Nigeria has spoken. He spoke with the voice of over 95 million young people, 28 million tweets under the #EndSARS banner, nearly 10 million protesters at 39 protests across the country in just three months. The Nigerian government may turn around or remain in denial, but Nigeria will not be silent anymore ...
On October 20, during a demonstration against police violence at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos, young Nigerians died under police bullets. Lekki's toll is almost back in service, but justice has yet to be served.
Punishing the wrongdoers, a sine qua non
Nigeria has never, in its recent history, seen such an important popular mobilization as that of last October. The government was taken aback by the #EndSARS movement, which started on social media and then led to massive peaceful protests across the country.
The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) is the Nigerian police anti-theft squad. Since 1984, its members have been accused of kidnapping, torture and executions of young civilians. Despite the mobilization of NGOs, no member of the SARS has ever been charged.
According to an Amnesty International report released in June 2020, these practices are common within this service. The NGO has reportedly documented at least 80 crimes of torture and summary executions committed by the SARS since 2017. The victims are mostly young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
In early October 2020, a video of a SARS agent killing a man for no apparent reason toured social media. Nigerian authorities shouted fake news and arrested the person who took the video, causing even more outrage on the internet.
The protests started in Lagos, before spreading across the country. The hashtag #EndSARS then took on an international dimension. On October 20, during a demonstration in Lekki in Lagos, police fired at protesters for no reason, killing more than 10, and arrested dozens.
The popular movement has since taken on an underground dimension. An investigation has been opened and a commission appointed, but it appears that the executive branch is protecting its own people, as no police officer has been charged. In addition, the promises to dissolve the SARS have turned into Arles.
One provocation too many
Popular outrage continued on social media, and the movement no longer speaks only of police violence, but of governance and crimes by Nigerian leaders.
The Nigerian people, once divided by tribal conflicts, have come together under one banner against government officials.
Following an announcement of the reopening of the Lekki toll, the scene of the October tragedy, Rinu Oduala, representative of #EndSARS within the commission of inquiry, announced that she was resigning from this commission and that the government was exerting great pressure on the judiciary. She called for a resumption of the demonstrations, in order to prevent the government from suffocating the affair.
A demonstration therefore took place on Saturday, February 13, the police dispersed the demonstrators with batons and tear gas. More than fifty demonstrators were arrested, some of them released on bail.
The protests linked to the #EndSARS movement, especially in recent weeks and in view of the impunity enjoyed by representatives of the executive power, have turned into more general criticisms of the government, the administration and even the health situation.
The watchword is "corruption". If the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace is to be believed, over 62% of Nigerians believe that corruption is the most immediate problem in Nigeria, causing huge losses to the country's economy and slowing down corruption. realization of Nigerian human and economic potential.
According to the same study, six in ten Nigerians believe that civil servants are not concerned with the people.
What has made the situation worse are above all the broken promises of the state: from a promise to dissolve the center of the problem, the SARS, President Buhari has revised his rhetoric downwards by proposing everything to first a redeployment of the SARS agents, to then propose a reform of the police. The government's promises lost all credibility after a #EndSARS activist exposed the existence of an investigation against those associated with the movement.
Freedom of speech in Nigeria has taken a hit in the wing, with protests banned in Lagos and governors in northern Nigeria publicly calling for censorship of social media. Dangerous when you consider that more than half of the population of Nigeria is under the age of 21.