and healthy environment, peace, communication, and humanitarian assistance, respectively (Davenport, 2007a).

        Since the start of October, demonstrators in the thousands have thronged Nigerian cities, calling for an end to police brutality in the country and demanding justice for victims of police violence and extrajudicial killings. The #EndSARS protests have elicited global sympathy and support, with world leaders such as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeting in support. Other political figures and celebrities have also used the hashtag or referenced the movement to either support the protests or demand an end to the government crackdown on protestors. These include former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. presidentelect Joe Biden, boxing heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, Arsenal footballer Mesut Ozil, and American rapper Kanye West. For several days in October, the hashtag #EndSARS was the number one trending topic on global Twitter with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey launching a special emoji for the movement.

        The ENDSARS campaign started on Twitter in December 2017 to protest against the harassment and fatal brutalities Nigerian youths suffered at the hands of the SARS unit of the Nigerian police force (NPF). SARS itself which stands for special antirobbery squad functions as a unit under the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department of the NPF (NPF, n.d.). The unit was established to confront violent crimes like robbery, kidnapping and other related activities etc. (Amnesty International, 2016). However, there have been widespread claims of abuse and extrajudicial killings by members of the unit particularly targeted at the youth in Nigeria. The outrage that emerged from these claims led to the ENDSARS campaign and since Twitter served as coordinating place for the protests, we used the tweets that were published under the hashtag #EndSARS as the primary content for our study. Although this article highlights these themes in the ENDSARS movement of Nigeria's Twitter sphere, the purpose of this article is not to advance the argument that social media empowers citizen action like contemporary research argues. Rather, the aim of this article is to shed light on claims that social media could promote “slacktivism” by demonstrating the link between Nigeria's political and cultural environment and the apparent failure of the Twitter generation to successfully advance social change through connective action unlike patterns evident in the “Arab revolution”. Previous research has shown that researchers who have described networked activism as “slacktivism” have engaged in the practice faulting slacktivism or clicktivism without properly defining the concepts Halupka (2014). In order to avoid this problem, this paper will use themes generated from the analysis to contextually define 'slacktivism'. The paper is compartmentalized into three sections. The first section briefly discusses connective action on social media. The second part of this article delves into the issue of police brutality against youth in the world's most populous black nation. This section sketchily traces the history of police brutality in Africa in order to stress the potential of the ENSARS movement. Similarities are briefly drawn between the movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. Importantly, the section presents the discursive themes of the ENDSARS movement.