The impact of Social Media #EndSARS Nigerian Youth Activism for Police Accountability in Nigeria

Academic Paper from the year 2022 in the subject Communications - Multimedia, Internet, New Technologies, grade: 4.50, University of Lagos (Department of Mass Communication), course: Communication studies, language: English, abstract: This article reveals how Nigerian youths reacted to the tragic shooting of a Nigerian man by agents of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a unit of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF), in Delta State, Nigeria. Between November 2017 and October 2020, series of vibrant online and physical protests organized under the hashtag of #EndSARS campaign was staged against the operation of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) for their abuse of power which indicates police brutality in Africäs most populous country.

Thus, this article examined the factors that led to the outburst of the #EndSARS protest as a strategic means for seeking police accountability, that represent the youths capacity to plan, organize, execute, assemble and persuade the Nigerian Government to act and the impact of the mass action on policing and law enforcement in Nigeria. The methodology postulated for this study consists of a qualitative analysis of tweets between September 11 and October 11, 2020.