The pervasive acts of police brutality in Nigeria
As Nigeria remembers the massacre of unarmed protesters at the Lekki Tollgate on Friday, the Tiger Eye Foundation is releasing “October 2020,” a documentary about the ramifications of police brutality in the country.
Tiger Eye Foundation’s Founder, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who made this known to GuardPost Nigeria in an exclusive interview on Thursday, said October 2020 addressed much more than what took place at the Lekki Tollgate and Abuja.
Our duty was to do a retrospective analysis of what happened and be able to find cases of police brutality across Nigeria and not concentrate on Lagos and Abuja and other urban areas.
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“We found that activities of SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) were found in all parts of Nigeria. The main narrative made it appear as if the brutality only occurred in Lagos, Abuja and other big cities.
“Human rights abuse is human rights abuse. It doesn’t matter where a person stays. If someone was beaten that means his rights were violated. In fact, some people in the rural areas are the worst hit.
“Our job was to move from the major cities into the hinterlands to investigate atrocities that had been committed and the effect on the people. It is a collective and holistic story of a peoples’ suffering and abuse and not just telling a part of the story. We are telling the whole story.”
Heart-breaking stories from victims
According to the multiple award-winning undercover journalist, the team talked with hundreds of people who told them of SARS atrocities. While Nigerians in cities were more likely to receive remedy when their rights were infringed by law enforcement, the situation in rural areas was dire.
During the year-long inquiry, he said the team interacted with victims individually before compiling their stories into a collection that revealed what happened across the country.
Continuing, he said, “If someone lost a limb in Lagos, that person is likely to get a lot more support but the ones in the hinterland don’t even get support. Some of the people we spoke to didn’t even know there was a protest called #EndSARS.
“They didn’t know. All they know is that they face atrocities from security agencies and whether there was a demonstration somewhere, they had no idea. That is what we did in October 2020.”
What former EndSARS coordinators are saying
Multiple award-wining investigative journalist and top EndSARS Coordinator, David Hundeyin said the movement “represented the long-awaited awakening of Nigeria’s youth-majority population.”
“For those of us in the journalism space who had built our professional identity around holding power accountable instead of acting as government stenographers, EndSARS represented the long-awaited awakening of Nigeria’s youth-majority population,” Mr. Hundeyin began
“Instead of putting out fearless work in the forlorn hope that the fearful audience might eventually someday find use for it, I found myself engaging with an audience that demonstrated that it had lost its fear, and was ready to engage with the oppressive Nigerian state at eye level. It held so much significance to me that I did not cover the protests as a journalist – I took part in them as a protester.
“The brutal response of the Nigerian state on October 20, 2020 and the days after is well known, as is the subsequent impact on the lives and circumstances of hundreds of protesters who were abducted and murdered by the state, or hounded into exile like I was.
“What is perhaps less discussed is that EndSARS and the Tiananmen Square-esque response to it directly laid the foundations for an emerging new political paradigm in Nigeria and across West Africa.”
The founder of West Africa Weekly, however, argued that young people under the age of 35 who make up the overwhelming majority of Nigeria’s population now understand that a strong ideological alignment with pronounced decentralisation of leadership and coordinating functions would yield a near-unbreakable political force.
Reminiscing on what happened in October 2020, rights activist and one of the coordinators of the #EndSARS Movement, Rinu Oduala said that the protest represented a fight against the oppressive forces that had stifled Nigeria’s progress for decades.
“EndSARS was anger, frustration, trauma, pain, and tragic deaths, within a single movement. It was a desperate struggle for life in the midst of senseless violence. It represented a fight against the oppressive forces that had stifled Nigeria’s progress for decades.
“The widespread killings, extortions, torture, sexual abuse, harassment, and the ever-present fear of ‘I will shoot you, and nothing will happen’ raises a question: if such actions could keep happening in any democratic nation without resistance,” Ms. Oduola told GuardPost Nigeria.
She maintained that the struggle exacted heavy sacrifices on the youth: sweat, tears, blood, and unwavering courage. It disrupted the lives we once knew, scattering us to strange lands, landing some in prison, and claiming the lives of others.
Another activist and #EndSARS Coordinator, Raphael Adebayo, for the first in Nigeria’s history, the EndSARS protests revealed the possibilities for a new paradigm shift in Nigeria.
Mr. Adebayo, who is also an author in a message to GuardPost Nigeria said, “From the embers of that mass action, three lessons stand out for me. The first is the indisputable power of peaceful mass actions.
“The EndSARS protests revealed that the oppressed and brutalised people anywhere can, indeed, come together to resist not just police brutality but any form of dehumanisation, tyranny, and indignity.
“The second lesson is that the EndSARS protests arguably exposed more about the meaning of Nigeria and her ruling class than any other event in Nigeria’s contemporary history.
“In its scale, the atrocities of the Nigerian state during the EndSARS protests, from Abuja to Lagos, particularly on October 20, 2020, were just as horrible as the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960—and that’s very instructive if we take in both events in their full historical nuances.
“The final lesson from the EndSARS protests that young Nigerians cannot ignore is that our job is not done. If anything, it has just begun.
On October 8, 2020, nationwide protests against SARS, a rogue police squad, began following weeks of outrage and disgust with clips and photographs depicting police brutality, harassment, and extortion in several parts of Nigeria.
The protests were led by youth in many cities, along with many activists and celebrities. The #EndSARS protests began as a call to end police brutality and extrajudicial killings, which have become common in Nigeria.
Harassment and unfair treatment by the police are still prevalent, and it stems back to the military era, when soldiers wrongfully arrested individuals and violated their fundamental rights. Most leaders of the EndSARS Movement were chased into exile and have remained outside fighting to restore sanity in the country.
