Who Is SARS? #ENDSARS

 The unrelenting and seemingly unquenchable protests by resilient youths across Nigeria against the rogue police outfit Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS has engulfed the nation and has put government at all level on its toes. There is palpable fear that since the youths have refused to back down, the protests may get to another level that may consume the nation.

The beauty of the youth protests is that it is people's driven, completely devoid of political undertone. We saw when people like Yele Sowore tried to sneak into the protests yesterday when it had taken shape in an obvious attempt to hijack the protest and stamp the face of his Revolution Now, the youths resisted and booed him away. This is not a political protest, it is not to score any partisan political goal but to liberate the people and society from the rogue SARS.

We have seen desperate attempt to also attack the protests with obviously sponsored counter protests but that had yielded no result. The government has responded rather unintelligently by hastily disbanding the rogue SARS and reinventing a replacement named Special Weapons and Tactics Squad, SWAT. The questions are how do you create and man a tactics squad in two days? Are the men in SWAT any different from those in the disbanded SARS either in persons or in orientation? It reeks of the usual offensive machinations of government to fool the people. 

Unfortunately for them, this is a generation of youths once called lazy youths who are not easily fooled many times. They know the leadership thrives on lies and deceits, they know that the Nigerian government by its initial handling of the matter cares less about them. They know that the thugs who attacked them at Alausa have sponsors, they know the ban on protest in Abuja by Buhari's minister of FCT is working in tandems with the government. They know that government is desperate to break their ranks and end the protests rather than meaningfully addressing the issues. The sudden reopening of NYSC camps and the finally headway with ASUU are indicative of this move. 

The youths cannot be manipulated, they cannot be cowered and they cannot be suppressed. They cannot be hectored and they cannot be fooled. And nobody can hijack their protests until their demands are genuinely met.

But SARS now goes beyond the rogue Special Anti-Robbery Squad that is deeply rooted in corruption, extortion, harrassment and killing of innocent Nigerians, it is now a metaphor for the stinking rot in our nation. SARS is a microcosm of the hopelessness in Nigeria. It is a representation of a rotten system where intimidation, harrassment, mismanagement, misrule, corruption, massive purloining of the treasury with sheer impunity and reckless abandon, abuse of office, self-aggradisement, and all the ills that stand a country as a shame reign.

SARS is bad governance, SARS is shielding corrupt persons and bullion vans politicians, SARS is creating hardship in the country, SARS is official incompetence, SARS is poverty, SARS is corruption, SARS is the lack of political will to move the nation forward, SARS is nepotism, SARS is sweeping the massive corruption in NDDC under the carpet, SARS is infrastructural deficits, SARS is bad roads, SARS is inflation without clue of reversal, SARS is increasing electricity tariffs without the corresponding electric supply, SARS is the Jumbo salaries of the National Assembly, SARS is the group of political elites who continually hold us divided and in menagerie even in our homes, SARS is all the rottenness in our national system, the terrible issues that have refused to let us grow as a nation.

We must End SARS Now!

In case we think this is a joke and we call the bluff of this generation of Nigerian youths, then we have something coming for us. We are nearing a time when all those who have stolen from Nigeria will vomit their loots.

#ENDSARSNOW

#ENDBADGOVERNANCENOW