Ibadan Journal of Humanistic Studies

Introduction: #EndSARS and the afterlives of hashtags

2023-07-17T12:24:00+00:00

No abstract.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- CC BY-NC 4.0 International License.

“Fem!” Affective soundscapes and the convening of an aural youth public in #EndSARS

2023-07-17T12:27:40+00:00

During the #EndSARS protests, popular artist Davido's single “Fem”, rose to prominence as an unlikely but effective anthem for protesters. In colloquial use, Fem means “be quiet” and is derived from adults' popular use of the term to caution children from being noisy. the song's rise to prominence during the protests ostensibly followed the moment when the incumbent Lagos state governor had tried to address protesters and was silenced with “Fem”'s opening lines: “E be like you don dey talk too much, small talk, you don dey talk who talk; Fem!”. Drawing on “Fem”'s indexicality in that moment as a noisy interception/silencing of the authorised voice of the state, this paper examines the role of music in producing affective soundscapes through which youth mobilisation can be mediated. Lauren Berlant has described the publicness produced in affective soundscapes as “attachments to and investments in a sense of political and social mutuality that is performed in moments of collective audition”. Following this understanding of affective soundscapes, this paper asks two related questions. First: how does popular music produce environments of social mutuality that enables youth to convene in protest? Second: what forms of inclusion and exclusion are at stake in organising youth belonging through affective aurality? I draw on #EndSARS to demonstrate how popular music opens up a space where competing claims to political publicness can be made.

Ideological representation of #EndSARS protesters by government (agencies) in selected Nigerian newspaper reports

2023-07-17T12:34:07+00:00

The 8^thof October 2020 cannot be forgotten in a hurry in the history of Nigeria. It marked the beginning of the #EndSARS protest that rocked the whole country. Nigerian youths in their thousands trooped out to speak against police brutality with reference to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police. the protest became the most important topic in the media at that time, and has since generated scholarly reactions across different disciplines. Existing studies on the #EndSARS protest have engaged rapport management, pragmatic and discursive features in #EndSARS-related discourse. However, adequate attention has not been given to the discourse strategies and the ideological representation of the protesters by the government and its agencies. thus, this study adopts Van Leeuwen's representation of social actors, complemented with aspects of Halliday's systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Data were drawn from four widely read Nigerian newspapers, namely The Guardian, the Punch, the Nation and the Sun. the period of covered was between 2020 and 2021. Protesters are represented as 'terrorists', 'economic saboteurs' and 'purveyors of fake news'. these representational strategies were hinged on Leeuwen's representational strategies as activation, association, dissociation and exclusion.

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

2023-07-17T12:44:28+00:00

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.

To end SARS or start a revolution? Class contradictions of youth within the #EndSARS rebellion

2023-07-17T12:48:52+00:00

Years after the #EndSARS movement rocked Nigeria and the world in October 2020, barely an ember of the rebellion has survived. While many scholars and activists position #EndSARS as a youth movement and formative political expression of the “Sòrò Sókè” generation, in this article, we argue that the #EndSARS rebellion can be meaningfully interpreted in terms of class struggle. The rebellion and its aftereffects reveal entrenched class divisions among young people that masked critical differences—in ideology, experiences, and interests—among emergent classes of poor, working-class, and professional, middle-class youth, which ultimately contributed to the movement's co-optation and fragmentation. The idea that #EndSARS was a generational struggle or that youth functioned within it as a unified social category fails to interrogate ways that the youth remains divided along class and ideological commitments. These tensions can be observed in the narrow reformist versus broader revolutionary demands articulated within the protests, the varying strategies and tactics employed during street actions, the conceptualisations and response to state violence, and the relative disposability of poor youth. In disentangling class contradictions, we hope to provide a sober reflection on the possibilities for deepening class collaborations and building stronger movements that can capture the revolutionary potential of Nigeria's social realities.

We are live now: The diaspora inflections of Nigerian political livestreaming

2023-07-17T12:54:32+00:00

No abstract.

Ideological constructs in placards on the #EndSARS protest in Nigeria

2023-07-17T12:57:33+00:00

The #EndSARS protest in Nigeria was an unusual, uncommon and unanticipated experience. It has enjoyed scholarly inquiries from many academic disciplines, but an ideological exploration of the wordings on the placards displayed by the protesting youths at the peak of the protest has not enjoyed sufficient attention. this study, therefore, investigates how language is used to depict the outcry of the Nigerian youths over the excesses of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad with a view to identifying the inherent issues surrounding the protest and addressing such issues in order to forestall such occurrences in the future. Michael Halliday's transitivity system, van Dijk's ideological square and elements of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations were eclectically deployed to analyse eight purposively selected placards gathered on Twitter. three issues found in the data were the brutality of the government, the self-vindication of the youth and the de-emphasis of social prohibition. the material process of transitivity which involves action words was mainly deployed in the expression of government brutality through the cruel and inhumane actions of the SARS officials. the self-vindication of the youth was mainly revealed through the relational process with which the youth dissociated themselves from certain identities while depicting themselves differently. De-emphasis of social prohibition is achieved through relational and mental processes and it showed the subtle attempt to hide under a protest to proclaim unlawful acts. the study concludes that an ideological investigation of the protest can subsequently help prevent a similar experience.

Tanure Ojaide, Narrow Escapes: A Poetic Diary of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Denver: Spears Books, 2021, 241pp

2023-07-17T13:02:34+00:00

No abstract.

Abosede Priscilla Ipadeola, Feminist African Philosophy: Women and the Politics of Difference. Routledge 2022, 180 pp.

2023-07-17T13:06:42+00:00

No abstract.