WATT9JA Magazine | Oct 2020

✊🏾EndSARS reports: What happens next? ✊🏾

It is with mixed emotions that I type this. The past two weeks in Nigeria has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride. Let us start from the beginning.

SARS, The Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a unit of the Nigerian Police force has been known for terrorizing citizens for years.
The ones who are supposed to protect us, turn around and unleash terror on the citizens.

They extort money from people with threats of killing them, they rape victims, they plant incriminating things in people so they'd be prosecuted, they kill and dump dead bodies, they believe you're into fraud if as a young person, you drive an expensive car or have an iPhone... Worse is when you have tattoos and dreadlocks.

This is simply putting it lightly. Words cannot even express the horrendous acts being carried out by these people. More surprising was the fact that, one of the requirements to join the unit is to be an ex-convict. Now the dots are aligned, right?

Time and time again, the young people had to endure all these for years. Finding justice was almost impossible. Complaints were swept under the rug and people were forced to swallow their tears of pain.
Freedom of expression and movement around some specific areas was greatly suppressed.

This continued until the last straw, when a man in Delta State was shot by SARS officers and made of with the dead man's car. Robbery in clear daylight. This sparked anger in some youths who were involved in a clash with the police.

Perhaps this was what prompted the  the young people of Nigeria to say, Enough is Enough.

It all began on Twitter with the hashtag, EndSARS. A social media influencer, Rinu, otherwise known as Savvy_rinu on Twitter, spearheaded the protests to the government's house in Lagos State. She, along with fellow protesters faced intimidation by the police.

Her protest was promptly followed by other protests, with celebrity artistes leading e.g Falz, Runtown, Small doctor.

The people grabbed this sliver of hope and before you know it, a worldwide protest, for the first time in a decade, ensued. With support from Nigerians in diaspora, we marched with placards all over, stating our ultimate demand, "End SARS and end police brutality."

Then the obstacles came. Even as we marched near police stations demanding for a right to live, police officers opened fire on protesters and we had the first protest death. Jimoh Isiaq.

It was devastating for the youths. But, we did not back down. During that period, a feminist group, Feminist Coalition, created a donation link for people to donate to aid the needs of protesters. In a couple of days we raised 25 million naira. But even in the midst of everything, more deaths occured from stray or intentional bullets from officers. Protesters were arrested and tortured while in custody. It was tug of war.

The funds donated covered medical expenses for those injured, legal expenses for the team of lawyers going to advocate for arrested protesters, food shared at protest grounds all over the country and many other necessities.

The Feminist Coalition received praise and recognition for the management and accountability of funds.

Strategic ideas were shared on Twitter. Online protesters pulled in their weight, retweeting and adding their voices through social media until EndSARS was a worldwide trend on Twitter. It gained international recognition and was aired on international news severally.

The President finally gave a speech, disbanding SARS, but the youths refused to seize protests as this was not the first time it was said that SARS was disbanded. They wanted action, not words. The 5 for 5, steps the people wanted to see, were presented to the national assembly.
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