Us and them

Abstract

#EndSARS protest started publicly on October 8, 2020, with teeming Nigerian youths moving from one location to the other to press home their demands, protesting police brutality among others. The protesters, especially those in Lagos, chose the Lekki Toll Gate as their protest base. The protest protracted across the country until October 20, 2020, when there were alleged shootings at the Lekki location by men in uniform believed to be from the Nigerian army. The protest and the shooting generated controversies, with the international community lending their voice to condemn the act. Existing studies on protests in Nigeria have examined #fuel fees must fall, Biafra protest, and so forth. Yet, studies have not adequately examined the #EndSARS-induced Lekki shooting. Its critical examination can confirm or refute the existing claims on protest discourse. This study, therefore, examines the newspaper narratives on the October 20 #EndSARS shooting at Lekki Toll Gate, to identify the deployed discourse issues, the pragmatic acts, identities and ideological polarisations in the discourses. Using aspects of van Dijk’s model of critical discourse analysis, Mey’s pragmatics acts and Voyant Tools, related narratives from two widely read Nigerian newspapers: Punch and Leadership revealed two broad ideological polarisations (US vs THEM) and four sub-categorisations of ideological discourse structure: actor description, argument, activity and goal description, and discourse strategies, and different pragmatic acts.