When does a protester become a hoodlum? #EndSARS protests and the active citizenry in Nigeria

Abstract

The series of youthful protests against police brutality in Nigeria in 2020 brings into sharp relief the circumference of citizen agitation that defines an agonistic democratic space. In this essay, I outline a set of queries that interrogate a major narrative dimension of the #EndSARS protests—the hijack of legitimate protests by hoodlums. I interrogate what I call the “hoodlum rhetoric” and the fundamental role it plays in furthering the objective of sovereignty as constitutive power in dismantling the boundaries of democracy. I argue that the possibility of a radical democratic politics confronts Nigeria's state of exceptionality that deploys the figure of the hoodlum to limit democratic gains in the postcolonial agon. However, the agony that resulted from the antagonism generated by the #EndSARS protests gives rise not only to the conceptual possibilities in the understanding of citizenship in Nigeria. It also provides hope that radical democratic politics and political action can also benefit from the hoodlum.