2 weeks ago
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…Why accountability, justness stay elusive — Lawyers
By Henry Ojelu
Five years ago, streets crossed Nigeria shook with the chants of restless youths, their placards raised against constabulary brutality and their voices echoing successful unison: “EndSARS, End impunity!” From Lagos to Abuja, from Port Harcourt to Jos, young Nigerians confronted a strategy they believed had failed to support them.
Today (October 20) arsenic the 5th day of the #EndSARS protests is marked, the question remains some a milestone successful civic awakening and a bitter reminder of however justness tin beryllium delayed, denied, oregon distorted.
This peculiar study revisits the forces that birthed the protests, the faces that defined them, the sites scarred by violence, the judgments handed down by panels and courts and the agelong hold for justness by victims and their families.
The sparks
The communicative of #EndSARS is the communicative of accumulated frustration. For decades, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, primitively created successful the 1990s to combat convulsive crime, had go synonymous with abuse. Instead of protecting citizens, SARS operatives were accused of turning Nigerian streets into hunting grounds.
Their methods were crude and notorious: young men stopped for having dreadlocks, wearing earrings, oregon carrying laptops; phones were seized and combed for ‘evidence’; wallets emptied astatine gunpoint; parents forced to wage to merchandise their children. Worse, allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances piled up with chilling regularity.
By 2020, these stories had reached a tipping point. Social media became the courtroom wherever the radical presented their grounds — pictures of battered victims, videos of raids, and testimonies of humiliation. The last straw came successful aboriginal October 2020, erstwhile a viral video allegedly showed SARS operatives sidesplitting a young antheral successful Delta State. Within hours, hashtags calling for the abolition of SARS trended worldwide.
What began online spilled into the streets. In Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, Benin City, and crossed Nigeria, thousands rallied successful unprecedented numbers. It was not conscionable astir SARS; it was astir dignity, accountability, and the close to unrecorded without fearfulness of those meant to protect.
A leaderless revolution
EndSARS was famously described arsenic a leaderless protest. There was nary cardinal committee, nary governmental fig issuing directives. Yet, it produced disposable faces and voices who rallied the masses.
Segun Awosanya, popularly known arsenic Segalink, had agelong been a professional of constabulary brutality and became an aboriginal notation point. Celebrities specified arsenic Falz (Folarin Falana), comedian and activistic Mr. Macaroni (Debo Adedayo), and Runtown not lone spoke but marched with protesters, lending prima powerfulness to the streets. Others similar Davido, Tiwa Savage, and Burna Boy utilized euphony and platforms to amplify the struggle.
Perhaps the astir iconic was DJ Switch (Obianuju Udeh), who live-streamed the events of October 20, 2020, astatine Lekki Toll Gate to implicit 150,000 viewers connected Instagram. Her footage, showing chaos arsenic soldiers opened fire, turned her into an planetary whistleblower. But the fame came with threats, forcing her into exile.
Grassroots organisers — lawyers offering pro bono services, medics treating wounded protesters, and women coordinating the feminist conjugation that funded logistics — kept the question alive.
Five years later, their trajectories diverge. Some stay vocal successful advocacy; others person returned to backstage lives. But the corporate representation they built continues to animate debates astir quality rights and governance successful Nigeria.
Monuments scarred
No spot symbolises #EndSARS much than the Lekki Toll Gate successful Lagos. Once a bustling constituent of economical activity, it became crushed zero of the protests. Protesters camped there, singing the nationalist anthem nether the emblem and holding candlelight vigils for slain compatriots.
On October 20, 2020, the toll gross turned into a country of humor and controversy. Lights went off, CCTV footage mysteriously failed, and soldiers opened fire. What followed has since been called the Lekki massacre by victims and “a disputed shooting” by authorities.
The toll gross itself suffered vandalism, its facilities damaged successful the aftermath. Attempts to rebuild and reopen it sparked outrage, with activists...
English (US) ·