The Role Of Social Media In The Police Reformation In Nigeria
[A CASE STUDY OF 2020 ENDSARS PROTEST]

1.2 Statement of the problem

One of the events that accompanied the later part of year 2020 after the covid 19 pandemic and the enactment of the company and allied matters act (CAMA 2020) by the President of the federal republic of Nigeria is the uproar in the country by the citizens on the EndSARS protest. EndSARS (or #EndSARS) is a decentralised social movement against police brutality in Nigeria. It was a call for the federal government of Nigeria to scrap the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a controversial unit of the Nigerian Police with a long record of abuses. The protests started in 2017 as a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #ENDSARS to demand the Nigerian government eliminate the force which after experiencing a revitalization in October 2020, mass demonstrations were occurring throughout Nigeria in major cities, and the hashtag has had over 28 million tweets. Nigerians have shared their experiences and video evidence of how members of SARS engaged in kidnapping, murder, theft, rape, torture, unlawful arrests, humiliation, unlawful detention, extrajudicial killings, and extortion in Nigeria all over the internet and social media. SARS officers have been alleged to profile youths based on fashion choices, mount illegal road blocks and searches, conduct unwarranted temperature checks, arrest without warrant, rape women, and extort young Nigerians for driving exotic vehicles and using laptops and iPhones. All this uproar has led to killings of protesters, burning and destroying of public and private properties in the country. As the protest was at the peak of it, the Nigerian government on Sunday, 11th October 2020 announced it was dissolving SARS and to carry out a reformation of the police force to serve the citizens better. This study therefore, seeks to ascertain the role social media played in the 2020 EndSARS protest towards the reformation of police force in Nigeria.

1.3 Objective of the study

The primary aim of this study is to find out the role of social media in the police reformation in Nigeria: a case study of 2020 endsars protest. Specifically, the study seeks to:

1. Find out how the social media contributed to the 2020 EndSARS protest in Nigeria.

2. To ascertain if social media played a significant role in the reformation of police in Nigeria.

1.4 Research Questions

The following research questions guides this study

1) How did social media contribute to the 2020 EndSARS protest in Nigeria?

2) What significant role did social media played in the reformation of police in Nigeria?