Judicial SARS

Hardball

Before it was disbanded amidst crippling citizens revolt in October 2020, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the police was notorious for its operatives going rouge. The police are essentially law enforcement agents statutorily mandated to keep the citizenry safe. But many SARS operatives plied abuses – including extra-judicial killings, extortions and property hijacks – against the Nigerian public that the police high command was never in a position to own, even though there was initial reluctance to dismantle the squad because of its purported strategic role in fighting violent crimes.

When fresh curbs outlined by the police leadership to check the abuses could not pacify citizens’ fury against the squad, Police Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu succumbed to pressure and scrapped the squad on 11th October. Even that did not upend public fury and the #EndSars protests raged with highly destructive consequences for some while. How hoodlums hijacked those protests and almost overturned the entire course of the Nigerian nationhood was an experience that will be indelible in memory. It was to regain nationhood groove that government, during the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting on 16th October, ordered the establishment of judicial panels of inquiry on SARS across the 36 states.

Now it seems the SARS mentality in the police system was not restricted to the disbanded ‘anti-crime’ (read: ‘criminal’) squad, but inheres other divisions: Surprise! Surprise! Even the legal division! A federal high court in Abuja, last week, listed a case purportedly by the police seeking a court order halting ongoing judicial inquiry by states into the activities of SARS before it was disbanded. In a suit filed on 9th November, 2020 by police lawyers led by Oyetola Atoyebi (SAN), the force argued that state governments had no statutory mandate to probe the activities of the police or its officials, hence violated cited provisions of law. It prayed the court to restrain judicial panel proceedings in the states forthwith.

But the police leadership swiftly came up to disown the anti-judicial panels suit and entered another suit pulling the earlier suit. In the latter suit by its lawyer, Festus Ibude, the force filed a notice of discontinuance, saying: “Take notice that the plaintiff herein intends to and doth hereby wholly withdraws its suit against all the defendants.”  Moments earlier, force spokesman Frank Mba, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, said the police management team had not authorised the earlier suit and IGP Adamu had ordered investigation of the role of the Force Legal Section, including its head, CP Tuesday Assayomo, who had been queried.

From indications, the force’s legal unit went rouge on the management with the Atoyebi suit. It is good that the unit is being probed already, because the architects of the repudiated suit are nothing other than judicial ‘SARSists’.