Call for Paper

[Adeolu Oyekan]

ENDSARS: State Repression and the Spaces of Popular Resistance in Nigeria

Editors: Tunji Azeez & Adeolu Oyekan

The history of protests and popular resistance in Nigeria is a long one. Right from the colonial period, to independence and the different republics, resistance to state policies popularly perceived as unfavorable have been recurrent. In a nation where social actions and political activities are often coloured by ethno-religious factors, labor unions over decades emerged as the hubs around which public discontents are articulated and ventilated. In recent time however, the fragmentation of the labor movement and its diminished capacity to mobilize public resistance to neoliberal state policies, and structural reforms to which it had organized notable opposition in the past signaled the collapse of opposition to the State, and encouraged the exercise of its increasingly expansive and repressive powers. Deepening ethno-nationalist fissures have also meant that protest culture is on the wane, as political elites have become more adept at manipulating primordial attachments for personal legitimation and preservation.

The recent ENDSARS protests of October 2020 and its aftermath in many parts of the country, however, appears to have opened a new chapter in the history of public consciousness and popular resistance in Nigeria. Arising from public frustration over police brutality at a time that government had successfully doused a tame labour effort to protest market reforms in critical areas such as fuel and energy pricing, the ENDSARS protest rapidly generated a momentum that clearly disrupted traditional hegemonic lines of resistance mobilization and negotiation in Nigeria, generating local and global interventions whose impacts are still unfolding even after the protests have ended. This project aims to understand the nature and context of the protests as a form of public resistance, with the aim of generating theoretical and practical insights that improve social understanding and the implications of state response to public crises.

Some of the questions we seek to answer, include, but are not limited to the following:

What are the conceptual issues arising from the recent protest? Are there connections between previous resistance efforts in Nigeria and ENDSARS protests? How does the connection between the past and the present, if any, shape our understanding of popular resistance? How did factors such as ethnicity, religion, and party affiliation, among others influence as well as shape the reception and rejection of the protests in different quarters? To what extent did external factors such as the BLM and the Nigerian Diaspora influence the trajectory of the protests? Of what significance is the impact of social media and technology to the ENDSARS protests? How does the "leaderless" nature of ENDSARS and the coordinating efforts of the Feminist Coalition shape how we rethink resistance and activism in Nigeria? What are the roles of the youth in the political and economic future of Nigeria and how effectively are they playing these roles? What are the implications of the protests on the 2023 general elections? Of what relevance is academia in the understanding of resistance movements in Nigeria? What is the intersection between artistes, artworks and the ENDSARS protests? 

Potential paper themes in relation to the ENDSARS protests could include, but are not limited to the following:

-Methodological and conceptual issues in popular resistance

-Politics and popular resistance

-Youth and the clamor for social change in Nigeria

-History of popular resistance in Nigeria

-Police brutality and human rights in Nigeria

-Identity politics (class, gender, age, religion) and popular resistance in Nigeria

-Social media, technology and popular resistance in Nigeria

-Protest culture and global influences

-Popular resistance and the Diaspora

-Urban space, resistance and expression

-Framing repression and resistance in Nigeria

-The art and aesthetics of popular resistance

-Protests and resistance in popular culture

-Popular resistance and the academia 

We invite well-researched, multidisciplinary and original papers that interrogate the themes of popular resistance in relation to the ENDSARS protests. We welcome submissions from scholars in diverse disciplines including visual and literary arts, cultural and gender studies,  history, philosophy, linguistics, political science, sociology, theater arts, music, language, media, criminology, etc. Submissions from activists and practitioners that conform with the style and focus of the project are also welcome.

 Essays must adhere to the most current MLA format. Please send your paper proposal (max. 500 words) and a short bio (150 words) by January 30th, 2022 to repressiona...@gmail.com 

Acceptance of proposal: February 28th, 2022.

Submission of full paper: July 30th, 2022

Expected date of publication: November 2022.