deltalaine Democracy, Gender, Law, Oil Theory

One of My Presentations on Women’s Protests

Below is an excerpt from part of a talk I gave on women’s role in Nigerian protests against oil extraction. Oil activities are blamed for environmental destruction, police violence, corruption, and lack of economic growth.

One of my research findings on Niger Delta oil politics was what I termed “positional arbitrage.” This means that local chiefs and male elites used their positions to help incite protests against oil companies and the government at times, as they were well positioned to gain from women’s demonstrations.

The talk also covers some other details about the oil reform movement in the region.

deltalaine Gender

Gender Essentialism (Part III)

When is it not in women’s best interest to embrace the motherhood frame to propel forward female protests? The problem with this essentialism in resistance is that it may compromise an ideological tenant for a pragmatic one. By definition, essentializing must simplify the experiences and forms of knowledge of participants in resistance, and thus inevitably omit those that are outliers. It is tempting to suspend a commitment to including individual needs if it means substantively furthering a cause beneficial to the subaltern group as a whole; it may serve as a means to an end.  Tangible gains for social movements through the use of strategic essentialism may not outweigh the ideological costs of its use.

It can be problematic for a social movement to use this maternal identity as the basis for political authority, as it excludes those who are not mothers and confines participants to the mothering role.  As Tripp, Casimiro, Kwesiga, and Mungwa (2009) describe it, “their roles may limit them to [only] that of mother. It also associates women’s participation with what many consider a natural role rather than agency and choice. It may prevent women from entering into politics on an equal basis with men if the focus is on their roles as mothers”. Additionally, such a tendency simplifies the variation in women’s lives.

In the Delta context, for example, the role of chiefs’ wives in resistance is very different from that of non-elite female farmers. Elite wives must navigate a different social terrain, in which their husbands may be using them to influence the actions of women in the community or, conversely, in which they may be able to exercise an unusual amount of autonomy. The princess of * told me, “My grandfather was founder of * [so] no, I cannot really go to protest, but I can tie my wrapper and turn it upside down to protest when I want in my house”.  Farmers, on the other hand, may act with more freedom since they are not royalty or, conversely, their positions may mean they don’t have the resources or social capital to behave as autonomously as an elite woman.  So, not only must one eschew gender essentialism and cultural essentialism but also socioeconomic or any other essentialism that discounts the variations in the ways that women experience society based on their economic, educational, or marital status.

One of the disadvantages of mothering as a frame can be found in a paradox: being mothers can justify women’s presence but, once they are engaged, then it constricts their actions within the movement. As an illustration, a majority of the two dozen female protesters I spoke with at Occupy Nigeria reported that their husband or a male organizer had directed them to come.  None of them had made their own signs or banners. They all said that they would not return to protest for another day. They didn’t take up the bullhorn as often, nor did they chant very loudly, and they marched together in back of the procession behind the men. If women were not choosing to protest on their own, or were not exercising autonomy during protest, then it presents a paradox: Motherhood is their justification for public engagement, yet that same gender construct constrains their independent participation within that space of engagement. So, in all, the maternal frame offers the contradiction of empowering women to demonstrate while also possibly limiting their chance for success.

mamas

deltalaine Gender

Gender Essentialism (Part II)

Mother protesting in Jos, Nigeria
Mothers protesting in Jos, Nigeria

Women across sub-Saharan Africa, not just the Niger Delta, have used the motherhood trope in both formal and informal mobilizations, engaging in what Molyneux (1985) has termed “combative motherhood” to justify and frame their resistance. Formerly apolitical mamas from rural Kenya marched through Nairobi and then disrobed to demand the release of their sons from political imprisonment, acting on principles of care and justice and strategically employed motherhood. Ivorian women marched through Abidjan to speak out against the violence of the Gbagbo regime and, later, to force peace talks in order to end the civil war there in 2011. Aya Virginie Toure, the leader of the “One Thousand Women March” in 2011, remarked that they were just marching as their mothers had done when their fathers had been imprisoned under colonial rule, and that mothers make the best last resort in resistance (Bannister, 2011). In Nigeria, Maryam Babangida’s Better Life for Rural Women and Maryam Abacha’s Family Economic Advancement Program placed women within the role of wife and mother, thus arguing that government policies aimed at helping women should focus on their ability to financially provide for their families. In the Niger Delta protests, women’s main grievance was that companies had not offered enough employment to the women’s sons. During my observations of protests, women also regularly chanted that they couldn’t afford to provide “chop,” i.e. food, to their children and that their babies were sick because of environmental damage.

Aya Virginia Toure, leader of the Thousand Women March
Aya Virginia Toure, Ivorian leader of the “One Thousand Women March”

This essentialization of female identity (see previous post) can be a benefit for protesting women in that it draws upon the one ability that men can never have—bearing children. Discursive exploitation of motherhood can give women an edge as they attempt to enter male-dominated political space. It can reify their collective identity as they attempt to come together in resistance and can help bridge cross-ethnic or cross-religious boundaries. It can place a burden on power holders to respect protesting women enough to listen. For example, Congolese women convened inattentive male negotiators to see a play depicting the suffering the civil war had caused the country’s children, “humbling” the men into returning to the negotiating table. Essentialization of motherhood may also be embraced because it appears to be an indigenous frame of resistance in a way that the contemporary human rights paradigm, often viewed as Western, is not.

Additionally, embracing this gender construct protects female protesters from the repressive violence that men experience. The maternal frame adopted by groups demanding information on the disappearances of loved ones in El Salvador, Argentina, and Guatemala protected them from the extreme violent repression that was prevalent against dissidents in those countries in the 1970s and 1980s. Likewise, the Federation of South African Women used their motherhood as a shield from violence during their work with the anti-pass campaigns of the 1950s.

Nigerian women have voiced the belief that soldiers are less likely to fire upon or use violence against women, especially mamas.  An interviewee said that in the Niger Delta, “Army and police will start beating and shooting people. It is only the women that they will not do that to, but the men they will beat and some will die”. They have demonstrated that by bringing children to sit-ins, holding green leaves, wearing their wrappers upside-down, and baring their breasts, they use their motherhood as both a conduit for their demonstrations and as a shield through which they may protect themselves from violence. This protection then extends to men who are engaged in gender-mixed demonstrations, which is a significant reason that elite men in the Niger Delta have encouraged women’s participation in resistance. Celestine Akpobari, a local NGO Director, described how, during Saro-Wiwa’s movement, “[FOWA] women began to stay at the front of demonstrations because of the belief that the military wouldn’t shoot women” (2/9/2012).

Although the motherhood identity may seem to empower women towards greater political engagement, it can also be a constricting force as well, as described in Gender Essentialism (Part III).

Demonstrators protest in Warri, Nigeria in 2005. The protesters demonstrated against what they claim to be the shooting death of activists and demanded that ChevronTexaco implement the July 17, 2002 Memorandum of Understanding and threatened to carry out more protest on ChevronTexaco oil facilities if their demands are not met.
Demonstrators protest in Warri, Nigeria in 2005. The protesters demonstrated against what they claim to be the shooting death of activists and demanded that ChevronTexaco implement the July 17, 2002 Memorandum of Understanding and threatened to carry out more protest on ChevronTexaco oil facilities if their demands are not met.
deltalaine Democracy, Violence

Military Recruitment, Casualties, and Public Opinion

Mobilizing Ideas

International Studies Quarterly just published Yagil Levy‘s most recent work on the reshaping of military conflict due to democracy, technology, and now protest.  I have posted elsewhere about his work on casualty aversion due to the intersection of democracy and technology (and also on related work by Jonathan Caverley).  This piece, titled “How Military Recruitment Affects Collective Action and its Outcomes” [gated] explores the impact of military recruitment on a public’s willingness to “absorb” casualties among its soldiers during military conflict.  In other words, Levy wants to know the extent to which recruitment impacts the collective action opportunities of those who would (de)mobilize public opinion in democracies regarding casualties, and thereby support for the war.

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deltalaine Democracy, Oil Theory, Violence

Renewed attention to the Biafran Conflict

The BBC has reported that at least 100 people have been charged with treason in south-eastern Nigeria after a march supporting independence for Biafra, their lawyer says. Igbo members of the Biafran Zionist Movement (BZM) declared independence from Yoruba- and Haused-dominated Nigeria, raised the Biafran flag and then marched through the region’s main town of Enugu over the weekend, the Igbo stronghold during the Biafran War. Most of those arrested were young men, many sons of former Biafran fighters, but some were veterans of the war themselves. They were all remanded in custody.

More than one million people died during the 1967-70 Biafran conflict – mostly from hunger and disease. Political scientists debate whether the term “war” accurately describes the conflict. To be a “war” a certain percentage of deaths must occur on each side, and nearly the all the deaths occurred among Igbos and nearly all were due to the national government and its allies cutting off food and medical supplies to Igbo communities.

The BZM first gathered on Sunday to mark the birthday of former Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, who died in November 2011 and was buried in Enugu in March. His burial revived some cries for independence. The BBC (from Lagos, and not Enugu mind you) says that 45 years after the Biafran flag was first raised – an action which sparked Nigeria’s civil war – a small number of separatists still keep their dream alive, despite the threat of being charged with treason.

Biafran War 1967-1970

map
  • 1960: Nigeria gains independence from the UK
  • 1967: South-eastern portion of Nigeria secedes as Republic of Biafra on 30 May
  • Biafra dominated by Igbo ethnic group
  • Home to much of Nigeria’s oil
  • Nigerian army blockades Biafra and more than a million people die through famine, disease and fighting
  • 1970: Biafran government surrenders

Some recently released books and films have increased attention to Biafra. The war has been put back in the spotlight as the renowned Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, arguably the greatest male writer in Nigeria with Wole Soyinka, has just released his memoirs of the conflict. Igbo-American Chimanada Adichie’s amazing novel  Half a Yellow Sun is being made into an American film, as this traumatic period of Nigeria’s history is set to reach a wider audience. The title refers to the flag created for the shortly independent republics of Biafra. The film stars Thandy Newton and was filmed primarily in Calabar, with my friends working as extras on set. Far less impressive, the Jeta Amata’s movie Black November is soon to be released starring Mickey Rouke, Viviva A. Fox, and Kim Basinger, which is an effort to take Nollywood mainstream to Hollywood.  Based on the ridiculous trailer I almost hope no one goes to see the unrealistic portrayal of the oil conflict. Oil was a key impetus to the start of the Biafran War and control over reserves undergirded much of the struggle over Nigerian territory in the late 1960s, but I doubt the average viewer will think enough about the movie to be able to link natural resources to conflict.

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deltalaine Law

Pro-Gbagbo Rally Outside of the International Criminal Court

Laurent Gbagbo, Président de la République (Cô...

Last week was historic for the International Criminal Court. It marked the pre-trial of the case against Laurent Gbagbo, the first former head of state to ever face charges in the ICC. I arrived on Tuesday simply hoping to see the inside of the building, but instead spent the afternoon watching demonstrators clash with Dutch police, and each other.

I was familiar with the Gbagbo case before I arrived and it was a simply a coincidence that my visit coincided with the first day of his pre-trial, which he did not attend. I knew that Gbagbo was installed as President of Cote d’Ivoire in 2000 and was in power during the 2002 civil war that split the country into politically contentious north and south regions. He served for a decade, based mostly on his continual stalling of his second election, and when Alassane Outtara was declared the winner of the 2010 elections Gbagbo refused to step down. He and his supporters argued that Outtara rigged the election (which is really hard to do unless the candidate is the incumbent) and Gbagbo swore himself into office again, despite that international observers called the voting more-or-less fair and that Gbagbo had already serve the equivalent of the constitutional limit of two five-year terms. Cote d’Ivoire became an even more volatile place in November 2010 when both Gbagbo and Outtara began to use violence to ensure their respective presidencies. The post-election conflict received the most media attention when a mass grave was discovered containing the bodies of known Outtara supporters.

According to the Case Information Sheet on “Situation in the Cote d’Ivoire: The Prosecutor v. Laurent Gbagbo” provided to me at the ICC’s front desk, pro-Gbagbo forces purportedly used widespread and systematic attacks against specific ethnic or religious communities that were supporting Outtara. The ICC is alleging that murder, rape and other sexual violence, persecution, and other inhuman acts were committed over an extended time period and over large geographic areas (I’m using the ICC’s wording). Gbagbo is being called an indirect co-perpetrator for four counts of crimes against humanity. Although Cote d’Ivoire is not party to the Rome State that founded the ICC, it accepted its jurisdiction in April 2003, which was ironically under Gbagbo’s regime. Outtara reconfirmed the country’s acceptance of this jurisdiction and at the end of last year the former President was arrested in the capital of Abidjan and transferred to The Hague. He has been fit to stand trial, and after being found indigent, the Court has borne the cost of his Defense.

Based on the violence that has occurred in Cote d’Ivoire over the last decade and the 2010 election strife, I was not totally surprised to see a rally outside the ICC on Tuesday. I became confused though when I approached the demonstration to see participants wearing t-shirts saying “Free Gbagbo” and holding banners calling Gbagbo a political prisoner. I initially assumed the 200+ demonstrators were there to see justice served against a tyrant, but on the contrary, they were loyal to Gbagbo and had come to support him.

I spent an hour or so talking with various protesters. Although a good number lived in the Netherlands, most seemed to have come from all over Western Europe, telling me they spent the night on buses from London, Paris, Berlin, and Milan to attend and would turn around and get back on the bus that same afternoon. I heard a litany of reasons for their presence there, with the most simple being that Gbagbo was a family friend or that he was born in the same community as the protester. Some said they came out because they felt he would be a better ruler than Outtara, while others felt he had been a scapegoat for an out-of-control military that acted of its own accord. Many voiced anger that Gbagbo’s inner circle have all been imprisoned under Outtara, including the former First Lady Simone Hehivet Gbagbo, his son, Michel Gbagbo, and former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan. Many chanted about one-sided justice, in which both sides had committed violence yet only Gbagbo was arrested. I was handed a leaflet calling the 2010 election a France-backed coup, a form of neocolonialism. A different leaflet I received showed graphic photos of dead bodies from a massacre that allegedly occurred on July 20, 2012, captions stating that Ouattara used the military to burn opponents alive and that he had established concentration camps. Another Ivorian-French man at the rally gave me an information sheet that had nothing to do with the 2010 election violence at all, but rather was demanding an answer as to who was responsible for the November 2004 bombing of a French military camp in Bouaké, which killed 9 French soldiers, one American civilian, and injured 38 others. The pro-Gbagbo demonstration simply gave him an audience and platform he needed to get his message across.

Here is some footage I took of the rally in its early hours when it was at its calmest:

 

deltalaine Democracy, Gender, Law, Oil Theory

2012 APSA Africa Workshop

Although the deadline for applications has passed, APSA will have its Africa Workshop at the University of Botswana, July 15-27, 2012.  The theme is “Local Communities and the State in Africa.” The workshop is targeted principally at university and college political science faculty residing in Africa, who have completed their Ph.D. and are in the early stages of their academic career. Up to 22 Africa-based fellows will be selected. Four advanced Ph.D. students residing in the United States will also be accepted. See: 2012 APSA Africa Workshop.

deltalaine Environmental Damage

A Visit to the Poorest Communities of the Delta

I had heard about Ikebiri long before visiting.  The Ikebiri Kingdom of the Southern Ijaw region in Bayelsa State is well-known for being at the epicenter of militancy.  The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) emerged not far away, and the area is considered to be one of the “hottest” in the Niger Delta.  It hosts the Nigerian Agip Oil Company, which locals blame for the destructive oil spills and gas flares that have killed local wildlife, poisoned drinking water, and ruined agricultural land. There have been several incidents of Ijaw women from Ikebiri demonstrating in the capital, and four years ago they threatened to march nude to Agip in protest of the lack of economic development in their villages.

To access Ikebiri from Yenagoa, we took an old speedboat an hour and a half towards the ocean. We passed two military checkpoints along the way that required us to raise our hands upon approaching, to show that we meant no harm and didn’t carry weapons. Although we were stopped for having a white person onboard, the soldiers were amiable. We maneuvered around fishermen in their canoes and made sure to avoid the nets that they were floating using empty water bottles. We waved to farmers along the banks as they dug up yams and cassava.  Families were living in thatched-covered homes perched on stilts, some constructed out of scrap wood and others out of reeds. Most of the women we saw were washing clothes or bathing themselves in the muddy water and children were fishing or diving for snails in their underwear.  It was a world apart from the middle- and upper-class neighborhoods that rely on the oil underground there.

Spending less than an hour at Ikebiri makes it clear why residents demand more economic development from the Nigerian government. Our first stop was at the health clinic, which services the thousands of people in the Kingdom.  From outside it looks new, but once inside we saw that the building was simply a skeleton.  There was nothing inside except for two dilapidated twin beds and a few foam pads on the floor; there were no medicine cabinets, furniture, nor machines of any type.  Wondering about machines is highly optimistic though since those machines would require electricity or a generator, which the clinic didn’t have. The only doctor on staff, a 23-year-old recent college graduate doing his National Youth Service, said that he performs surgeries using satchels of drinking water, but if those satchels run out the he is forced to boil river water.  When a human rights activist that I had traveled with asked about health problems related to the ongoing fire on a Chevron rig, which has been burning for almost three weeks, he seemed overwhelmed and mumbled that it was causing asthma and gastrointestinal issues with the patients.  Two older men interrupted to point out their red and pussing eyes.  I don’t know if these problems can be linked to oil pollution or the poor living conditions in the community in general, but hospitals need medicines, machines, and doctors, and this one didn’t have any of those things.

During our walk back to the boat, it suddenly dawned on me why this community had felt unusual.  The majority of the residents were children.  All around were children carrying babies, children washing babies, children feeding babies.  The children must have outnumbered the adults almost ten to one.  Additionally, the adults I did see were women, and almost half of those women were visibly pregnant.  Presumably the men must have left to go find work, since fishing and agriculture are no longer able to sustain families anymore, but somehow the community still managed to have astronomically high birth rates. Nigeria has a young population, with over 1/3 of the population under the age of 24, but this community must have had an even more dramatic youth bulge.

Each community we visited seemed to have even more noticeable poverty than the one before it. As the seat of the Kingdom, Ikebiri I receives the majority of resources, so that newer Ikebiri II was noticeably less developed.  Our final visit was to Otorgbene, an island community situated in muddy mangroves.  We went to ask about the thousands of fish that had washed up on shore in the last few days, probably as result of the ongoing rig fire. Residents told us that every morning they would wake up to find more and more fish on the banks, and that they didn’t know what they could do to stop it.  They told us about common health problems they experienced; foremost among them was malaria, a problem certainly predating the development of the oil industry.  They asked about the free mosquito nets they had been promised months ago by the federal government, and the investigator had to tell them that a state government official had been caught selling the nets for personal profit, and so there were no more left. They admitted they had been excited when our speedboat pulled up because a white person was on it (me); they thought we were arriving to deliver food and medical supplies.

We carefully made our way to where the Delta creek meets the ocean at the village of Kolu-Ama.  We went to see the smoke fumes caused by the Chevron fire.  The billows came up out of the trees and then disappeared into the sky.  We had passengers in our boat from a community that is in a legal battle with Kolu-Ama over land rights, so we didn’t want to approach too closely out of fear of provoking a conflict.  I was glad to see the Kolu-Ama community that I had heard about in recent weeks, the one in which women marched to the Chevron office in Warri and then to Government House in Bayelsa to demonstrate against the company’s failure to put out the fire. It is still burning.

On the ride back to Yenagoa, I chatted with a pleasant woman who had joined us for the day.  When she showed me a picture of her deceased son, I realized that she is the mother of the 20-year-old who was shot by police for refusing to pay a traffic bribe. It is well-known story here. The two of them were coming home from church, his mother tried her best to protect him during the altercation, and he was killed holding a bible in his hand.  The police involved were acquitted of all charges except mishandling a firearm. The parents have filed a civil suit and are being assisted by the human rights activist who had led the site visit.  I couldn’t help noting the irony that her husband helps head the Joint Task Force (JTF), which has had a very heavy hand when dealing with collective action in the Delta.  The very organization that was representing her in her case for her son’s murder is the same one that speaks out against rights abuses perpetrated by the JTF in the very areas we had visited. The Niger Delta is a complicated place.

To see photos from the site visit:

Gathering Data on Pollution in Ikebiri, Nigeria
deltalaine Occupy Nigeria

The Spillover Effect of Occupy Nigeria

The powerful emergence of Occupy Nigeria could have profound implications for the human rights mobilizations that previously existed here. There is an extensive women’s health movement that focuses on lowering maternal mortality rates through building women-only hospitals and conducting public health education campaigns (a darling cause of several First Ladies here). Child rights campaigners have aligned with government agencies to try to stop the use of child labor, namely families sending young children to work as vendors and beggars. Several civil society groups focus on improving accountability and transparency among state officials, a challenging feat in a country where corruption pervades the highest levels of the federal government. To a lesser extent, there is also a nascent LGBTQ rights campaign by groups such as The Initiative for Equal Rights that have received virulent criticism, creating an anti-gay rights legislative backlash over the last year. How will Occupy Nigeria, far more poignant and widespread than any of these other movements, impact previous human rights causes?

The strength of the anti-oil campaign in the Niger Delta has fluctuated since it emerged twenty years ago. It was at its strongest in the mid-1990s under the direction of Ken Saro-Wiwa, but it then faded after his execution and with the increased repression of the Abacha regime. After the implementation of the new democratic constitution in 1999, it revived itself when women in Rivers and Delta state became increasingly involved in largely peaceful protests against oil companies. The most well-known is the occupation of Chevron’s Escravos site by 600 Itsekiri and Ijaw women who halted production there for 10 days in the summer of 2002. The following January dozens of Ijaw women in Warri blocked a river leading to a proposed Naval base in protest against government neglect and as recently as 2010 Shell closed two flow stations for several days due to a women’s sit-in. In January 2012, women from the Kolu-Ama community protested by setting up a roadblock to a Chevron office, demanding the company put out an offshore platform fire.

Although these women’s anti-oil movement has been overshadowed by Occupy Nigeria in the last month, I think that ultimately the Niger Delta mobilization benefits from collective action for other causes because of a “spill over” effect.

deltalaine Occupy Nigeria

The Spillover Effect of Occupy Nigeria II

No social movement exists in isolation. Social movements constitute and are constituted by sympathetic and oppositional mobilizations. One movement can alter subsequent movements externally by affecting cultural and political conditions, and internally by changing the individuals, groups and norms within the later movement.  Organizations with hybrid identities – those whose organizational identities span the boundaries of two or more social movements – are especially vital to creating this spillover.  Thus, Occupy Nigeria is in part a product of the anti-oil movement and a comprising force of it as well.

Social movements cannot be labeled as “successes” or “failures” aside from their impact on policy.  Even when a movement is inactive like Occupy Nigeria, it may still function as a training ground for activists and as well as an engine for shaping ideologies. First, all collective action allows participants to “practice” resistance. Organizing for various related social changes over several decades is the rule rather than the exception for activists, as studies of the American civil rights and African independence movements illustrate. Not only do movement veterans continue to mobilize at higher rates than nonveterans for other causes throughout their lives, they carry their political lessons and perspectives that shaped their collective identity with them. An early social mobilization may act as a training ground for participants and leaders who bring their experiences and expertise to a later mobilization that may enjoy success as a result of their know-how. Additionally, an early mobilization not only teaches participants, it can also refine new leaders who become key players later on.  A low-level participant in an early movement may become a leader in a subsequent one, e.g. Malcolm X was a member of the anti-Korean War mobilization before leading the radical wing of the civil rights struggle. Such spillover in expertise furthers tactical innovation as well, as activists learn which methods of activism are most useful. The 2002 peaceful takeover in Escravos led to oil labor strikes by men in various sites of Delta State, as activists had learned that impeding production was the most powerful tool in gaining the attention of the state and oil companies.

When several different campaigns necessarily interact, even those that eventually end or become dormant, a stronger social movement community emerges. In Nigeria, the Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Center has programs for environmental protection, local conflict resolution, and human rights awareness campaigns, with the idea that all three causes help to improve the status of women in southern Nigeria.  Hybrid organizations such as Kebetkache are well-positioned to use inter-organizational networks in order to allow activists from one movement, e.g. environmentalism, to participate in another, e.g. peacebuilding.  This transfer of individuals reifies a collective identity and serves the organizational maintenance needs of the movement. This social movement community also gives activists a more structured way of staying involved in future campaigns.

Second, nearly all collective action shapes both internal and external ideologies to some extent. An early social mobilization may make intangible but important strides in altering participants’ consciousness about the salience of its cause and the causes of other movements. Even a mobilization that does not stimulate policy change can still heighten prospects about what sort of change is possible; the act of shared rights-claiming can raise expectations of future success.  This rights-claiming is also a process through which activists ossify their shared identity and relationship with one another, relationships that are pivotal in other mobilizations.

Aside from affecting the consciousness of movement members, even short-lived movements alter popular consciousness about reform on a larger scale. They have an ability to alter public discourse regarding their cause and frame the way outsiders view their issue. A series of challenges to the status quo, even challenges that have no direct effect on policy, may make some outside of the movement more open to change. Additionally, collective memory is such that contemporary ideology provides us with the lens through which we view the past. A later success for the same or similar cause may lead us to believe that a past “failed” movement was more “successful” than it really was. This can be seen in the way that history may heroize movement leaders, Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni rights mobilizations for example.

Lastly, for two social movements that co-exist simultaneously, the emerging salience of one may leave the struggling other with more time to devote to re-assessing strategy and resources. In other words, it can take the heat off a movement that has received backlash. LGBT activists in Nigeria have said that Occupy Nigeria has beneficial to them because it has shifted attention away from their cause as they still try to recover from the passage of a federal anti-gay marriage bill last year, one that enjoyed widespread support across the country. The Executive Director of the Improve Male Health Initiative has called Occupy Nigeria a “blessing” because it has bought the organization more time to shore up resources while attention is focused on the fuel crisis.

So, simply because Occupy Nigeria is not on the streets does not mean that it is not functioning.  Those who have “practiced” resistance will carry with them those experiences in future political activism. They constitute a larger community of activists with a collective identity. Ebbing overt activity and influence is sometimes helpful in giving movements the opportunity for re-assessing strategy, tactics, and collective identity. Moments of inactivity provide special impetus for movement-to-movement linkages as beleaguered activists and organizations pool their strength against powerful opponents. Even during periods of low activity, movements both endure and impact other movements through organizational forms that maintain culture and ideology.