The Immediate Causes of the EndSARS Protests

0

Established in the early ’90s – precisely 1992 – during the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida regime, the now-disbanded police unit, Special Anti-Robbery Squad acronymed SARS whose duties, among other things, included to fight against sophisticated and organised crimes like: robbery, kidnapping, assassination and sundry criminal activities, soon fell from grace as it became associated with brutality, torture, rape, abuses and exploitation against which the youth protested in October 2020 from Lagos and Abuja to virtually all parts of the country including Abia – mostly Umuahia and Aba.

The reasons for which SARS became unpopular among Nigerian youths culminating in the most popular mass protest and civil disobedience of the 21st century in Nigeria and Abia State can be seen in its remote and immediate causes.

EndSARS: What Are The Remote Causes? We will have a better grasp of the whole matter of course when we look at first the background subsisting age-long reasons for which the protests happened; here are some of the reasons that date back to even before the founding of SARS and which made the squad become public enemy instead of friend.

1)Recruitment
Nigerian police, SARS included, have a bad recruitment, even selection process. In recruiting citizens who are to bear arms in defence of lives and protection of properties no serious background or security check is carried out on such individuals, the intending recruits – not even a mental test is done to ascertain if psychologically such persons are mentally good for the job or whether or not they have a past criminal record. In Nigeria, it could be strongly said that majority of those who end up in the force (same for SARS) did not join service out of their love and passion but mostly out of joblessness or frustration. Given, as it were, that no background check is run on intending recruits, chances are that criminal elements may get selected which when it happens results in criminals fighting crime. As with SARS, nothing better explains away a situation where a special branch of the police could extort money from the citizens and youth; tag same as internet fraudsters (Yahoo Yahoo Boys); profile people as criminals for wearing dreadlocks, having and branding tattoos or piercings on their bodies, wearing earrings and all that; pick up people at random and charge them with crime they knew nothing about or are not associated with, even engaging in illicit activities like organ trading as SARS agents got accused of among other things!

When a state hires in her rank people of questionable background, the result is what we saw with SARS – brutality, rape, assault, extra judicial killings and the like which were themselves met with the statewide protest of October 2020.

2)Lack of Coordination of SARS Operations and Activities.
Another remote reason why SARS became almost a state within a state leading to the protest was because its activities were not brought under the control of state commands of the force. For example, SARS agents were for the most part seen as federal agents or “IG boys” (Inspector General of Police Boys, as they were called) and for this could not take orders from superior officers attached to their various areas of stationing. Soon, SARS decided which operations to embark on and which not to, without any regulation and coordination as they acquired larger-than-life status, a Gestapo of sorts. The centralisation of that unit, among other things, created operational problems given that the state government and its state command of the force have nearly no form of control over SARS and its agents or operatives who operated how they saw fit even against the cultural and relative milieux and ethoses of the people hence the resistance themed EndSARS or EndSARSNow.

ALSO READ  See what Anambra Assembly Asked Landlords To Construct to minimize flooding

3)Corruption in the Force
There’s no gainsaying that the Nigeria Police – of which SARS is a part – is one of the most corrupt in the world. With brazen impunity, police in Nigeria extort money from poor innocent and indigent citizens and so since SARS was built on such foundation it was never going to be any different after all. Police in Nigeria take bribe from even criminals, charge money for bail, extort motorists and other road users in broad daylight. SARS, founded on this platform, joined the foray of making money off the innocent which can only result in the kind of protest we saw during the EndSARS days. SARS for example conducted along the major express roads so many stop and search exercises culminating in abuses even when such was never their core mandate. It got to a point new vehicles and owners became SARS targets. SARS became “lucrative” that regular officers envied them and some who could not help it, we are told, paid bribes to be allowed to join the unit!

4)High-handed Operation Style
Police and SARS brutality, intimidation and victimisation are not new; nationally or internationally, SARS is famed for brutality such that by 2016, Amnesty International had done a report on its activities. SARS agents brutalised many a victim in Abia State for no just cause. The torture ranged from beating, clobbering and subjection to unlawful detention and punishment even threat to kill and mock executions in most cases. The language “I will finish you!” was common among agents, even the abusive “bloody civilian(s)” was used against citizens for just being citizens, it was only a matter of time before such citizens protest hence the EndSARS streets protest.

5)Poor Police Institution
Nigeria went to democracy in 1999 without democratizing first her police force. No special training and retraining package were designed to help the Force and its officers grasp the basics and functioning of a democracy and so the police, SARS included, instead of being civil and friendly carried a militant policing approach it had long acquired during years of military rule into a purported democracy and this soon affected those recruited into the Force since after 1999 who had no guideline and code than to tag along abusive senior officers. SARS, we should not forget was never a creation of the people but that of a military regime!

6) Underfunding
To say that the Nigerian police and all its units are underfunded is to say the sun rises in the east. Inadequate funding had led the police force (this includes SARS too) into doing all sorts of things including lending their weapons out to robbers, if they do not use same for robbery and heist themselves. SARS agents were soon making money off their many illegal operations and saw same as a way of making up for their paltry welfare and condition of service. It is not to make case for the inadequacies of SARS but the fact that if men and officers of that unit just like those of the entire force die in active service no compensation is given to those they left behind does not boost morale, if anything it made matters worse that SARS agents saw wisdom in extortion, the peak of which led to nationwide resistance that is EndSARS Protest.

ALSO READ  Ndikelionwu Marks colourful Ikeji Festival

7)Lack of Discipline
It bears repeating that the Nigerian police lack discipline. Promotion and transfer do not follow the right order. Many times officers of the force and by extension agents of the unit had got away with all sorts of crime even with killing innocent people. A certain SARS commandant of Awkuzu SARS becam notorious for their power over life and death of citizens. In Aba for example, Aba North SARS, located within government facility at Local Government Council Headquarters with a court present, turned their office to a place of torture where bribe in the neighbourhood of hundreds of thousands of naira was taken from the Aba poor. Even to date, mention is not made of Aba North SARS, a notorious SARS detachment located in Aba, in the same manner mention is made of Awkuzu SARS. A lot happened because the Force and its unit lack discipline.

The Immediate Causes of the Protest

From its faulty foundation, recruitment, abuse of power, torture, exploitation, extrajudicial killings, poor institution, lack of coordination and so many more SARS had other issues which triggered its rejection by the populace, including isolated cases. These immediate causes are the reason which sparked the protest given the prevailing remote causes. The immediate causes are highlighted thusly:

1) Internet Campaign/Social Media Effect.

With the hashtag EndSARS or EndSARSNow (#EndSARS or #EndSARSNow) Nigerian twitter space was agog in 2017 when following increased killings and mock executions by the special squad Nigerians began to tweet a campaign for SARS to be disbanded. The spontaneity of the tweets, retweets and online campaign was much that by 2020 28 million tweets were harvested at the peak of the whole protest. Soon, Nigerian diasporans joined the campaign and it became an awareness that from internet spaces the youth occupied civic and governance spaces. Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, Abeokuta were lit up thence to Aba, Umuahia, Onitsha and virtually every part of the country like a domino!
The networking on social media was even powerful in Abia State that a WhatsApp group under the theme “#ENDSARSPROTEST-Abia” was created in October of 2020 through which protesters organised, planned and staged peaceful protests in Umuahia and Aba shortly before SARS was disbanded.

2)Isolated/Unreported Cases of Abuse

There were many un/reported cases of abuse carried out by SARS agents recently in Aba by 2019 which made worsened and perhaps righteous the anger of youths so much so that when the protest began many signed up. By 2019, SARS agents together with the military scaled up their profiling operations against Aba residents that many were publicly shaved for keeping shaggy hair or dreads, and their skins altered for wearing tattoos. These isolated cases no doubt set on collision the youths and the squad’s agents ventilated through the protest. SARS prior to the October protest were combing drinking joints, betting houses, hotels and motels rounding up some youths in an unprecedented manner and so this heightened emotion when EndSARS protest came to Abia.

ALSO READ  Ohanaeze Ndigbo lauds Soludo's two years in office

3)Lack of Political Willpower to Scrap or Reform SARS
For over four times from, say, 2015 to 2020 SARS was scrapped, reformed or even disbanded only for worse to occur. Even the vice president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo once said SARS would be reformed and yet did the squad continue to exist and do its worst. It was only a reform in name as SARS became reformed only nominally as Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, acronymed F-SARS. This did not meet the demands of the youth in Abia who felt that only a protest could end SARS and not government policy.

4)BlackLivesMatter Campaign

We live in a global world and events in say, India can attract certain reactions in Nigeria and vice versa. The EndSARS protest that happened in Nigeria from Lagos to Abuja down to places like Aba and Umuahia followed the protest in America after George Floyd, a black, was killed by one Chauvin, a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota of USA. Watching Americans take to the streets chanting solidarity amid global appeal, support and sympathy it will not be a bad idea to achieve same here under the circumstances were. When in February 22, 2020 SARS agent pushed out a soccer athlete, Tiyamiyu Kazeem who plays for Remo Stars FC out of a moving vehicle leading to his death the last straw that broke the camel’s back might have been seen! From that incident to Warri, Benin elsewhere issues started cropping up leading to the protests and when they happened, the protests were well-received globally putting severe pressure on governments – both state and federal. Abia youths who were equally victims of SARS brutality tagged along, it was known as EndSARS Aba.

5)The Lockdown Killings
During the lockdown killings by police officers of innocent Abians including at Oruruka, Ohafia and few other issues were condemned by many agencies including Foundation for Environmental Rights Advocacy and Development, FENRAD a pro-democracy and human rights advocacy group. Nothing significant was done to get perpetrators prosecuted and so when the EndSARS happened it was easy for the Abia youth to identify with it given the reported cases for which justice was not served. More to it, the EndSARS as it happened to be was equally during the same lockdown so security analysts and conflict experts, including FENRAD through its release warned of any likely mayhem that could follow such killings.
Signed,,
Comrade Nelson Nnanna Nwafor

FENRAD Executive Director

Aba.Abia state, Nigeria

Emails: [email protected], [email protected]
[email protected]

Twitter: @FENRADNigeria

Website: www.fenrad.org.ng

For more information or to request an interview, please contact us on: +2348033383708,07062949232.

What are your thoughts?

Discover more from Odogwu Blog

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading