#EndSARS, A Call For What To Come

 Nigerian youths seem to be the true catalysts for a true national change. The rise against the rogue police squad created to fight armed robbery and violent crimes called Special Anti Robbery Squad, SARS is indicative of my assertion. 

SARS shifted its attention from fighting armed robbery to terrorising citizens. Tales of woes abound of how SARS have turned paradoxical by perpetrating the evil they were initially created to fight.

Innocent Nigerian youths have been killed by SARS, many have been robbed by SARS. Once, I had given lift to a young man who was stranded around Bariga at night. He said SARS officials picked him up on his street at Onigbongbo, Maryland on his way from work. He was accused of being a yahoo boy. They took him to a lonely street in Maryland, checked his phones and saw nothing incriminating. Rather than release him, they took him to the nearest ATM, withdrew the only forty two thousand naira in his account, then they took him to Bariga and dumped him there, with no money, nothing. He did not even have call credit in his phone to call anyone.

I was touched and I had to change direction to drive through Maryland. I dropped him off at Maryland. That is one sad tale of SARS atrocities. SARS became a terror to young people. They saw every youth as criminal and they tried to exploit them. It became a crime to carry a laptop in Nigeria, it became a crime to dress well and look good because SARS was there to harrass Nigerian youths.

Funny enough, the rogue SARS dressed like the rogues they were, touts with guns. They were no different from armed robbers. I ran into some of them on a street off College Road, near Ogba, Lagos. They were in front of a house and the first thought that came to my mind was that a robbery was going on. I was about to take flight when I heard someone mentioned they were SARS officials.

The call to scrap the rogue police organisation has been on for years but the government had only paid lip service, nothing was ever done. SARS continued to harrass Nigerians and kill many.

Disbanding SARS and forming a new squad to replace it is just short changing the people because the same rogue squad will be returned in a different garb and the terror continues. Police brutality does not even end with SARS. The entire force needs to be reformed. Go to a police station and see how a sergeant behaves, how he smells of cigarettes and cheap alcohol while on duty yet barks at citizens like a rabid dog. This is shameful.

Let me salute this current generation of youths for voicing out and coming out to fight for their rights. I see them as the generation that will move Nigeria away from all the ills that have devilled  this country. This is the generation of game changers, freedom fighters and nation builders.

SARS is just one of the ills bedevilling Nigeria. Nigerians are still yoked with police and military brutality, Nigerians are still yoked with failing economy, Nigerians are suffering without mitigation, corruption continues to kill our nation, politicians continue to steal our commonwealth and they get away with it, no infrastructural developments, no good governance. These are issues that will come up and our youths will demand for end of corruption in Nigeria, end of exploitative governance, end of poverty, end of suffering.

I pity President Buhari that this reawakening is happening during his tenure but truth is that this has been long overdue. Nigeria has to rise from her slumber and be the giant that she is. The current government has not done anything to mitigate the sufferings of the people. In fact, it has made life more unbearable for the people. This government has taken Nigerians for a ride and for far too long. It is sad that despite its huge failings, the government would rather recruits people to bully dissenting voices instead of addressing the issue. Imagine a president who is not running for election keeping a band of media sycophants who called themselves Buhari Media Organisation, BMO.

The appointment of Buhari's Madam Blabbermouth, Lauretta Onochie by the president as a national commisioner for INEC is one evidence that the government takes Nigerians for a ride. How on earth could he have done that?

This youth movement must be sustained, it must change the narrative. After the reform of police, the next call will come! One placard by the #EndSars protestprs read "We will call out bad governance soon."

 This is a call for what is to come. Nigeria must be saved from the hands of those who have failed her, the generation of old men with fatigued but cunning minds. 

#ENDSARS. I stand with Nigerian youths always!