I have followed the versions of this raging argument. Some say scrap SARS others say don’t scrap but reform or armed robbers and kidnappers will take over.
Such a rot that we cannot pretend anymore. What the youth want is to end police brutality evidenced and represented by SARS.
Nigerian Police needs help and it cannot come from Within. We need something as drastic as the banking reforms by Soludo and Sanusi.
We need a brand new system of policing that makes men with guns accountable. The statistics says the young people are correct in asking for a change.
I was on flight back to Nigeria and I sat with a rich kid coming home from school in Canada. He asked me about a group called SARS. That his friends in Lagos warned him to wear Kaftan when he comes to Nigeria because of SARS. I was bewildered.
The only advice he got is to beware of SARS. My staff on his way to join me in Ghana was picked up the night before by SARS and by the morning there was chaos when he failed to turn up at ABC station to Lead the dancers to Accra. Luckily for us he got out in the morning but had tales to last a lifetime.
So many stories many so sad to tell. Something has to change and should change Now. Someone said Boko Haram is the terror on the North, Herdsmen are the terror in Middle Belt and SARS is the terror in the south. It should not be so.
Good thing the so called “Lazy Youth” have finally found the Fire. Let us hope it doesn’t end with #endsarsnow Campaign. I have seen Nigeria change over the years and I believe we can solve this.
13% Derivation, Banking Reforms, NAFDAC improvement, planes stopped falling from the skies, GSM and some others.
We can make this happen. Let every State House of Assembly call for hearings similar to Oputa Panel so we can document the atrocities, even if we cannot do anything now. Let every citizen write their complaints. Put a searchlight on the few bad apples. Let us separate the so called bad apples from the good cops we have.
We need the police I agree but we need the Youth too. It is good that the government has finally accepted their demands and scrapped SARS.
This post below helps explain SARS
“The origin of SARS” – Cheta Nwanze.
Cheta Nwanze is lead partner at SBM Intelligence
The rogue unit that has served to terrorise a large section of the populace, especially young people.
The Nigerian Police has a history of extrajudicial murders. One of the most notorious was on 6 September 1992 when an army colonel, Israel Ridnam, was at a traffic jam caused by a police checkpoint in Lagos. Col. Rindam got out of his car to ascertain what the problem was, and was promptly shot to death by the policemen who had set up the checkpoint.
He was in mufti, but his beret was on the dashboard of his car, so upon realising that they had killed a soldier, the murderous policemen took to their heels.
Col. Rindam’s murder was one in a series of murders by police officers.
On 15 May 1991, Dr Nwogu Okere, a general manager at Klinstine Limited, a building contractor, was killed by policemen who trailed him to a petrol station in Gbagada, Lagos. On 27 May 1991, Andy Esiri, Kayode Oladimeji, and US-based athlete, Ndubuisi “Dele” Udoh were killed when policemen opened fire at them at a checkpoint while they were travelling in Esiri’s car. Ganiyu Yekini, a danfo driver, was shot dead by a policeman at a checkpoint over a ₦10 bribe in February 1992. A 52-year old widow, Fidelia Oguonu, was murdered by a police constable at a checkpoint at Oba Junction, Anambra State on 20 September 1992. ………….
The data says a lot. 1007 civilian victims were reportedly killed by police officers in Nigeria last year. Of the 1007, 142 died from “accidental discharge” an indication that training in the use of firearms is grossly inadequate; 29 were students, pointing to untold human rights abuses not just from SARS alone; the number of robbers and kidnappers extrajudicially killed stood at 710; cultists killed were 61; ordinary civilians, 47.
For a police force consistently ranked among the worst in the world, SARS is just the tick in the large cow. The major reason why this menace has persisted for years even after the decline of the dreaded “Mopol” is the thriving nature of the patronage networks the country’s political elites have put in place by commission, deliberately wrecking the economy, and divestment from the police force in order to keep them subservient to pecuniary interests.
All talk of scrapping SARS is likely to fall on deaf ears on account of the fact that senior officers and the leadership cadre of the NPF get remittances from the junior officers who go out on the street to “hunt”.
The target may have been “Yahoo Boys” (which is even a deviation from its original purpose of chasing after armed robbers, not necessarily internet fraudsters), but insatiable hunger and the money to be made have encouraged them to widen the net to just any young man on the road.”
