What is SARS and How the ENDSARS Protest Started in Nigeria

What is SARS?

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was a Nigerian Police Force unit created in late 1992 to deal with crimes associated with robbery, motor vehicle theft, kidnapping, cattle rustling, and firearms.

While it was credited with having reduced brazen lawlessness in its initial years, the police unit was later accused of evolving into the same problem it had been designed to stop: a criminal enterprise that acts with impunity.

Amnesty International issued a report that it said had documented at least 82 cases of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial executions by SARS officers between January 2017 and May 2020. The victims, Amnesty said, were predominantly men aged 18 to 25, from low-income backgrounds and vulnerable groups. The Nigerian government’s failure to address this problem, Amnesty said, showed “an absolute disregard for international human rights laws and standards.”

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The critics include Fulani Kwajafa, the former police commissioner who founded SARS. In an interview with the BBC, he disavowed what it had become, saying the unit had been “turned into banditry.”

The Reason Behind The #ENDSARS Protest in Nigeria.

Africa’s most populous country and biggest oil producer has been convulsed by protests that started with anger over police brutality and have now broadened, drawing worldwide attention.

The catalyst seemed to be an Oct. 3 video that appeared to show the unprovoked killing of a man by black-clad SARS officers in Ughelli, a town in southern Delta state. Nigerian officials said the video, which was widely shared over social media, was fake and arrested the person who took it inciting even more anger.

Demonstrations erupted in Lagos, the nation’s biggest city, and elsewhere around the country, driven by calls from people demanding that the government dismantle SARS.

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The decentralized movement coalesced on social media, where people were using the hashtag #EndSARS and sharing images of police brutality. The hashtag spread internationally, with prominent actors and sports figures from across Africa to Europe and the United States sharing the posts.

Issues That Fueled The Protest.

The anger of the protesters increased after the deadly suppression of a peaceful demonstration in Lagos, compounded by a 24-hour curfew decree and the deployment of Nigeria’s military forces to quell further demonstrations.

The powerful role in the protests played by young Nigerians and their use of social media to share grievances turn the movement into a much broader crisis for the government. Half the country’s population is under the age of 19.

The protests morph into a much larger critique about Nigeria, everything from police reform to security to extrajudicial killings, this protest was fueled by young people and an outspoken Nigerians in diaspora, the movement become “a platform to talk about a host of challenges.”

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The movement bears striking similarities to demonstrations in the United States amid the outcry over police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The protesters keep saying police brutality cannot stand, and at the same time the police are underfunded and poorly equipped to get a better Nigeria, we need better police.

Police brutality isn’t the only issue fueling the anti-government sentiment. Nigeria’s stagnant economy, which relies heavily on oil exports that were crippled by the coronavirus pandemic, has become a major issue.

Anger over suspected misuse of government funds during the pandemic was also an element of popular anger. In one case that received widespread publicity, the Bureau of Public Procurement data showed the Health Ministry had spent $96,000 on 1,808 ordinary face masks about $53 each.

Complaints about government corruption are a longstanding grievance. The country is regarded as highly vulnerable to corruption, ranking in the bottom fourth of an annual 180-country best-to-worst list by Transparency International.

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Even before the pandemic upended life, Nigeria’s people had a dim view of their politicians. A Pew Research Center survey conducted a few years ago showed only 39 percent of Nigerians were satisfied with how democracy was working, while 60 percent said they were not. Asked if they thought “elected officials care what ordinary people think,” six in 10 said that was not true in Nigeria.