A consequence of this reputation is that citizens resent the police even when they are exercising their legitimate powers in the course of legally permissible law enforcement activities (Alemika and Chukwuma 2000). The Nigerian police is reputed as a notorious abuser of power and violator of human rights (Emerson 2010 Amnesty International 2014 Peter Naankiel 2013 Aborisade and Obileye 2018). When police officers exceed their boundaries or infringe on the rights of individuals in a manner not contemplated by law the wrongful use of police powers may be declared unlawful ( Ukata and ors v Akpanowo 2016). The rule of law requires these powers to be exercised within stipulated boundaries, including those imposed by the constitution ( Igweokolo v Akpoyibo 2017). 1 The police can lawfully arrest (Police Act, s.34), detain (Police Act, s.43), search (Police Act, s.50), prevent offenses (Police Act, s.86), investigate offenses (Police Act, s.31), grant administrative bail (Police Act, s.64), and prosecute (Police Act, s.68).

To effectively discharge these cardinal functions, various federal statutes confer powers on the police (Police Act 2015). 214, (CFRN 1999) Nigeria Police Force (Establishment) Act 2020, s.4 ('Police Act')). The Nigerian Police Force is constitutionally established and charged with the primary responsibility of protecting life, liberty, and property in Nigeria (Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, s. The protests were a poignant reaction to systemic abuse of power by the Nigerian police (Uwazuruike 2020). Notable among them was an anti-police brutality campaign that erupted in Nigeria in October of that year ng and bad governance in their country through protests that shut down some of the country’s major cities and towns for weeks (Olaloku-Teriba 2020). It will also be remembered for the wave of social justice agitations that exploded to unprecedented global reckoning (Press and Carothers 2020). This tends to ground a crucial supposition in corporate activism theory: that corporations would more likely engage social issues that affect their business.Ģ020 will be mostly remembered for a pandemic that claimed the lives of millions (WHO 2020) and crippled economies globally (Blake and Wadhwa 2020). As a key finding, the paper observes a relatively greater tendency of tech companies to engage in the Nigerian anti-police brutality movement than firms from other sectors, and attributes this relative involvement to the seemingly greater levels of representation of young tech industry employees as victims of police brutality. The analysis highlights how Nigeria’s legal, political, and socioeconomic dynamics factored into the dimensions of corporate activism in that momentous social justice agitation. Adopting a qualitative research mechanism that reflects on open-source information about relevant actors, collected from blogs, Twitter, and news sites, as complemented by a broad variety of secondary sources, this interdisciplinary research explores the theoretical suppositions of corporate activism in light of corporate intervention in Nigeria’s youth-led nationwide anti-police brutality (#EndSARS) protests of October 2020. Emerging scholarship suggests that corporate activism is influenced by various factors, including the ethical, political, and commercial orientations of corporate minds and the relative political and legal landscape within which corporations operate. There are increasing expectations and, in many cases, demands that corporations pull off their gloves to actively confront sociopolitical issues bedeviling their communities. Corporate activism-the progressive pursuit of social justice causes by corporations-is a growing global phenomenon.

Peaceful takeover streets of rogue