Protest Photography: #EndSARS Movement in Nigeria

Abstract During the #EndSARS protest that took place in Nigeria in the year 2020, photography played a key role as a tool for activism and advocacy in calling for an end to the operations of the Nigerian Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) which many deemed as [being] anti-people. Worth more than a thousand words, the #EndSARS images are in themselves symbols of protest, activism, resistance, and visual evidence of the same brutality that the protest set out to address. This chapter examines how active participation by young photographers inspired protest photography during the #EndSARS movement. It argues that increased access to technology and smart gadgets greatly influenced the impact of photography in documenting various aspects of the #EndSARS protest. The proliferation of small technological gadgets with inbuilt cameras helped to bring to the fore critical issues of police force brutality that would have ordinarily been swept under the carpet by the state actors. This chapter is made up of five main sections. The introductory part covers definitions, and the origin and evolution of protest photography. The next section discusses the #EndSARS movement and protest photography within the confines of the movement. The third section evaluates the role and impact of technology and smart gadgets in protest photography. The fourth section analyses the use of imagery for activism and advocacy during #EndSARS protest. The last section summarises ideas and findings regarding how the #EndSARS protest has contributed to the advancement of protest photography as a tool for activism, and advocacy for social change in Nigeria and elsewhere.