Africa-Press Nigeria
The police officers accused him of speeding, but Dare Olaitan felt that wasn’t true. The 29-year-old filmmaker in Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos, says he requested proof.
“Then they slapped me, yanked away my phone and keys and said, ‘We are going to an ATM,’ ” Olaitan said.
The men, who’d pulled him over in an unmarked van, identified themselves as part of the federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS, a Nigerian police unit that has been tasked over the past three decades with fighting violent crime, including banditry and kidnapping.
Similar tales blazed across social media in recent days as thousands of protesters filled the streets in several Nigerian cities to urge the leaders of Africa’s most populous nation to disband the squad. They said it routinely commits the kind of crimes it is supposed to thwart.
Under mounting pressure, the Nigerian Police Force announced Sunday that SARS had been dissolved in response to “the yearnings of the Nigerian people.”
The officers will be redeployed, a spokesman said, and human rights groups will assist in building a replacement squad and guiding a probe into past abuses.
While celebration erupted on the Internet and in the streets, where people cheered and waved Nigerian flags, some expressed concern about men they viewed as dangerous staying on police payroll.
Activists have campaigned against SARS for years, and violent videos that surfaced online this week shone a fresh spotlight on what demonstrators condemned as police brutality. Nigerian celebrities took up the cause, helping the hashtag #EndSARS go viral.
The surprise dissolution came two days after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari pledged change. “Our determination to reform the police should never be in doubt,” he tweeted.
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The “vast majority” of Nigerian police officers are “patriotic and committed to protecting the lives and livelihoods of Nigerians,” he said, “and we will continue to support them to do their job.”
Security officials banned SARS last week from conducting stop-and-search operations in plain clothes. They also outlawed checkpoints, which Nigerians frequently photographed to warn others on Twitter. (The Nigeria Police Force did not respond to requests for comment on specific allegations.)
Two agents had been apprehended on charges of professional misconduct, including extortion, officials said.
Critics say the problem is widespread.
Amnesty International said in June it had documented 82 cases of the squad’s brutality in the past three years, including “hanging, mock execution, beating, punching and kicking, burning with cigarettes, waterboarding” and other violent tactics.
Hundreds of protesters camped outside a government building in Lagos on Saturday, waving signs that read “END SARS NOW.” Others surrounded the squad’s headquarters in Abuja, the nation’s capital and poured red paint on the road to symbolize violence.
