Taiwo Jimoh
The #EndSARS protests, which started like an impossible dream on October 3, 2020, snowballed the following week, resulting in the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, disbanding the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) on October 11.
The IGP soon announced that trainings of a new police unit to replace the disbanded SARS would commence by next week. He also promised to investigate all cases of brutality by SARS operatives and bring perpetrators to book.
He said the new outfit; Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), would be intelligence-driven, properly trained and only act on occasions that required their attention.
However, different reactions have come from security stakeholders, who had expressed their opinions following the disbandment.
A retired Assistant Director, Investigations and Intelligence, Department of State Security (DSS), Mr Dennis Amachree, said: “The Nigeria Police and federal government have finally listened to the yearnings of Nigerians by disbanding SARS. It’s an indication that the voices of the youth of this nation still counts. Now, SARS units have been disbanded, what next? We shouldn’t forget the reasons SARS was created in the first place. Those problems, which are violent crimes like armed robbery, kidnapping, human trafficking and banditry, are still with us. What the Police should do now is to look inward and restructure its operations. We should discourage the temptation of always creating a specialised agency any time there is a new challenge in the horizon. Same way the DSS, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and others, which were created out of the Nigeria Police.”
He added that the federal government, rather than create new agencies out of the Police, should strengthen the Police by training specialised teams among its ranks.
He stated: “The team to fight violent crimes, just like the American Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit, should be trained to handle violent crimes. This team should not be seen on the streets, but trained and equipped as an elite force for special operations only. It is hoped that the police authorities can re-strategise and bring this reform to fruition. Nigerians deserve better in 2020.”
The Executive Director of the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC), Mr Okechukwu Nwanguma, while expressing his opinion, said that the #EndSARS protests underscored the urgent need for police reform.
He added: “As I have always said, SARS is just a symptom of the problem that plagues the Nigeria Police. We’re faced with a problem bigger than SARS. It’s an entrenched institutional cultural problem.”
He noted that the colonial culture of violence, brutality, repression and corruption inherited at independence was consolidated by military rule. “Despite the mantra, no serious measures have been implement that would transform the Police and policing in the new 'democratic' dispensation,” said Nwanguma.
He further said: “The new Police Act provides a framework to start genuine and far reaching police reform. From compromised recruitment process, to poor training, including dilapidated training institutions and poor training content to inadequate funding and poor welfare conditions, which make the work force prone to corruption and violence. As long as people who are not qualified and trainable continue to be recruited; as long as investigating police officers do not have funds to carry out basic investigations and have to depend on complainants and accused persons for funds to carry out investigation; as long as junior officers remain under pressure to generate funds and make returns to their superior officers who threaten to remove them from 'lucrative' postings if they don't 'deliver'; as long as corruption and abuses are condoned and tolerated at the top; as long as the IGP lacks operational autonomy and security of tenure and cannot safety resist political interference, and so on, no serious change can happen.”
A human rights lawyer, Barrister Lukman Agbele, said the federal government needed to look into the welfare of the policemen, not just SARS.
He opined that the salary of the police was too low compared to the risk they take, which he said was the reason they extort and harass citizens.
He said: “SARS Operatives go out to arrest youths who have tattoos on their body, but these SARS men also have tattoos and dreadlocks. They look more irresponsible than the people they arrest. They should stop going after flashy cars! What they are doing is a breach of a person's privacy. Police have to be accountable to the citizens. These harassments and brutalities are not limited to the SARS alone, even the anti-kidnapping unit also do worse.”
Asked if the change of SARS’ name would bring the desired changes, Agbele responded: “What majority of Nigerians don't understand is that the same policeman we have in Maiduguri is the same police we have in Edo State. It is just a few among them that are good. We are not saying SARS as a unit are not doing well. Why must SARS beat suspects in order to get information from them? I’m in support of the state police. In fact, State police will solve a lot of problem. The reason we have the problem we are facing now is that a lot of power is rested on the IGP, who is at the centre. Concentration such power at the centre can corrupt absolutely.”
President of Association of Industrial Security and Safety Operators of Nigeria (AISSON), Dr. Ona Ekhomu, said: “Violent criminals are aware that SARS has been scrapped. Since there was no orderly transition from one crime combating agency to another, the terrorists and criminals will exploit the confusion during the interregnum to unleash mayhem on Nigerians.”
Ekhomu said that given the probability of spike in violent crimes, the police must create a new elite unit dedicated to crime-combating within seven days in order to deny robbers and kidnappers the opportunity to slaughter innocent citizens.
According to him, Nigeria is already the third most terrorised country in the world. He said that it would be totally unacceptable for violent crimes to rise higher than current high levels. “SARS or no SARS, the police must competently perform its constitutional duty.”
Ekhomu said that the excesses and abuses of SARS were well documented. “However, Lord Acton aphorized that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, any successor elite anti-violent crime squad must be given the imperatives of accountability, responsibility and integrity. The unit must be properly supervised to avoid a repeat of the history of SARS of gross abuse of the rights of Nigerians.”
Ekhomu advised the Police High Command to address the huge trust deficit between the police and the Nigerian public. He said that policing would succeed only with the cooperation of citizens.
The former President of Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), Comrade Supo Ojo, said: “SARS is just a few among the problems confronting the country. A good thinker should know that the state-policing system is the solution to the problem we are having with the SARS. Remove police from the exclusive list of the president, it would only require amendment of the constitution. Let each state organise its own police, while some issues should be left to the federal police to handle and collaborate with the state police. Most people don’t want to believe that crime is local. There is no national crime. Some crimes are peculiar to certain localities. Changing the name SARS cannot change the characters of a policeman.”
He added that the same policemen, who had been chasing, extorting, violating and killing Nigerians, were still those that would be operating under the new name and uniform.
He stressed: “I will continue to say it; the solution to the protest is creation of state police. Power should be given to the governors to have their police. When a crime has been committed in Ilesa in Osun State, you shouldn’t expect somebody in Abuja to appreciate the enormity of the crime. It required somebody from that locality to do the job perfectly. State police is the answer. We don’t need a special police within the police. If there is an emergency, those in the locality will call the policemen within their reach. In other countries, you don’t see roadblocks whenever you are driving. You only see policemen, sitting in their vehicles. When they receive information that a crime is being committed somewhere, they take off and go there immediately. It is only in Nigeria you see roadblocks. The enormous amount state governments are spending on the police in their respective states is much. It shows the federal government don’t have the money to fund the police anymore.”
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