SARS’  Spirit  Never Vanquished

Almost two years ago, in the heat of the #EndSARS protest, President Muhammadu Buhari made a pronouncement that seemed to have effectively disbanded the notorious Special Anti Robbery Squared (SARS) unit. That day, October 11, 2020, provided   a watershed moment that only happened because the youths who were always at the receiving end of the torturous acts of the men of the SARS unit had had enough. A litany of events, ranging from mass arrests, harassment, torture, exploitation, and extra-judicial killings brought about the tipping point, which snowballed into the global #EndSARS protest and the eventual disbandment of the SARS unit.  Several panel sittings, the release of the Lekki Tollgate shooting report, detailing the events during the Tollgate shooting, the denials, and then the release of the much-awaited, infamous, white paper on the report. In truth, it is hard for the conveners of the #EndSARS protest to accept that change has come, or that justice has been served.

That goal is still a mirage.  Sadly, the spirit of SARS was never vanquished by the Nigerian Police Force (NPF); rather as the operatives of the disbanded unit percolated through the rank and file, like a deadly contagion,  the spirit of SARS has possessed many police officers, especially those on checkpoint duties. Just last week, six  police officers in Lagos were paraded for harassment and extortion using the antics of the SARS. Unfortunately, these law enforcement outlaws, operate under the mantra of the mother hen, when she said, “if I stop scratching the ground, how do I feed my chicks?. According to information from The Complaints Response Unit of the NPF, there have been a total of 14,976, complaints since its inception in 2015; and this flood of complaints had led to the outright dismissal of more than 30 officers, while more than 250 others had faced disciplinary actions. It was also reported that more than N55 million was recovered and returned to victims during the period under review

Interestingly, it is important to note the conclusion of a NOIPolls survey in 2016 that as high as 76 percent of human rights abuse victims in Nigeria refrain from reporting the perpetrators of the crime. If this conclusion were to be taken at face value, only 24 percent of police human rights abuse cases see the limelight. Today is the eve of the second anniversary of the disbandment of SARS, and the second anniversary of the #EndSARS protest, but available data on human rights abuse by the police is unnerving. The data for 2022 is not yet available, however, in 2021 alone, The Complaints Response Unit of the NPF recorded1244 human rights abuse complaints against police officers. It is terrible news because, if the idea that 76 percent of abuse cases are unreported holds true, the implication is that every two hours, the human right of a Nigerian is abused by an officer or a group of officers of the NPF. Strikingly, even before the ripples of the #EndSARS protest settled, reports of police brutality, harassment, exploitation, unlawful arrest, and extortion, had  started pouring in. As early as February 2021, the Eagle Crack unit was disbanded by the Rivers State Commissioner of Police, CP Ebuka Friday, for harassing and extorting the sum of N150, 000 only,  from one Mr Victor. While announcing the disbandment of the police unit, former police spokesperson,  late SP Nnamdi Omoni said, “the Commissioner of Police, Eboka Friday, has dissolved the Eagle Crack Squad following a meeting with his management team. The dissolution is coming on the heels of complaints of unprofessional conduct exhibited by the personnel of the unit.”

In March 2022, Osun State police officers  invaded Modomo Area in lle-Ife in the wee hours of the morning to harass and extort the  sum of N150, 000 only,  from students. They later recovered their money. But they continued  to live with the trauma. In the same month in Lagos State, a music producer, Emmanuel Chibueze was fleeced of N1.2 million by police officers working in consonance with a POS operator. In April 2022, in Lagos, an ASP extorted N50000 from a member of the National Youth Service Corps. In the same month, three police officers were dismissed for allegedly intimidating, and extorting N153, 000 only  from Mr Sheriff Adediga. Also in Anambra, during the same month, police officers were alleged to have used  the same tactics to extort N500, 000 only from their victims. Akwa Ibom State, June 2021, a police constable was arrested for extorting N60,000 and soliciting sex. August 2021: Imo State University students residing at Olive Hostel were the victims of a police invasion, which led to mass arrests and detention at the Shell Camp Police Division. According to one of the students, “The security men moved into our hostel and started arresting some of us, many of us ran into our rooms and the police chased us and forced us out from our rooms and ordered us into the security patrol vehicles and took us to the Shell Camp Police Station, where some of us were cornered to a place and we paid up to N60, 000 for release.”

Also in August 2021, police officers in Lagos detained Michael Ekene and Udochukwu Maduforo on their way to the airport. They were harassed and the sum of N40, 000 only was taken from them, and they also missed their flight. To seek redress, their family was assisted by the Rules of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) to file a petition to the CP of Lagos State.
Commenting on the incident, the executive director, Mr. Okechukwu Nwaguma, described the behaviour of the police officers as unconscionable, an act of wickedness, he said, “that police officers trained and paid to serve and protect citizens could descend to holding students – young people who could be their children – to ransom and ignored their explanations that they are students going back to school and their plea to let them go – since they were not found with anything incriminating – so that they would not miss their flights.  “They robbed them of their money and made them miss their flight. “That in spite of the current raging issue of police corruption and abuse of power which has again put Nigeria in the spotlight of international opprobrium, these officers could not be deterred or persuaded to minimise their greed for money acquired through extortion.”

In October 2021, Ekele Nwachukwu, a 300-level student of Rivers State University was accosted on his way home by police officers who tagged him as a cultist. They tied him and threw him into their vehicle and sat on him till he was gasping for breath. They detained him and demanded N50, 000 from his friends for his bail. Luckily for him CP Ebuka Friday intervened and he got his money back. In the same month, in Kogi State, police officers at Okene were seen in a viral video extorting N25, 000 from a young man. Also in February 2022, police officers operating like armed robbers according to the description of the victim, 24-year-old Clement Ehinomen, extorted the sum of N1 million at gunpoint. Mr Ehinomen was taken to a lonely police station where N7 million was demanded from him. They compelled him to start calling friends and family members to transfer money into his account. He was able to recover his money when he cried out on Twitter.

By: Raphael Pepple