He had never been brutalized by Nigerian police until last Sunday. A new wave of protests began in early October, with protesters denouncing the brutality of the Special Anti-Theft Brigade (SARS), a Nigerian police unit operating in civilian clothing. I helped talk about the #endSARS in real time. Last weekend, I tweeted about the occasion we were attending in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, and shared our location. We were walking to the police headquarters in Abuja when police began spraying water cannons and throwing tear gas canisters at us to disperse the crowd.
The police ambushed my friend and me, picked up my phone and crashed it to the ground. I wasn’t aggressive, but that didn’t stop them from beating me, rising up at me and beating me. I said my last prayers. I think my life was going to end. It made me realize the danger of a formula that gave savages the right to be neglected.
The police moved me and my friend to the police headquarters and we met with his superior, who told us that we were lucky enough for the assembly to take a position day and not at night, because if it was night we would have been killed and erased everything. lines of our existence. According to Amnesty International, another 10 people have been killed and many have been injured so far in the protests.
The alarm was sounded about our disappearance on social media, and one of the things that stopped us that day was Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, the organizer of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, who came here to police headquarters and insisted on our release. He was also a dissident cop who objected to the remedy we received. If Dr. Oby hadn’t come to pick us up, and there wouldn’t have been that single voice of explanation why in the police, our obituaries would now be on the news. .
The challenge is institutional. SarS and the officials who paint there are supported by the police hierarchy, there is no sanction for any crime committed through the police and they are reluctant to punish one of their own, they do not need to settle for rot in the system. Over the years, police have been able to kill innocent citizens without justice, and police brutality has a culture here. A previous Amnesty International report earlier this year documented at least 82 cases of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial executions through SARS between January 2017 and May 2020, challenged him several times on the streets and nothing happened, political leadership has stopped listening to the masses. We occupied Nigeria in 2012 and calls have been made to dissolve SARS since 2017. What is happening now is a long-awaited outburst of indignation.
On 11 October, the same day of the attack, the Nigerian government announced that SARS would be dissolved, this is the fourth time the government has announced the dissolution of SARS. This time there is a replacement, but it’s just a Call and Acronym Replacement, special weapons and equipment, or SWAT. It’s like an old wine in a new bottle.
The current occasions of #endSARS stand out because there is no explained leader: each and every citizen is at the forefront of this event. The government has not expressed this grievance. This pandemic has made Nigeria vulnerable, and even before, 40% of Nigerians lived below the poverty line. During the closure, other people said they would be killed by COVID-19 than by hunger.
People were waiting for a channel to reveal how they felt, now it’s an opportunity to protest against police brutality and express their sadness by a formula that has never cared about them. These have been years of poor governance, nepotism and widespread corruption. , and the government has refused to acknowledge these concerns.
The government will have to recognize valid outrage and not undermine it. You will have to brazenly condemn the perpetrators and fully compensate all the victims. I hope there’s a security that there won’t be a prestige quo. This is a generation that needs to do it, things otherwise, it needs to deviate from the sleing of its parents, who will no longer settle for the old governance formula. The exchange of concepts across foreign borders has shown us new tactics to combat formula and new tactics to achieve political prestige quo sit down.
This time, other people still defied the threats and yet defied bullying. Now they’re on the streets and the government is afraid.
As Suyin Haynes says