Police Brutality Protests in Nigeria

Nigeria has seen a lot of news coverage for its #EndSARS police protests. To give background on this issue, SARS stands for Special Anti-Robber Squad. The Nigerian government established in 1992 as a specialized police unit. It's developed to become more violent and abusive over the almost 30 years of its existence. The Nigerians have been protesting how much power SARS has, and most of these protests have been peaceful. In 2018 they were followed by the Nigerian government's claims to disassemble the unit. Nigerians don't believe the Nigerian government has made any real effort to reform SARS because there has been no reduction in the violence they perpetrate. However, it's only recently that SARS's nature has been brought into the public spotlight. This has been through a combination of recent events and the Nigerians' accessibility to social media.

On Tuesday, peaceful protests were being held in Lagos (an area of 20 million people). Eyewitness accounts state street lights in the area went out before Nigerian soldiers rolled up in trucks. What happened next became the event that brought attention to the situation as a whole. "As demonstrators began to sing Nigeria’s national anthem, 'Arise O’ Compatriots,' the soldiers fired live rounds at the unarmed protesters, leaving a number of people dead and flags stained with blood, and filling Nigerian social-media feeds with images that have prompted condemnation from around the world" (WSJ). The Nigerians' access to social media, while not nearly as widespread as it was in earlier years, irrefutably documented this slaughter for the world to see. It was a news source that couldn't be censored by the more powerful forces oppressing the people. Not only did this event spark social media attention, but it also sparked many more protests both across the country and worldwide.

The Nigerian police force faced a lot of pressure from international backlash. They announced they were dissolving SARS even though this announcement was ineffective as previous ones. In response, Nigerians started making more specific calls to action. CNN cites calls for psychological evaluations of police officers, for example. The country continues to exist in a state of unrest as of now.

My take on how this relates to comparative politics is where the US stands on all this. Nigeria is a very important military ally of the US army. The US considers all of this conflict bad for their public opinion, so they made a statement condemning the military's actions. I consider this an extremely ironic thing for them to do. The Black Lives Matter movement has been sweeping across the US over the past few months, which calls for an end to the US's own version of police brutality. In much the same manner as SARS has, the US police forces have violated human rights by murdering innocent people. Rather than reform its own police forces the US condemned Nigeria for not reforming its police forces. This makes me think the US doesn't truly care about justice in this instance; they only care about looking better than other countries. But I do find it interesting that two very different countries across the world are dealing with similar issues.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/21/africa/nigeria-sars-protests-police-explainer-intl/index.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/young-nigerians-came-to-protest-police-brutality-then-the-shooting-started-11603452187

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/endsars-nigeria-police-brutality-sars-lekki-protest/2020/10/22/27e31e0c-143d-11eb-a258-614acf2b906d_story.html