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#EndSARS: Have our children gone mad?, by Azu Ishiekwene

The Eagle Online by The Eagle Online
October 16, 2020
in Column, Featured
6 min read
6
Atiku: An omen worse than defeat, by Azu Ishiekwene
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You’ll have to go back nearly a decade to find anything resembling what has been happening across the country in the last one week.

Back then, civil society deeply offended by trillions of naira stolen by government officials and campaign donors to the ruling party in the name of petrol subsidy mounted protests that rocked the country and nearly brought President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to its knees.

As it turned out, nearly didn’t kill that bird. It, however, triggered #BringBackOurGirls, which sent waves of protests, as far away as the US White House, against the cavalier way that Jonathan’s government handled the kidnap of over 200 school girls from their dormitory in daylight in Chibok.

Yet, even the protests at that time are only a shadow of what has been happening in the country since last week. #ENDSARS is what happens when deep-seated injustice and oppression meet single-minded courage and determination.

It’s hard to tell which of the stories that sparked the protests is more heart-breaking. The story of the woman whose brother was killed by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad and whose grief was compounded by SARS men demanding sex before the young man’s corpse would be released? The corpse was released after a radio announcer intervened. But the victim’s mother died while waiting.

What about the case of young Aborisade who was forced to get off an inter-state bus because he was carrying an iPhone and after the SARS men didn’t find enough money in his account, framed him as a robbery suspect?

Or the case of Ifeoma Abugu, a young lady that had just completed her national youth service who was arrested in place of her fiancé, sexually molested in detention and left to die in the cell? Or Tiyamiu Kazeem who was stopped by SARS men and as they tried to take him into custody fell out of the SARS van and was run over by a moving car?

Have we forgotten the cases of dozens of young men humiliated, detained and brutalised for their dreadlocks, tattoos, long beards and avantgarde dressing? Or the filmmaker who escaped death by the skin of his teeth for carrying props meant for an action movie?

Even if you overlook the trauma of the survivors, which is quite a mountain to climb, the 82 persons who according to an Amnesty International report were killed extra-judicially by SARS in the last three years present unique stories of ruthlessly aborted dreams. While each affected family has borne its own grief in its own unique way, not a single perpetrator has been brought to book.

Ochuko, the young man whose shooting in Ughelli last week sparked the latest protests, barely escaped with his life. It doesn’t matter whether it was SARS or “Operation Delta Safe” that pulled the trigger: They’re cousins of the same deadly heritage.

And that’s precisely the point: how long that heritage would be endured, tolerated and even enabled.

As the protests spread, former Inspector General of Police Suleiman Abba, shed a few tears, not for the victims of the heinous crimes and brutality, but for SARS. He said we’re going to miss SARS so badly, that we would regret the day they were redistributed. By the time he was done messaging, I couldn’t help a sense of relief that he failed to get the All Progressives Congress nomination to run for Senate in Jigawa. That’s how he would have been talking in the Senate?

Abba doesn’t get it. He won’t. In his 30-year career in the police force apart from his tour of duty as aide-de-camp to General Sani Abacha’s wife, his withdrawal of the police orderly attached to former Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, and the day Dr. Reuben Abati announced his appointment as IGP in a short press statement, you’ll have to scratch your head to remember that he rose that high in the force. He apparently just loved to leave rotting dead bodies in the force exactly where they were buried, with a big face mask over his nose.

Abba is not the only one who thinks that we might yet send roses to SARS for dismantling them. I’ve heard some say that while SARS operating in most parts of the North are good guys, the ones in Lagos and a number of the states in the South (and especially the Southerners among them), are the bad guys. Why dismantle the good guys with the bad?

Why? When there’s an epidemic of rape, the way to save potential victims is not to try to find which likely perpetrators are wearing tribal marks or to use a measuring tape down below.

There’s no question that there are good policemen and I have met a few of them in my lifetime. The question is whether the culture of brutality in the force – and indeed in the security services – is not too deeply entrenched to make any cosmetic changes useless and endanger even the few good ones.

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Even in the midst of the protests, policemen were still slashing the car tyres of social crusader Aisha Yesufu and those of other protesters; they were teargassing them and hosing them with water cannons when the Fire Service couldn’t find enough water to quench the fire set to the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, just next door.

Is that the force you redeem with a sermon or save by preaching like IGP Mohammed Abubakar Adamu did that they shouldn’t be inspecting people’s phones for the heck of it?

What the protesters are asking for – and what the country now deserves – is root-and-branch change; not tokenism by vested interests behaving as if they have been asked to donate their virility.

The good thing is that no matter the distractions and efforts to obfuscate things, the protesters are largely clear about what they want. And they know that the arm-twisting to make them relent is worse than giving SARS another welcoming party.

The protesters don’t want government money because they’ve seen protest leaders paid off and nothing changed. They don’t want a “seat at the table”, because they have seen White Papers on police reform turn brown and things only got worse.

And yes, they’re not burning tyres or looting shops because they have also seen genuine protests hijacked in the past and watched reactionaries use such incidents to compromise or blackmail demands for action.

They have learnt from the mistakes of their long-suffering parents and at least learnt a lesson or two from their striking teachers who were either lied to or who lied to themselves that change is best served piecemeal. They are charting their own course by having their skin in the game. They are levying themselves to pay for food, drinks and music as they keep the protests going.

While Tunde Lemo, Chairman of the start-up fintech, Flutterwave, was apparently away to ease himself, for example, the staff in his company donated the first N2million to fund the protests and gave details on social media to the last kobo how other donations came in and were being spent. Bundle Africa, another fintech, did the same thing.  Anyone with a morsel’s worth of brain would know that all the talk about some people hijacking these companies to transfer illicit funds is nonsense.

Some of the best and smartest young people I’ve ever known – including a number of them with good-paying jobs and well-off parents – were out there on the streets, leveraging technology, social connections and their place as citizens of the world – to press for fundamental change. No PDP, no APC.

We may dislike the inconvenience caused by the road blockades. Or be embarrassed like Governor Abdullahi Ganduje whose appointee posted a snide remark against President Muhammadu Buhari. I honestly didn’t know that Ganduje still had the capacity to be embarrassed after all the dollar stories.

But after years of watching us play the ostrich, our children appear to be telling us the game is up. They’re not mad. And in this particular case, SARS is not even a predator police. A predator hardly wastes its prey. SARS is worse than predatory police: it has been infiltrated by a criminal gang that has bought the right of access and transformed the force in its own brutal image.

Georgia faced a similar problem. In an article in the June 11, 2020 edition of Foreign Policy, former Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvilli, said when he took over as president in 2004, “Law enforcement agencies functioned like criminal gangs. Officers demanded bribes, trafficked in narcotics and weapons and worked for political and business elites as mercenary security force.”

Saving the fruit basket by removing the bad apples was not an option. He scrapped the system completely in addition to changing “the mentality of a broken, cynical, and fearful society.”

The process of creative destruction, according to him, involved dismantling the legacy of politicised policing, disbanding the traffic police, and replacing them with an entirely new force with no background in law enforcement and therefore no ties to the old corrupt network. It’s the culture, stupid!

New recruits were subjected to competitive exams and courses in the criminal procedure code, while they were taught new skills in persuasion, negotiation and mediation. The system had to be rebuilt from ground up.

Their stations were pulled down and every single one rebuilt with transparent glass frames. There was no longer any hiding place. The net result was a 66 percent decline in violent crimes and over 50 percent drop in the overall crime rate. At the end of Saakashvilli’s presidency in 2013, law enforcement ranked among Georgia’s most respected institutions with 87 percent approval rating.

It’s fair to argue that Georgia’s population is just about the size of a local government in Lagos and that what works there may not work here. That’s OK, but why not take the principle and start by truly decentralising the police and making them accountable? Redistributing SARS officers amongst the regular police force and throwing more money at the problem won’t solve it.

And the lesson about change by band aid is that it only makes the wound fester. Those resisting fundamental root-and-branch change in the police are not doing so out of benevolence. They want just about enough change that maintains their current privileges and nothing more. And they would do anything, including blackmailing protesters and spreading lies and hysteria, to get what they want.

Only creative destruction can produce something lasting. It remains to be seen if this moment will bring it about.

. Ishiekwene is MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview.

Tags: #EndSARSBundle AfricaFlutterwaveGoodluck JonathanMuhammadu BuhariNigeriaProtests
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Comments 6

  1. David .O says:
    3 months ago

    Slowly and slowly, more like the earth is moving toward a calamitous end, like the slow motion picture in tragic movie, competing on the hundred metre track with a slug, waiting for who will become victorious.
    The journey of a thousand miles begins with a step, but in this Lagos traffic, you’ll have to begin in ten steps for the journey of a hundred mile. Being the unfortunate cause of different “Traffic Babies”, flights missing, delayed contracts, among many others. But we cannot rule out the fact that it contributes largely to our economy through the sales of edibles like sausages, plantain chips, fruits and many others.
    The Lagos traffic has carved a niche for itself and is already an unofficial last name for Nigeria’s centre of excellence, Lagos. Anywhere in the world where traffic is mentioned, thoughts don’t travel for before the almighty Lagos is mentioned.
    Although couples have been joined in holy matrimony in the Lagos traffic, dream children have been delivered, eight days babies, christened among many pleasurable moments, but does this count as a blessing or a cause?
    Human lives have been lost to the dire state of the Lagos traffic, so have medical matters become worse, not even leaving out how it affects students, workers and even government officials in carrying out their day to day activities.
    It’s really time to evaluate, restrategise and weigh our options from moving out of the horrible state that the Lagos traffic has put us through. The government and professional bodies are being called upon to please act swiftly to this cankerworm eating deep into the fabrics of our society.

    Adeyemi David. O
    PgD/PA/005

    Reply
  2. Odedina Damilola says:
    3 months ago

    The creation of SARS; Its Original Mandate and Modus Oparandi
    – By Odedina Damilola. O. PGD/20/BJ/010
    For a little over a week, Nigerian youths have taken to the streets demanding an end to police brutality, and for the immediate disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit of the Nigerian Police Force, who are the main perpetuators of the brutality acts.
    The police is an integral part of any democratic society. They are a constituted body of individuals empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure safety, health and protection of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. The legal power of the police includes arresting and the use of force legitimized by the state. This description of who a police is and what their duties entails is according to international best practices. How well has Nigerian Police fared in meeting up with their job description?
    The Nigeria Police Force is the principal law enforcement and the lead security agency in Nigeria. The Nigerian Police (NP) is designated by the 1999 constitution as the national police of Nigeria with exclusive jurisdiction throughout the country.
    The Nigeria Police Force currently has eight (8) Departments and each is headed by a Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of police. These departments include;
    1. The Department of Finance and Administration,
    2. Department of Operations
    3. Department of Logistics and Supply
    4. Force Criminal Investigations Department (FCID)
    5. Department of Training and Development
    6. Department of Research and Planning
    7. Department of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
    8. Force Intelligence Department

    The Criminal Investigative Department (CID) is the highest criminal investigation arm of the Nigeria Police Force. This department is authorized and empowered to carryout investigations, make arrest and prosecute criminals to the full extent of the Law of Nigeria. The CID is headed by a Deputy Inspector-General (DIG). Specifically, its primary function includes investigation and prosecution of serious and complex criminal cases within and outside the Country. The Department also coordinates crime investigations throughout the entirety of the NPF. The CID is divided into sections, with most of them headed by Commissioners of Police (CPs). The Sections are:
    1. Administration
    2. Anti-Fraud Section
    3. The Central Criminal Registry (CCR)
    4. Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
    5. X-Squad
    6. General Investigation
    7. Special Fraud Unit (SFU)
    8. Legal Section
    9. Forensic Science Laboratory
    10. Interpol Liaison
    11. Homicide
    12. Anti-Human Trafficking Unit
    13. Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB)
    14. DCI Kaduna Annex
    15. Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU)
    From this, we can see that the CID is more like the engine room of the NPF, and the various units under this department have been assigned a lot of responsibility and assignment. The reason why SARS operatives feel invisible is no longer farfetched.

    Over the years, the NPF have come up with different units to combat and tackle a wide range of specialized criminal activities. The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) is one of such unit. SARS was created in 1992 by then Superintendent of Police (SP), Simeon Danladi Midenda in Lagos to deal with crimes associated with robbery, motor vehicle theft, kidnapping, cattle rustling, and crimes involving firearms. It was part of the then Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (FCIID), now Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), headed by the then Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police Anthony Ogbizi.
    At its preliminary stage, the unit was successful in fulfilling its mandate by recording high success rate in Lagos. The secret behind the successes of this original SARS was its facelessness and its mode of operation. In 1992, SARS officers operated in plain clothes and used plain vehicles that could not be associated with security or any government agency. Members were not permitted to carry Walkie Talkie openly talk less of wielding firearms. With the outbreak of robberies in Lagos then, they realized the danger of carrying weapons openly. Also, they realized that by openly bearing arms, they’d have destroyed the element of surprise. The implication of this was that the armed robbers would know them, while the robbers themselves will remain anonymous.
    SARS operatives were fully combatant and combat ready at all times. The team stayed under cover for the most part, monitoring radio communication of conventional police operatives. As soon as robbery signals was reported anywhere in Lagos, they went out with speed, each team to a predetermined location. At their various locations, they waited patiently while the conventional officers continued to chase and clamp down on the robbers around Lagos. Usually in their bid to escape at all cost, the robbers almost always fell into the traps of SARS and met their waterloo.

    All robbers arrested in combat had no option but to divulge information and details of their composition and numbers of the operations they had carried out before their arrest. The information gathered were used to solve previous cases of robberies by giving the unit names of other robbers still on the loose to go after. SARS never stood on the road looking for notorious armed robbers. Suspects were usually rounded up when they are in their beds. SARS also never received direct complaints from members of the public but allowed the Divisional Police Officers (DPOs) to do their job and hand over to the unit established cases of armed robbery for further follow up action. In like manner, after taking over a case from the DPO and they’re unsuccessful in linking their suspects with any robbery incident, the unit usually reverted to the DPO for them to be charged with lesser offences.

    Until the year 2002 when Simeon Danladi Midenda was transferred from heading the SARS unit in Lagos to Umuahia, where he headed the state’s CID, SARS never existed outside Lagos.

    After a while, the SARS unit spread to every state command and then controversy from different angles began to emerge. SARS have deviated from the original concept and have become quite controversial as the unit have been linked to a number of extrajudicial killings, extortion, torture, framing, and blackmail. According to CP Midenda (retd), the controversies surrounding SARS today will not disappear unless they revert to the original concept. They should undergo reorientation and thereafter, disappear from public view and not to be seen in the public. They should avoid receiving direct complaints from members of the public and work out a communication link between different divisions and the units command.
    With Nigerians calling for a police reformation, and an end to SARS, the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu disbanded the unit and has announced the setting up of a new Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team that will fill the gaps arising from the dissolution of the defunct SARS. How this plays out is left to be seen.

    Reply
  3. Akindele Oluwarotimi says:
    3 months ago

    AKINDELE OLUWAROTIMI
    PGD/20/PA/016
    END SARS PROTEST: A MEANS TO AN END

    Nigerians youth has taken over the street agitating for end to a department of police, Special anti- robbery squad (SARS). The department is known for mass voilation of human rights of Nigerians, alleged killing of a young man in Delta State by SARS operatives promoted mass protest.
    The protest has gathered much momentum among youths across the country. Government has responded by disbanding SARS department. It seems the youth want more than mere banded, Federal government has introduced SWATS new department to replace SARS. It has been rejected by protesters asking for police reform and end police brutality. Government has running from pillar to pole to get protesters off the street. Can this be a means get New Nigeria?

    Reply
  4. Abdul Lateef Williams says:
    3 months ago

    Name: Abdul Lateef Williams
    Matric No: PGD/20/PA/027

    PRIVILEGED CHILDREN OF THE MILLENNIAL

    I took a peep into the rise of privileged children flocking the social sphere in our country, and what I saw, I feel needs to be addressed. Wetin I mean by dis?

    The children of the crème de la crème of the society are becoming the icons and object of social ambitions – I no talk about the shaku shaku, marlian music and entertainment crooners o.

    In the wake of this, young men and ladies of humble background often feel unequal to and envious of the luxury and affluence these privileged guys live. So much so that sadness and worry possibly seed in their hearts, leading to low esteem, and at worse, suicidal thoughts.

    Yet, this should not be.

    This reminds me of a research I stumbled upon: a group of teenager was lined outdoor on a track field for a race. Each teenager was to take a step forward when s/he hears an instruction that is reflective of his or her reality. The race was a social experiment to determine who comes first.
    The first instruction was, “If you have both parents living together from your birthday till this moment; take a step forward”. Some teenagers did.

    The second instruction was, “If you have parents/guardians who fend for you, take a step forward”. Some teenagers did -including a few of those who had a step ahead prior.

    The third instruction was, “If you don’t hustle while you’re in school, take a step forward”. The teenagers in front from the first two questions took another step forward. Then all teenagers were to race to the finish line.

    Tell me, who are those most likely to finish the race first, without stress?

    That race is life and living. And the truth of it is that you will only run as fast and far as your parental precedent allows -most times.

    But don’t get me all

    Reply
  5. Pingback: #EndSARS: Have our children gone mad?, by Azu Ishiekwene – Nigeria Elections
  6. Pingback: #EndSARS: Have our children gone mad?, by Azu Ishiekwene… – Nigeria Elections

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