Political strategies and social movements: A preliminary analysis of the failure of ENDSARS movement in Nigeria

Abstract

The recent proliferation of scholarship on strategies and framing processes in relation to social movements indicates that strategy and framing have come to be regarded, alongside resource mobilization and political opportunity processes, as a central dynamic in understanding the success or the failure of social movements. This article examines preliminarily the rationale behind the failure of the ENDSARS social movement on the basis of three important factors i.e. the mobilization processes, the framing process and the Tactics adopted by the protesters. A qualitative content analysis approach was adopted in this study. The concept of social movement and the theoretical frameworks upon which the research revolves were discussed. The article further reviews how social movement frames, mobilization process and tactics have been empirically analysed, including their characteristic and variable features. The relevance of these characteristic and variable features to the success or otherwise of the ENDSARS social
movement in Nigeria were thematically analysed. The findings from this preliminary study suggest that for social movement to succeed, gathering a band of passionate enthusiasts is not enough, the organizers should take a stock of the political environments in order to identify the local power matrix with considerable level of influence as well as the normative and cultural
inclinations of the targets publics to which they address their action. The article then concludes with a brief insight on framing processes for future social movements in the country.