Young people staged the
biggest anti-government uprising in a generation, triggered by relentless
police brutality. Rattled, politicians are promising reforms, but using
repressive tactics, large and small.
 |
| Protesters in Lagos last month. The demonstrations against police brutality had brought the country to a standstill.Credit...Temilade Adelaja/Reuters |
LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s
leaders have made a show of responding to the demands of a massive youth-led
uprising over police brutality that recently brought the country to a
standstill and captured global attention.
The government has commissioned panels of inquiry into police
brutality, and the presidentpromised to disband the notoriously abusive police
unit known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS.
But at the same time, protesters say that the government is conducting
a targeted campaign against people associated with the uprising in order to
harass, impede and break up the movement — destroying any good faith the
government had hoped to build.
“They are persecuting
peaceful, and actually quite patriotic young people,” said Chidi Odinkalu,
senior manager for Africa at the Open Society Justice Initiative.
Nigeria
— Africa’s most populous nation — was turned upside down last month by an
uprising that grew into the largest popular resistance the government has faced
in years. The demonstrations began as an outcry against the SARS police unit,
but evolved into a larger protest over bad governance.
The government has adopted a two-pronged strategy to try to put a stop
to the uproar. It has tried to persuade people that it is listening to the
protesters — commissioning panels of inquiry and announcing that SARS is being
disbanded. But it is simultaneously using its power to repress and intimidate
activists by throwing many people in jail, and harassing others in ways large
and small.
One example of the government’s two-faced approach was on
display last week in a packed hearing room in Lagos overlooking the ocean,
where a panel was supposed to be holding a hearing on police brutality.
Two young activists had
been invited to join the panel to represent the protesters. But the youth
panelists boycotted the hearing because Nigeria’s Central Bank had just frozen
a bank account belonging to one of them, claiming it was linked to terrorists.
In recent weeks, at least 20 activists and organizations have had their accounts
frozen by the Central Bank.
“How can I be asking as a citizen of my country for
better government, for an end to police brutality,” said Bolatito Olorunrinu,
one of the youth panelists, a 22 year old student at Lagos State University,
“and my government turns around to tag me a terrorist? It’s saddening.”
Warned of threats to their safety, some high-profile
activists with the movement, known by the hashtag #EndSARS, have gone into
hiding or left the country. There was a public outcry when Modupe Odele, a
lawyer helping the protesters, said that her passport was confiscated at the
airport. She says was prevented from traveling, but recently was given her
passport back. |
| Nigeria’s top police official said his officers had arrested over 1,500 people suspected of taking part in violence.Credit...Benson Ibeabuchi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
The
country’s top police official said earlier this month that his officers
had arrested over 1,500 people during
and after the protests suspected of taking part in violence.
The
government has moved to use its authority to shut down the movement. Lagos,
Nigeria’s biggest city, banned demonstrations. Powerful state governors in the
country’s north last week called for censorship of social media, which had
played a decisive role in mobilizing the marches.
Like
the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, #EndSARS was triggered by
viral videos of police brutality that documented a decades-long pattern of
violence. And similar to the protesters behind the Arab Spring, young people
used social media to coordinate protests on a scale that frightened authorities
accustomed to being in control.
These
days, Muhammadu Buhari is Nigeria’s democratically elected civilian president.
But in the 1980s, he was the country’s military ruler, with a fondness for
discipline — famously forcing civil servants late to work to perform frog jumps.
Despite
trying to reassure young people last month that their voices had been
heard “loud and clear,” his
pronouncements have come across as highhanded and disingenuous. Nigerians are
wary that his authoritarian tendencies, his General Buhari side, is showing
through.
On Oct.
20, the military was deployed to the site of a long-running peaceful #EndSARS
protest in Lekki, an affluent area of Lagos, shortly after sunset. Floodlights
were turned off. Then the soldiers began to shoot.
 |
| A demonstration outside of Alausa, a government building in Lagos, after the governor of Lagos State declared a 24-hour curfew.Credit...Benson Ibeabuchi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
It is
still not known how many people died that night, though a popular disc jockey
who broadcast the shooting live on her Instagram — Obianuju Catherine Udeh,
known as DJ Switch — said she saw at least 15 dead
bodies, and that security forces took them away. Amnesty
International said police and soldiers killed at least 12.
Abuses
by Nigerian security forces are nothing new. In the northeast, home to the
terrorist group Boko Haram, women have been raped by soldiers and babies and children locked up. In the capital, Abuja, and the nearby city of Kaduna,
minority Shiite protesters have been killed.
But
#EndSARS had attracted social media influencers, musicians, Nollywood actors and reality TV stars. The Lekki
incident drew international condemnation, including from President-elect Joseph
R. Biden and Beyoncé.
“It’s
one thing to shoot protesters in the relative backwaters of Kaduna,” said Mr.
Odinkalu. “It’s another thing to shoot protesters under the clear gaze of
upmarket Lagos. The political ramifications are higher.”
The
Lekki shooting was one of the things the Lagos inquiry has been investigating,
before it was boycotted over the frozen bank account. Adesina Ogunlana, a
lawyer who appeared at the hearing and said that he represented the #EndSARS
movement, compared the Lekki shootings to tinko, a kind of Nigerian sun-dried
meat.
“Looks
small. But when you put it in your mouth and chew, it gets bigger. Gets bigger.
Gets bigger,” said Mr. Ogunlana, who carried a well-thumbed copy of Malcolm
Gladwell’s “David and Goliath” to the hearings last week, and nibbled bitter kola to
fortify himself.
 |
| A demonstration outside the Nigerian High Commission in London last month. The #EndSARS movement had garnered international attention on social media.Credit...Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Lekki
was just one case of abuse, “but it involves the military, it involves the
Lagos state government,” he said. “And of course it involves thousands and
thousands and thousands of young Nigerians.”
At the
Lagos inquiry last month, the panel listened to a businessman testify that in
2018, SARS police threw him from a two-story building, breaking his spine. They
heard a father of five describe having been tortured for 47 days by SARS
operatives accusing him of theft.
Lawyers
who have worked on many such cases are unable to name a single case in which a
perpetrator in the security forces has been disciplined or prosecuted.
Where
it can, experts say, the government has gone after #EndSARS protesters instead.
But this has not been straightforward, because the movement has few easily
identifiable leaders.
“There
is no oga,” or big boss,
said Jola Ayeye recently on the popular podcast she co-hosts.
As the
#EndSARS protests waned, word began to spread that state governments were
hiding food donated by some of Nigeria’s wealthiest individuals, which should
have been distributed to its poorest to sustain them during the pandemic
lockdown.
Many
Nigerians suspect that governors had been holding onto the supplies in order to
hand them out when they were in need of political support.
This
sent more waves of people into the streets across the country. Crowds of people
broke into warehouses, carrying off sacks of rice and cartons of noodles. In
some places, people destroyed property.
 |
| Police fired tear gas at a crowd of people looting a warehouse that had food supplies that were not distributed during lockdown in Abuja.Credit...Kola Sulaimon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Then came arrests.
“They just rounded up
people on the streets with no evidence, no anything. Lots of people in jail,”
said Yemi Adamolekun, executive director of Enough Is Enough Nigeria,
a nonprofit promoting good governance and accountability. “Police brutality has
increased significantly.”
Now that the protests
have ended the streets are pretty much back to normal.
In Surulere, an old
suburb of Lagos, traffic jams have replaced the crowds of demonstrators
flapping the national green and white flag. Hawkers are back outside the
market, selling strings of mock coral beads and books promising the secrets to
amassing great wealth. Residents are no longer terrified of venturing out lest
they catch a bullet.
But in a country
where mostly older, wealthy men govern a population with a median age of 18 and
an average annual income of $2,200,
now that the youth have discovered the power of their protest muscle, they say
they very well might use it again.
“You never can tell
what is going to trigger another protest,” said Ariyo-Dare Atoye, the convener
of the Coalition in Defence of Nigerian Democracy and Constitution.
“People
will have justification to do it again,” he said, because the government has
been given enough time to respond to the issues.
Thanks for reading. Follow the page and Share it.
Posts
