Can Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests lead to police abolition?

As Nigerians protest brutality and demand reforms, some say full abolition is the only road to liberation from violence.

On October 11, Angela Christian was in a throng of more than 200 people marching to Louis Edet Building, the police headquarters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, when the protesters came face-to-face with a roadblock of water cannon and police.

It was the 24-year-old’s second protest – the first was against sexual violence back in June – and here she was again, on a Sunday blighted with heat, holding a haphazardly cut carton inked with “END SARS” to protest against police brutality.

The same words – calling out Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) – echoed through the crowd; protesters chanted it even when blasts of high-pressure water from the cannon hit them. Brought to her knees, Christian’s mind told her things could get worse but, inspired by those around her, she raised a defiant fist.

“I was scared for myself because I also heard the police firing warning shots and using tear gas,” she said. “The police tried to disperse us because we were growing in number. We were peaceful and yet they attacked us just after it was announced that SARS has been dissolved.”

Three days after protests began on October 8 – a chain reaction after a video on Twitter showed SARS officers driving away after shooting a young man and leaving his body by the roadside – the police chief announced the dissolution of the unit. But this is the fourth time since 2017 the government has promised to disband or reform SARS.

Set up in 1992 to tackle armed robbery, car theft and kidnapping, SARS has become a widely-loathed police unit, notorious for unlawful arrests, extortion, brutality and carrying out extrajudicial killings. In 2017, the #EndSARS social media campaign began. But the unrest has reached a flashpoint over the last two weeks, triggered by continued acts of police brutality.

“We will never stop protesting until SARS are no more and the police is reformed,” Christian said.

That same sentiment can be felt in Lagos, where youth-led demonstrations have crippled vehicular movement and turned the Lekki toll gate – where several protesters were shot and killed on Tuesday – into a nexus of rebellion.

“I have been at two protests in Lagos but the one in Surulere is still in my memory because we were attacked by state-sponsored thugs,” said Kazeem Balogun, a 21-year-old university undergraduate. “They arrived in mass transit buses and some of us were beaten and wounded and the police around did nothing to help us.”

“This is now more than SARS because the Nigerian youth are fed up with the way this country has been running. Overpaid politicians, lack of security and social amenities. We want change.”

Reform vs abolition

While many Nigerians are prioritising police reforms in their laundry list of citizen demands, the concept of police abolition is also gaining support. But it has yet to break into mainstream political discourse.

“Abolition is a lifelong project. There’s never a better time than now to start, but we must never forget that we are in this for the long haul,” said OluTimehin Adegbeye, a Nigerian feminist and speaker observing the protests online who is also new to the framework of abolition.

“In my learning, I have come to realise that abolition means transforming not only policing, prison or the justice system, but also interpersonal relationships and how we think about punishment as a whole. It requires a complete shift in how we are in community with each other,” she said.

“The only way to seed this kind of thinking in public consciousness is to do so extremely deliberately, through political education and with understanding that it will take generations to take root.”

SARS is not the only concern for protesters out in the streets. The Nigerian Police Force has a grim record of unlawful killings and violence. This includes killing at least 18 people during their enforcement of COVID-19 lockdown measures and the use of water cannon and tear gas on peaceful #EndSARS protesters like Christian.

In disbanding SARS, Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu announced a new tactical team (SWAT) would replace the now-defunct unit. But SWAT, like SARS, is still skewed towards operating within militarised paradigms of policing. “Functionally, the Nigerian police currently plays a limited role as an institution,” said Ayo Sogunro, a Nigerian human rights lawyer and writer observing the protests from South Africa. He explained that issues like community security and traffic control are managed by other entities, which means the police only really operate in the sphere of violent crimes. “The entire fabric of our criminal justice system is wrapped around the use of the police as an agent of violence rather than as an impartial arbiter of the law.”

Sogunro is of the opinion the idea of a police institution, or even a police state, is deeply embedded in Nigeria’s national psyche – an outcome of its colonial and military history. As such, it is hard to see police abolition as a popular demand among Nigerians in the near future.

“But, indeed, the #EndSARS protest is opening up a space for this kind of conversation,” Sogunro added. “The important thing is that Nigerians are no longer thinking of police operations as immutable facts that cannot be contested by public opinion. Now that more are beginning to shine a spotlight on the internal affairs and external fallout of policing in Nigeria, then there’s a slight – but present – possibility that the whole structure of our criminal justice system, especially policing, will be called into scrutiny and a new, more humane form of providing human security will gain gradual acceptance.”