Finally, it is done. Or so those sliding down the slippery slopes of excitement would think.
The infamous Special Anti-Robbery Squad, which was not special in the way it related with Nigerians who are not criminals, has been disbanded.
After years of staggered protests on the streets and on social media, after countless #EndSARS, this time, SARS killing of an innocent young man in Lagos seemed to be the trigger, the proverbial last straw.
This time, when Nigerians poured onto the streets, and protests were held in front of Nigerian embassies abroad, by Nigerians and global activists, it was clear they weren’t going to take those shoddy promises of reform that have been shoved down their throats before.
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As the Hausas would say, it was a bloody battle between a dog and a monkey, one being the police and the other being the protestors and, as the dust settles, questions arise.
The most obvious of course being who actually won?
One may be quick to say the protestors won.
They wanted SARS gone and in the end, it looks like that is what happened. But is it, really?
Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu’s reluctant proclamation yesterday, Sunday, announcing the disbandment of SARS is not Thanos’ Snap that will wipe away the thousands of officers who wear the SARS badge and have reigned with impunity over the years.
They will, in the words of the IGP, be “redeployed to other police formations”.
How is that a bad idea?
Going by the simple principle of guns don’t kill people but people kill people, those gun-totting officers with SARS badges on their chests, who harassed, violated the fundamental rights of Nigerians and have grown accustomed to getting away with this cruelty, are still the same men who will be in the police, bearing the same guns that have given them the powers they have so grossly abused.
Judging by the IG’s words, a “new policing arrangement” will be created to take the place of SARS, to fill the vacuum its disbandment will create.
In all likelihood, a good number of these officers will remove their SARS vest and put on that of the new “arrangement.”
They may be civil and professional in the first few months, maybe up to a few years, and then they will revert to type.
They cannot give what they do not have.
In a small way, the Nigeria Police lost face by kowtowing to the will of the protestors.
But since when has losing face bothered the police?
Besides, they get to reinvent SARS in the shape and form they so desire.
There is mention of an “investigative team” to deal with crimes against citizens by members of SARS.
The IG had previously promised setting up a human rights desk in the offices of SARS to investigate crimes by its officers.
The truth is no one trusts the police to handle this.
The police force has a long tradition of protecting its own from prosecution for wrongdoings.
In 2014, Yusuf Kolo, who was heading SARS in Kano, was indicted in a civil trial for directly torturing to death one Hassan Alfa and severely injuring his brother Auwal Alfa over complaints of a domestic dispute.
But the police instead promoted Mr Kolo to head SARS at its Abuja headquarters.
Now, Mr Kolo is a Deputy Commissioner of Police heading the Special Tactical Squad (STS) and is one of the IGP’s top lieutenants.
With someone like him, with his record in the force, in bed with the IG, it is hard to see the sincerity in this comment.
And only the promise by the IGP to include civil society organisations in this investigative team will buy it any kind of credence.
So who won?
The truth is the monkey and the dog in this bloody battle might both have missed a significant opportunity.
There is no wisdom in denying that despite its many atrocities, SARS was in fact created because there was a need for it and by sheer coincidence ended up with the same initials as a very bad disease.
The rampant cases of armed robbery across the country at the time the squad was created called for a response force.
It has sadly, like the police force itself, failed to adapt.
There has been a noticeable decline in armed robbery in favour of kidnappings and banditry.
That is not to say the need for a force like SARS has ceased.
Or that disbanding it was the best option.
That option was to reform SARS and by extension reform the Nigeria Police Force and policing in the country.
The men who gave SARS a bad name were drawn from the larger body of the police, into which they are returning.
Without any reform, a training on how to be civil, polite and professional towards innocent people, while being more efficient and technically savvy in discharging their duties intelligently, they will continue being what they have always been.
These much-needed reforms would have been a better outcome for those clamouring for #EndSars.
That they are gunning for an end to SARS is only because they do not trust the sincerity of the police to reform, as they claimed to have done when former IG Ibrahim Idris merely changed the name of SARS to Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) and thought that was good enough to ruin the hashtag.
The atrocities did not stop. The hashtag did not change either.
What is fascinating here is the fact that some Nigerians somehow read politics into an agitation that is essentially about human rights violations.
Some of these people thought that the #EndSARS agitation was directed at the president, as a criticism of his poor handling of the security situation in the country.
Such elements lent themselves to sponsored, counter-protests and commentaries that tried to chip away at the validity of the #EndSARS campaign.
Conversely, it also chipped away at the moral rights of these people to expect the larger majority of Nigerians to raise their voices for them when their own oxen are being gored.
It was for these people, a missed opportunity to lend their voices to an issue of national concern.
So again at the end, who won?
Well, there are quite a few:
The protestors who feel deeply offended by the existence of SARS, on account of the cruelty of its officers, and there are many of them.
Those who don’t trust the police to reform, until they realise later that they have in fact lost when “the new policing arrangement” turns out to be SARS with another acronym.
Those Nigerians who have discovered that their voices and their hashtag and their righteous rage can cause a change, who have learnt that though air is thin, it can still bend a tree.
Those police officers who are going to escape justice for their crimes against the Nigerian people, who will disappear under the dust of this confusion and rise to the top echelon of the police force, like DCP Yusuf Kolo.
Those criminals who will exploit the gap created while SARS undergoes its metamorphosis, those whose activities in the first place gave SARS the impunity to become the monsters that they eventually became.
But who lost then?
The authorities who lost face because they failed to act when they should have and waited until angry citizens forced their hands.
And those who introduced politics and petty sentiments into the mix, who have now been left licking their injured pride and have somehow managed to ex-communicate themselves from the power of agitation, from the hashtag, which is becoming the greatest movement in the world.
In the end, as the Hausas would say, the monkey and the dog in this battle are bloodied and the truth is that there is no clear winner and loser here. It was a battle that should have, could have, been avoided.
The fact that it had to happen is a great loss for Nigeria.
