By Lawal Ogienagbon
In the end, what ended the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was not one of its despicable acts for which it was notorious. It was scrapped for what it did not do, but was accused of doing by some of those familiar with its trade mark of sorrow, tears and blood as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti would put it. It was like hanging SARS with its own rope of false allegation which it is known for largely making against its victims to fleece them. The renowned novelist, Rene Lodge Brabazon Raymond, alias James Hadley Chase, would have tagged it all: The way the cookie crumbles, the title of one of his bestsellers.
What led to the demise of SARS began in Ughelli, Delta State, about two weeks ago, when the video of a man allegedly shot by its operative went viral. A Twitter user, who uploaded the footage on social media, claimed that the victim had died. His tweet was all that was needed to reignite the #ENDSARS campaign which has been on and off for years. Efforts by Minister of State, Labour, Festus Keyamo, who is from Ughelli, to douse tension failed. His explanation that the victim did not die and that he was not shot by SARS cut no ice with the aggrieved.
He said the victim’s brother told him that the man was in hospital. Keyamo added that the victim fell out of the vehicle of Operation Delta Safe which arrested him. Ughelli youths, many of who have had bitter experience in the hands of SARS, trooped to the streets in protest, setting off a nationwide movement such as never seen in the land. The protesters had found something to hang SARS on at last and they were not ready to let go.
Nobody, not even those in power, gave SARS the benefit of doubt because of its notoriety. What I have been reading about the squad in the past few days on social media is mind boggling and some of the stories sound incredible. But the narrators insist they are true. What is certain though is that SARS and other police and security operatives have been involved in extra-judicial killings nationwide for years. Some of them had even been tried and sentenced to death, but the verdicts never served as deterrent to others. Instead, they have carried on with these dastardly acts as if they are above the law.
The authorities share in the blame of how SARS, a unit that was created to tackle the menace of robbery, became the menace itself. The government and the police echelon, for long, looked the other way amid reports of the excesses of SARS. They can never claim that those reports never got to them. They chose to ignore the reports as SARS was serving a purpose that suited them until the bubble burst on October 1 in Ughelli. What a significant day, the nation’s 60th Independence anniversary, for the people to free themselves from the shackles of SARS. If the government had acted long before now, the SARS monster would have been tamed and the outfit would not have gone into oblivion in this shameful way.
The failure of leadership allowed SARS atrocities to fester. With the layers of authority within the police, it is unbelievable that an outfit could be allowed to become a terror to the people it was supposed to protect. SARS’ main duty was to fight armed robbery, but it abandoned the job to look for easy money from members of the public, especially well to do youngsters, who without proof, it labelled Yahoo Yahoo boys in order to extort money from them. It became a crime for youths to drive exotic cars, use expensive phones or have laptops in their bags. Woe betide any youth found with any, or all, of these items.
It is the duty of the police to investigate a case before arriving at any conclusion. Sadly, the reverse became the case and despite complaints from different quarters, the police hierarchy did nothing. Will it be proper for the top officers who ran SARS to retain their jobs in the wake of this ignominious sacking of the outfit? The fish, it is said, gets rotten from the top and not the bottom. If the rank and file and the middle level officers in SARS are to be redeployed for disgracing the police, their bosses deserve a harsher punishment. These bosses knew what was going on, but shielded their boys because they were partakers in the illicit gains made in the line of duty.
Policing should be better than that. And Nigerians deserve the kind of policing that will give them rest of mind and not a heart attack whenever they see a policeman coming. The #ENDSARS protests across the country showed how bad things had become. The protesters were echoing the larger public’s disenchantment with not only SARS, but the entire police and other security agencies. Nothing depicts this more than the protesters’ outright rejection of Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu’s dissolution of SARS on Sunday. They said they would only accept President Muhammadu Buhari’s word for it and demanded an executive order to that effect.
Now, SARS is gone and it is gone for good. It has been replaced with the Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT). It is not the name that matters, but the character of the people that will serve in the unit. Will they be different from their colleagues who served in SARS? With the high crime rate in the country, we cannot discountenance the use of some special squads to combat heinous crimes. Members of these squads must play by the rules and must not use their position to make life difficult for the people. SWAT should not take a cue from SARS, otherwise it will end up in ignominy like its precursor. And that is not a curse.
SARS went beyond its brief because it believed it had an all encompassing power. The only power it had was to arrest robbers, nothing more, nothing less. It overreached itself by stopping youths on the road under the guise of looking for Yahoo Yahoo boys. Are Yahoo Yahoo boys and armed robbers the same? That was where SARS missed it. Its operatives greed for filthy lucre pushed it to the extreme and it destroyed itself in the process. The youths have stood up for their right and won. It shows that their voice counts. Things can only get better if they channel this same energy into producing the desired leadership for the country in future.
As leaders of tomorrow, they owe it a duty to make the country work not only now, but always. They have won the battle; but they can only rest after winning the war of saving Nigeria. This should be their next assignment.
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