Kansas State University

In this special blog series, Understanding Leadership for Racial Justice, the Staley School of Leadership Studies invites conversation and action on understanding leadership for racial justice. What leadership is required for progress on racial justice? What practices and orientations to the work of leadership advance this effort and what hampers progress? 

In this piece, K-State’s Communications Studies graduate teaching assistant and doctoral candidate in the Leadership Communications doctoral program, Onyedikachi Ekwerike, explains the #EndSars movement on Twitter through the Direction, Alignment, Commitment model.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On Oct. 3 2020, a video surfaced on Twitter showing alleged SARS officers shooting an unarmed young man in Delta State, Nigeria. This viral video sparked outrage on Nigeria Twitter, with people using the hashtag #EndSars to express their anger and call for the disbandment or abolition of SARS. In just two days, the hashtag #EndSars was trending globally on Twitter.

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) is a Nigerian Police Unit. This unit was formed in 1992 to curb the menace of armed robbery and kidnapping in Nigeria (Amnesty international, 2017). The challenge, though, is that this unit has abused their powers and has allegedly terrorized young people, hence the call for abolition. Using the hashtag #EndSars, many young people share scary stories about their experience with SARS. There seems to be a pattern: extortions, extrajudicial killings, unjust imprisonments, abduction, and brutality were common themes. I, too, shared my story. Five years ago, I was abducted and assaulted by SARS after they wrongly suspected me of being an internet fraudster. When the SARS officers searched my phones and realized they had nothing on me, they threw me out of a moving bus. I suffered bruises, but I was thankful I made it out of their hands alive. Not many are that lucky.

Five days after the viral video showing the killing of a young man surfaced on Twitter, the call to #EndSars moved offline. On Oct. 8, 2020, thousands of young Nigerians took to the streets nationwide to protest and demand that the government abolish SARS peacefully. This protest was not the first time Nigerians have called on the government to disband SARS. In 2017, the hashtag #EndSars trended nationwide, with young people calling on the government to reform the police and disband SARS (Amnesty international, 2017). The complaints were the same: extortion, abduction, brutality, and extrajudicial killings. Three years on, nothing had changed. SARS was still terrorizing young Nigerians, with the government looking away.

To be fair, the Nigerian government passed the Anti-Torture ACT in 2017 to respond to the people’s outcry over human rights violations committed by members of the Nigerian police force (NCAT, 2018). However, since the Nigerian government passed the bill, not one SARS officer has been prosecuted (Amnesty international, 2020).

Four days into the nationwide protest, on Oct. 12, the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, announced the disbandment of SARS. This announcement sparked widespread celebrations across the country. Citizens viewed this as a symbol of victory, hope, and the beginning of a new Nigeria. But interestingly, it did not end the protest. It is currently day 10 of the #EndSars protest in Nigeria, and the citizens are not backing down. Young people continue to use the hashtag #EndSars to call for widespread police reform and justice for families who have been victims of police brutality.

As a budding leadership scholar, what I find fascinating about the #EndSars movement is the absence of formal leaders. The movement has no face. This is in contrast to other movements like the 2012 Occupy Nigeria protest led by the Nigeria Labour Congress, or even the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s, which had clear leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X.

The absence of formal leaders does not indicate a lack of leadership. On the contrary, what I have witnessed is an organic collective leadership in action.

In 10 days, ordinary citizens have set up the following:

• Legal teams to advocate for and bail-out individuals arrested for protesting
• Medical teams to provide ambulances and treatments for protesters who are hurt
• Mental health care for protesters who are traumatized
• Provision of private security for protesters against interlopers who might infiltrate the protest and cause trouble
• Feedings arrangements to ensure all protesters get food and water to sustain their energy
• A call line where protesters/organizers can request any of the above services without charge
• Set up a radio station to keep citizens informed

The nature of leadership displayed within the context of the #EndSars movement turns the question away from “who is leading?” to “what exactly is leadership?” and “what does leadership accomplish?” Newer perspectives can help us better understand leadership’s nature and how leadership is evident within the #EndSars movement.

Through a leadership communication lens, it appears that the hashtag #EndSars provided an online conversational space that produced this leadership. Citizens who offer services listed above to support the protest collaborate using the hashtag #EndSars to communicate a shared purpose. However, the #EndSars movement’s kind of leadership cannot be understood or explained using traditional leadership perspectives. Traditional orientation to leadership views it as an influence process produced through the interaction between leaders and followers to achieve shared goals (Crevani et al., 2007). The leadership happening within the #EndSars movement context has no leaders or followers, just citizens collaborating to hold their government accountable. To understand and describe the leadership happening within the #EndSars movement context, we must turn to an alternative leadership lens; The Direction, Alignment and Commitment perspective.

Understanding #EndSars through a Direction, Alignment and Commitment (DAC) Lens

The dominant perspective of leadership is one that focuses on individuals and the role they play to inspire a collective purpose. It is rooted in what Alvesson (2019) calls a Hollywood ideology of leadership. According to Hollywood ideology, leadership is a product of an all-knowing, strong individual or group of individuals who transforms and influences others to achieve a set goal (Alvesson, 2019).  Drath et al. (2008) argue that this leadership perspective is based on a tripod ontology of leaders, followers, and shared goals. An ontology is beliefs about the nature of a thing in its most basic form, in this case, the nature of leadership. When an individual believes that leadership at its core is the interaction between leaders, followers, and shared goals, it means they subscribe to the “tripod” ontology (Drath et al., 2008). This tripod ontology of leadership is deficient in helping us understand leadership in the context of movements like #EndSars, where leadership activity is collaborative, and a formal leader is nonexistent (Drath et al., 2008).

An alternative lens replaces the tripod entities (leader, follower, and shared goals) with outcomes (direction, alignment, and commitment). Leadership through a DAC lens is defined as the production of direction, alignment, and commitment (Drath et al., 2008). This means that wherever/whenever a group of people has a direction, are in alignment, and there is a commitment, you find leadership. Leadership through this lens is viewed as a collective activity and not residing within an individual.

According to this alternative perspective of leadership, direction is achieved when there is an agreement among a collective on their overarching goal. A group is said to have direction when they have clarity and understanding of their goals and aims. Similarly, alignment is achieved when a collective organizes and coordinates resources that help them achieve their purpose. Lastly, commitment is evident when group members are invested in achieving the group’s goal (Drath et al., 2008). Hence, when a group has direction, alignment, and commitment, then leadership is enacted.

How then can we understand leadership within the context of the #EndSars movement through a DAC lens?

Direction. Even before Nigerian youths took to the streets, the direction was clear, #EndSars. There was a consensus on Twitter that rot within the police unit SARS was beyond reform. The youths, therefore, called for the abolishment of SARS. The direction was evident, and from my observation, the youths understood what the goal was, #EndSars. There is more to having a shared direction than just knowing what the goal is or understanding the group’s mission (Drath et al., 2008). Having shared direction involves agreeing to the value of the direction. Nigerians youths who took the streets agree that abolishing SARS was the right step to take.

According to Drath et al. (2008), a shared direction is not set in stone. It is continuously negotiated and can change based on the context and challenges facing the group. Therefore, it is not surprising that the #EndSars protests continued despite the President’s announcement of the disbandment of SARS. Nigerian youths are now demanding a total reform of the police, compensation for families of people who have lost their lives during the protest, justice for families who have lost loved ones to rogue SARS operatives, and better welfare for police officers.

Alignment. A collective achieves alignment when their work is organized and coordinated (Drath et al., 2008). I have been astonished by the amount of organization and coordination that has been shown during the #EndSars protest. Using the hashtag #EndSars on Twitter, youths have set up legal teams to advocate for and secure the release of individuals arrested during the protest. Youths have also used the hashtag #EndSars to pull resources together to provide food and water for protesters. Nonprofit organizations have also collaborated to provide medical support for protesters, both physical and mental healthcare. Achieving this requires significant coordination and organization, proof of alignment.

The hashtag #EndSars provides an online space for collaborating and organizing. The communication theory of affordance suggests that hashtags’ help coordinate large-scale discussions that support movements like #EndSars (Boyd, 2010; Eddington, 2018; Gibson, 2015). This technological affordance likely enabled #EndSars to achieve a level of coordination under a short period that would have been difficult or impossible without technology, or specifically with the Twitter Hashtag.

Commitment. Thousands of young people on the streets for ten consecutive days are proof you need to know that there is commitment. Besides leaving their work and families, people have donated money and other resources to sustain the protest. Citing Farley (1986), Drath et al. (2008) argue that commitment is achieved when individuals are willing to allow others to “make demands on their time and energy” (p. 648). The amount of funds donated and energy expended is proof of loyalty to the cause and commitment to ensuring an end to police brutality in Nigeria.

Implications for future research and practice

One question you may have is, how then are Direction, Alignment, and Commitment produced? Drath et al. (2008) argue that DAC is an outcome of individual and collective leadership beliefs and practices. Leadership beliefs are the dispositions people have about why and how DAC should be produced. In contrast, leadership practices are patterns of behavior within a collective deployed to achieve DAC (Drath et al., 2008). Therefore, research is needed to understand the leadership beliefs, and practices that produced DAC in the #EndSars movement. How did these beliefs and practices come into being and become widespread among protesters? How did protesters’ leadership beliefs and practices develop and change over time?  Future studies from a communications perspective could also investigate the role the hashtag #EndSars played in organizing the movement.

For organizers and practitioners, achieving and maintaining DAC is important. Some leadership practices that align with the DAC ontology includes; prompting cognitive shifts and engaging dialogue about differences (Ospina and Foldy 2015). Prompting cognitive shifts involves changing the way your audience views or understands the crucial elements of your work (Direction). It includes getting people to think about the issues you seek to address as relevant to them. This helps to create a sense of shared purpose, which in turn, fosters alignment and commitment. Engaging dialogue about the difference is crucial in achieving long term goals. People come from different backgrounds and may have varying interests. It is, therefore, important to create space to surface and engage these differences. Engaging differences via deliberations that accommodates multiple voices can help a group gain clarity about their direction and help achieve alignment and commitment.

In conclusion, the #EndSars movement is collective leadership in action. The absence of a formal leader does not negate the presence of leadership. On the contrary, the direction, alignment, and commitment of protesters is proof that leadership is being enacted. Therefore, DAC ontology is useful in understanding leaderless movements like #EndSars.

References

Amnesty International. (2017). Nigeria: Government must act in response to fresh allegations of police abuses.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/12/nigeria-government-must-act-in-reponse-to-fresh-allegations-of-police-abuses/

Alvesson, M. (2019). Waiting for Godot: Eight major problems in the odd field of leadership studies. Leadership, 15(1), 27-43.

Boyd, D. (2010). Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 39–58). New York, NY: Routledge.

Crevani, L., Lindgren, M., and Packendorff, J. (2007). Shared leadership: A post-heroic perspective on leadership as a collective construction. International Journal of Leadership Studies, 3(1), 40-67.

Drath, W. H., McCauley, C. D., Palus, C. J., Van Velsor, E., O’Connor, P. M., and McGuire, J.B. (2008). Direction, alignment, commitment: Toward a more integrative ontology of leadership. The leadership quarterly, 19(6), 635-653.

Eddington, S. M. (2018). The communicative constitution of hate organizations online: a semantic network analysis of “Make America Great Again”. Soc Media Soc 4 (3).

Gibson, J. J. (2015). The ecological approach to visual perception. New York, NY: Psychology Press.

NCAT. (2018, November 30). Nigeria’s anti-torture law shows India’s failure to criminalize torture. Campaign Against Torture.

https://www.uncat.org/best-practices/nigerias-anti-torture-law-shows-indias-failure-tocriminalise-torture/

Nigeria: Time to end impunity: Torture and other violations by special anti-robbery squad (SARS) (AFR 44/9505/2020). (2020). Amnesty International.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr44/9505/2020/en/

Ospina, S. M., and Foldy (2015) Building bridges from the margins: The work of leadership in social change organizations. Leadership Quarterly, 21(2): 292–307.