With no backing from any organisation with deep pockets, ordinary Nigerians began a three-day movement against the continued existence of the notorious police unit popularly called SARS on Wednesday in Lagos.
The protesters—mainly youths—armed with their voices and cardboards marched to the Lagos State Police Command Headquarters in Ikeja as well as the state government’s House of Assembly to register their angst and displeasure with the extra-judicial activities of FSARS (the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad).
As the agitations continued in Ikeja the next day, with more youths mobilised, another group of youths, led by two of Nigeria’s popular celebrities, Runtown and Falz, stormed the streets of Lekki in solidarity and with the same purpose.
Their message was simple: “No reform. EndSARS,” a cardboard reads.
Taking place simultaneously in other states across Nigeria, including Abuja, Edo, and Delta states, these protests were a continuation of the online version triggered by the killing of a young man in Delta State on Saturday, October 3.
A video had appeared on social media showing a team of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigeria Police allegedly shooting and killing the young man.
According to reports, the incident was said to have occurred in front of Wetland Hotel, Ughelli in Delta State. Trending heavily on social media, the footage shows them speeding off in the victim’s vehicle – a white Lexus SUV.
Eyewitness accounts said the police operatives stole the victim’s car after they killed him. The incident sparked wide outrage nationwide with residents recounting ugly encounters with SARS and calling for outright disbandment of the unit, on social media.
A litany of human rights abuses
But Saturday’s occurrence was not the first time that SARS had killed, tortured, or harassed a Nigerian.
In 2019, Kolade Johnson was shot by officers with Nigeria’s anti-cultism police unit during a raid in Lagos, according to a statement from the Nigerian Police Force.
Members of the unit were searching for a suspect and at one point fired into the air. Johnson and a friend were leaving a soccer viewing centre in the area, where they had gone to watch a Premiership League match, when a stray bullet hit and killed him.
He died at the hospital while waiting for treatment. But more Nigerians have been victims before and after him.
“They held me by the trousers and when I protested and asked what my offence was, they all
descended on me and started to hit me. My shorts were torn as they were trying to search my back pocket, where I kept my wallet. They put me in handcuffs and threw me inside their car,” said Adetokunbo (not real name), a 22-year-old university student, who participated in a research by Amnesty International.
Adetokunbo was physically attacked by four SARS officers in the Okota area of Lagos in May 2017. The attack took place after SARS officers saw him with an iPhone and consequently accused him of being a Yahoo boy (Internet fraudster).
“They were beating and slapping me from different sides,” he recounts.
He said he told them to check his ID card or allow him to make a call, but his plea was unheeded to. The student was asked who his father was that he could use an iPhone which they could not afford.
Narrating his ordeal in the hands of the dreaded SARS, Adetokunbo said they pointed a gun to his head and said they could “waste” him and nothing would happen.
According to him, there were two other men in the car who were arrested, because the policemen saw a valid visa with them.
“They were making plans to travel abroad when they were arrested. The two men, who were also accused of being Internet fraudsters, were searched by the policemen and their ATM45 cards seized. They took N70, 000 from me and took the other two men to an ATM to withdraw money… They released the two men at Oworonsoki. They took me to 3rd Mainland Bridge and asked me to go,” Adetokunbo said.
Countless evidential tales of SARS’ cruelty have flooded Nigeria’s social media space. Just recently, another Nigerian reported his encounter on Twitter after N100, 000 was extorted from him and his friend.
He was accosted and made to get into their bus and was told he would be taken to SFU division Ikoyi, their station. After driving around for about 30 minutes to one hour he and his friend were asked to pay N1million.
He said when he asked if they were no longer taking them to the station to let them know their crime, the officer who sat in front (who seems to be their boss) got angry at the statement and further threatened them.
“These guys are real demons,” the youth said. “Seeing that we weren’t about to give them that money they ended up bringing it down to N100, 000 and they drove us to Zenith Bank along Osolo Way, opposite SOS home, where they made my guy get down from the bus to withdraw the money from the ATM. After they got the money they let us go.”
Origin of SARS, and deviation from course?
SARS is a controversial police unit in the Nigerian police force founded in 1992 by former police commissioner Simeon Danladi Midenda. The unit was originally meant to intervene in high-risk operations like robbery and kidnapping.
But it has now deviated from its course and morphed into a terror factor for the Nigerian populace, becoming notorious for extortion, framing up suspects, and even blackmail.
According to Amnesty International, the organisation targets money and property in their criminal activities as they regularly demand bribes, steal and extort money from criminal suspects and their families.
More so, they also target young persons. Some youths have argued that to be a young person in Nigeria today means to constantly live in fear of being harassed and molested by SARS or have your phones searched without a warrant.
Wearing dreadlocks or tinting your hair puts you on the arrest and extortion list of SARS. Young persons between the ages of 17 and 30 are at the most risk of arrest, torture, or extortion by the police unit.
About 20 youths who were interviewed in a report said SARS officers often look out for well-dressed young men, especially those in new cars. Often, these young men are accosted at roadblocks or on the streets and accused of being internet fraudsters, known as ‘Yahoo boys’ in local parlance.
The young men are taken to the station and are threatened with being charged for robbery, unless they agree to pay large sums of money for bail.
The cases are too many to count, however, Amnesty International documented 82 cases between January 2017 and May 2020.
The organisation said detainees in SARS custody have been subjected to a variety of methods of torture including hanging, mock execution, beating, punching, kicking, burning with cigarettes, water boarding, near-asphyxiation with plastic bags, forcing detainees to assume stressful bodily positions and sexual violence.
Why has Nigerian government reneged on directives against SARS?
Although the Lagos State Police Command dismissed Inspector Ogunyemi Olalekan, the policeman who shot Kolade Johnson dead last year, reports of SARS’ brutality and rights abuse are often treated with levity.
It appears that the unit has grown beyond the control of the government which has failed to curtail the excesses of SARS, despite a cornucopia of reported killings and violations which have led to outrage in the past and a protest in 2017 calling for an end to police brutality.
There have been several bans on the organisation. But none has worked. In December 2017, the then Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, banned the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police Force from conducting stop and search operations on roads except when necessary.
In what has become an annual ritual, the IGP had, in December 2017, June 2018, January 2019 and in February this year, made similar announcements to ban SARS and an immediate restructuring of the outfit.
Idris also promised to restructure and reposition the unit for effective service delivery. The then IGP’s order in June 2018 was also a ban on SARS from conducting stop and search operations on roads.
This was followed by another order in August 2018 for an immediate overhauling of SARS in compliance with a directive by then acting president, Yemi Osinbajo.
After another public outcry in January 2019, the current IGP ordered a total reorganisation of SARS the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) and ordered state police commissioners to command the squads in their locations.
President Muhammadu Buhari, the same year, directed the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ministry of Justice and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to work out modalities for the implementation of the report of the Presidential Panel on the Reform of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) within three months, reports say.
Again, in February this year, following the death of a player of Remo Stars Football club, Tiamiyu Kazeem, allegedly caused by operatives of SARS, Obada-Oko, Abeokuta, the IGP had announced the disbandment of SARS offices nationwide.
But despite these bans and promise of a reorganisation and psychological checks, FSARS has continued with its unbridled killings and harassments.
This explains why Nigerians are insisting on the total abolition of the feared police department despite another ban on FSARS’ operation on October 4, 2020.
“Everybody here is fighting for the same course,” Folarin Falana (Falz), a Nigerian artiste, said demanding an audience with the AIG of Zone Two Command at Thursday’s protest.
“This is not the first time we have heard of a directive being issued that SARS officials are not allowed to do searches anymore, they are not allowed to harass. But they still continue killing us. What is our guarantee that this issue will stop?”
A social media influencer, Pamilerin Adegoke told journalists that they want nothing from the government than to end SARS, and also that they do not want a reformation.
He said the police keeps promising to reform them (SARS) for the past three years, but after each promise comes more killings.
“We want them to just end the whole thing. They said they are protecting us, how? We can’t drive nice cars anymore. We can’t wear nice clothes because we are scared of our fellow men killing us. If you can end this SARS, we’re good,” Adegoke said, visibly upset.
Does this government have the capacity to end SARS?
Fayoade Adegoke, a police officer who said he was representing the AIG of Zone 2 Headquarters, Oniru, told the protesting crowd that the AIG had gone for a meeting over the SARS matter, and assured the protesters that the issue would be addressed.
He said the Inspector-General of Police has addressed the issue, and the guidelines have been issued out to all police senior officers.
“This issue you have come for has become an open one and will be addressed. The directive this time is very emphatic, the IG’s directive is very emphatic and there is no police unit that will go against the IG’s directive,” the officer said.
But Gbenga Sesan, executive director, Paradigm Initiative, strongly believes that the fresh directive given by Mohammed Adamu, the current IGP, will amount to nothing like the previous bans in “2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019.”
According to Sesan, when a solution, for which the Special Anti-Robbery Squad was established in 1992, becomes a problem, then you can be sure that it has become bigger than the promoters of that “solution”.
“This government has demonstrated that it has no capacity to manage this dilemma because it is only a fraction of the larger brutality that comes from Nigeria’s security agencies — police, military, secret service, all of them,” he told BDSUNDAY.
“Unfortunately, the structures set up to protect citizens have become private armies of political demi-gods and as long as they serve that purpose, their harm to citizens will only be met with empty words to placate the people,” he further said.
These protests are the first time Nigerians would come out en masse to fight back after one was held in 2017 with no impact. It would also be the first time they would show determination, desire a commitment to continue until something concrete is done.
Asked if the protest would yield results, Sesan said the only thing that is guaranteed with the government is that only persistent and costly public outcry will force their hands
Why SARS has remained untamed
SARS is like a scar that has refused to heal. A plague that has defied variegated interventions and faux reformations, with the unit captured on social media going back to the very criminal undertakings, they were banned from.
Nigerians believe that SARS has remained untamed because the bigwigs in the police department are complicit. A Twitter user Silvanus Divine Ugoh (@DivineUgoh) said if the ‘ogas’ were not in full support [of] the unethical personnel, the SARS team would have been purged out.
Based on video pieces of evidence and the consequent laxity of the authorities to curb SARS, some argue that the department is being used to fund the police, giving their thirst to extort huge sums of money.
“The police authorities empower SARS to rob Nigerians. This madness started with police officers going on indiscriminate raids in the night [and] packing anyone they see and then demand bail. It then morphed into full-blown kidnap for ransom using SARS both during the day and night,” a source said.
A prominent online influencer, Henry Shield, said the confidence of SARS operatives to continue breaking the law, harassing and shooting innocent citizens comes from the assurance that ‘ogas’ [bosses] are involved.
In his response to an email, and citing various evidence of “the evil that SARS is”, Sesan said the unit has remained untamed because of impunity.
Extrapolating from previous occurrences, he said what has happened over the years is that the officers chill and then return with a vengeance when the ban is “forgotten” or overtaken with other national issues.
“So, the main reason SARS will continue to be a problem is that from the Inspector-General to the Presidency, every form of “action” you see now is performative, similar to how a criminal promises never to repeat his offence only because he got caught this time,” he said.
“It has remained untamed because those benefiting are from the very top. The baby terrorists on the streets are only carrying out the instructions of the big boys up there,” Deji Adeyanju, convener, ConcernedNIG, bluntly stated.
Adeyanju further told BDSUNDAY that the recent ban would not change anything, noting that this is the fourth time they have been banned and nothing had changed.
He revealed that they met the IG of police over a year ago when Kolade Johnson was extrajudicially killed in Lagos and the same promises he is making today were the same ones he made to them then.
On whether the public outcry would governments’ hands this time, Adeyanju said we currently do not have a reasonable government that listens to the cry of the people because if we do have one; things would not have gotten this bad.
“What does it take to stop the extrajudicial killings of innocent citizens by this anti-people unit of the Nigeria police force? Absolutely nothing. The political will to do the right thing is just not there. And it’s tragic and sad indeed,” he said.
How SARS affects the economy
Though it is largely a human rights problem, the excesses of SARS could be taking a toll on Nigeria’s economy.
Some encounters narrated by victims on social media during the heat of the outburst following the Ughelli incident, involved Bolt Nigeria, a taxi company, where victims were picked up during trips with the drivers alleged to be complicit.
In some cases, the drivers themselves were victims. “On 25 September, we received a support request from a passenger who claimed that while on a ride with his friend, their Bolt driver had been complicit in an incident where unidentified SARS official harassed and collected N100, 000 from them,” Bolt said in a statement on its Twitter page.
The driver indicated that in the course of the journey, officers of SARS flagged down his vehicle and searched the phones of the passengers after which they allegedly found incriminating materials on the phone. He was then instructed to drive them to a police station in Surulere.
The private transport company said the driver maintains that he had no prior knowledge of the incident and was not working as an accomplice as there was no way he could have refused to halt his vehicle when SARS officers flagged him down.
But that did not stop Nigerians from deleting the company’s mobile app from their phones and sharing videos of it online to avoid falling prey. For Bolt Nigeria, this could mean a fall in its market share.
The country has been battling insecurity for many years without significant success. Experts say SARS has contributed significantly to the climate of fear that threatens the spirit of innovation in Nigeria, and the latter keeps investors away, or forces them to factor in the risk that hurts the bottom-line.
In the full lockdown, police officers were pictured destroying small businesses in Lagos, a state that generates most of its IGR from MSMEs. Some officers also broke into a beer parlour and destroyed lots of goods in a bid to enforce the lockdown.
“Consider how much individuals and businesses have lost to SARS operatives who literally subjected them to kidnapping and extortion,” Sesan earlier told BDSUNDAY.
Also speaking to the reporter, Mark Essien, CEO of Hotels.ng said the world is digitalising and the future of industrialisation lies in technical skills that can be learnt with a laptop.
Essien noted that SARS is targeting people who are learning and working at these skills. They are destroying the foundation of what will be Nigeria’s biggest economic activity in the future.
According to him, the police and SARS are constantly bringing bad news on the media about them brutalising people, and performing extra-judicial killings. No reasonable investors would invest in a place with such news.
“The ‘techies’ who are affected by this are also very vocal on social media—and the news is getting out really quickly about how SARS is behaving. The foreign investors are reading this news and factoring it into their risk assessment of Nigeria. SARS should simply be ended,” Essien said.
NASS lends its voice
Last Wednesday, the Nigerian senators joined their voices to the national outrage against the extra-judicial activities of FSARS.
The lawmakers said officers of the unit must be made responsible for their actions. Senator Remi Tinubu (Lagos Central – APC), raised a point of concern over the activities of the unit.
She condemned some of the high-profile abuse cases that FSARS officers have been involved in and listed a host of prayers for lawmakers to pass, to rein in the excesses of the unit.
“Despite assurances by the IGP that there will be reform of FSARS, Nigerians are still daily being abducted and extorted under duress with no mechanism in place for complaints and resolution,” the lawmaker complained.
In his contribution, Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege (Delta Central – APC), expressed concern that it is now difficult to tell the difference between FSARS officers and actual criminals because of the way they operate.
Analyst, Bayo Salami said though the security may have helped in checking crime, they had gone outside their jurisdiction. He said the unit was now a threat to Nigerians, especially the youth they were meant to protect.
“Even though they have helped in checking crime, as you can see, those people are now criminals themselves, committing all sorts of atrocities on a daily basis. I support those calling for the scraping of FSARS, they have gone out of their jurisdiction.
“Even if you reform them, the problem is that there is nobody checking them; they operate as if they are not answerable to anybody,” Salami said.
Protesters can only get SARS’ reform not outright disbandment – Mba
Despite the stringent calls for #EndSARS by many Nigerians, Frank Mba, a deputy commissioner of police, and Force Public Relations Officer (FPRO), said the best the protesters would get was reform and not outright disbandment of the unit.
Mba, who spoke on a television programme Friday, said considering the amount of resources spent on their training and the crucial role they play in society, it would be counter-productive to disband the unit.
According to the DCP, many people are motivated by different reasons in their protests, alleging that some people may be clamouring for disbandment of SARS to pave the way for them to ply their evil trade unhindered.
Mba pointed to the exploits of SARS operatives in foiling bank robberies and checking other crimes such as banditry, kidnapping in some volatile parts of the country.
“Those who are desperate for public validation or to be social media influencers, they are the people who are carrying out the #EndSARS protest. If anybody thinks the protest for #EndSARS will mean total disbandment, that may not be possible,” he said.
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