How the #EndSARS Movement Upended Politics as Usual in Nigeria by Chris Olaoluwa Ogunmodede

 

On Oct. 20, Nigerian security forces opened fire on two groups of unarmed demonstrators in the sprawling metropolis of Lagos, reportedly killing at least a dozen people. The victims had been part of a weeks-long civic uprising to demand more accountability from law enforcement and an end to rampant police brutality in Nigeria. In the wake of last week’s shootings, the direction and future of the protest movement remain unclear. Several states, including Lagos, have implemented curfews due to increased violence and pockets of unrest, much of it targeting the peaceful protesters. In the aftermath of last week’s shootings, several governments and international organizations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United Nations and the African Union, have issued statements decrying the violence. The bloodshed also led The Feminist Coalition, the group of young Nigerian feminists that emerged as one of the spearheads of the protests, to announce it will no longer accept donations toward the movement.

What comes next for the protests, which initially sought the abolition of the country’s notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad but subsequently called for systemic reforms to address police brutality, is very much an open question. But the developments of the past month already have significant implications for Nigerian politics.

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad was created as a specialized unit of the Nigerian Police Force in 1992, during a period of intense anxiety in Nigeria about armed robberies and other serious crimes. Its mandate was subsequently broadened to include the investigation and prosecution of armed robbery, murder, kidnappings and other violent crimes—and with those enhanced powers came more impunity and heavy-handedness. Over the years, SARS officers have been implicated in widespread human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, rape, extortion and unlawful detention. In June, Amnesty International released a report documenting 82 cases of extrajudicial killings by SARS officers between January 2017 and May 2020.

The Nigerian Police Force, with its colonial origins as a tool of domestic repression, has always had and continues to have problems with excessive force and brutality. But SARS has gained particular notoriety, particularly in southern Nigeria, for reasons that include the broad mandate it enjoys and the lucrative benefits, both real and imagined, it is perceived to offer.

Although the #EndSARS movement first gained international visibility this month, it is not new. The hashtag first debuted in 2017, when a number of notable incidents of police violence sparked conversations on Twitter, in Nigeria’s mainstream press and in the public sphere.

Its current iteration is a decentralized, leaderless social movement advocating against police violence in Nigeria, and articulating five core demands, including justice for the families of victims of police brutality and an independent body to investigate abuses by police. The movement has thrived due to digital organizing, especially on Twitter, but also through a website created for people to share their experiences at the hands of SARS officers. Organizers and supporters of the movement used crowdfunding tools to raise money for food, water, medical care and professional security at protests, and they were able to deliver these services despite interference from the Central Bank of Nigeria—which froze the Feminist Coalition’s bank account, forcing the group to raise donations through Bitcoin—and organized attacks at protest venues.

By the standards of Nigerian protests and political organizing, this format is unprecedented. Historically, mass protests and social movements have been led by trade and student unions with a large, centralized structure and identifiable leadership. Particularly during the years of military rule, this form of organizing was effective in creating the kind of civil disobedience that could secure government concessions. But it also made it easy for the government to co-opt those leadership structures or, should that fail, target them for persecution.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why the most recent #EndSARS protests took off when and how they did, given how accustomed to police brutality the average Nigerian is. In terms of the broader context, the protests take place against the backdrop of a worsening economic climate in Nigeria, especially with the outbreak of COVID-19, which necessitated lockdowns and teleworking, resulting in the loss of jobs and livelihoods. In addition to this, the country’s universities have been closed since March after the union representing academic staff of public universities went on strike. Put simply, a lot of Nigeria’s young population have a lot of time on their hands and many grievances.

As for more proximate causes, a video began to go viral on Twitter on Oct. 3, in which eyewitnesses alleged that SARS officers had shot a young man after arresting him in the southern town of Ughelli, in Delta state. The facts of the case remain in dispute, including whether the man was actually shot, whether he had died, and whether SARS officers were actually involved in the incident. But despite these uncertainties, tensions that had been building for a long while exploded, and the sharing of many other recorded incidents of police brutality fueled outrage that drove people into the streets of 21 of Nigeria’s 36 states, as well as the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, known officially as the FCT.

The subsequent protests have been peaceful and well-organized, with the movement’s decentralized structure allowing for organic planning across the country. Despite the use of force by police and attacks on the demonstrators by thugs, protesters have avoided retaliating, instead working hard to emphasize nonviolence. The movement has now gone global, with #EndSARS trending in cities such as London, San Francisco, New York, Dubai and Nairobi, and Nigerians in the diaspora organizing protest marches to Nigerian diplomatic posts across the world, including London, Paris, Berlin, Ottawa, Washington, Pretoria and Cairo.

The immediate response from federal government officials was scattershot and uncoordinated. An initial dismissiveness of the first wave of protests was later replaced by inconsistent attempts to placate the protesters with offers of negotiations and vague commitments to “police reform,” while eliding the movement’s core demands. Within a few days of the protests, Nigeria’s police chief, Mohammed Adamu, announced he was dissolving SARS and replacing it with a new unit called the Special Weapons and Tactics Team, or SWAT. That did little to assuage protesters, who duly noted that similar announcements to “reorganize” or “disband” SARS have been made in the past. Adamu’s announcement was also silent on the fate of former SARS officers, among other lingering questions.

The federal government subsequently tasked the 36 states and the FCT to set up panels of inquiry on public complaints relating to SARS, which a handful of states have already inaugurated. But there again, some protesters saw a bait and switch, as the Nigerian Police Force is a federalized structure that state governors have no formal authority over.

Thus, protests continued until the fateful events last Tuesday in Lagos, where according to Amnesty International, the army and police killed at least 12 peaceful protesters. However, these figures continue to be disputed by many eyewitnesses and other Nigerians who watched a live streaming of the shootings on Instagram.

It is tough to predict what comes next. For now, large-scale demonstrations look to be over in the major cities, especially in the wake of the Feminist Coalition’s announcement that it will no longer accept donations and President Muhammadu Buhari using a national address to implicitly threaten another crackdown if more protests occur. By the same token, demonstrations by Nigerians in the diaspora continue. Nonetheless, the events of the past month already have broader implications for Nigeria, the West African region and even elsewhere on the continent.

By some considerable margin, #EndSARS is Nigeria’s largest social movement since the pro-democracy campaigns in the 1990s against Gen. Sani Abacha, the country’s military dictator at the time. The protests appear to have sparked a renewed level of political awareness and advocacy, especially among young Nigerians who have no memory of military rule. The significance of the movement’s youth cohort cannot be overstated in a country whose median age is 18 and where 65 to 70 percent of the population is believed to be younger than 30. The majority of Nigerians largely continue to support democratic governance. At the same time, there is widespread disillusionment and discontent over the state of the economy, insecurity and the political system. To a large degree, the #EndSARS protests were a vector for broader dissatisfaction with the political class.

More broadly, the #EndSARS movement coincides with protest movements in Ghana, Cameroon, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia, and beyond the region in Kenya, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia, some of which are also responses to violence and abuse at the hands of state security forces. Given the sheer size of Nigeria and its diaspora, as well as its status as a major player on the continent, #EndSARS was bound to command a lot of international attention. It is possible that activists and organizers in these other countries will apply some lessons learned from the movement to their own struggles.

For now, the #EndSARS movement and its supporters will likely concentrate their efforts on realizing some of their five core demands. But as they live to fight another day, there is some optimism that the model of organizing they pioneered may translate into a template for future social movements in Nigeria, and that their effectiveness could inspire Nigerians to increasingly demand more accountability and responsiveness from their government.