Days after nationwide protests rocked many cities and other metropolitan centres across the country, Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police, IGP Mohammed Adamu has announced the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, nationwide, and other special policing squads operating throughout the country.
IGP Adamu announced that the dissolution of the special Police forces affected such formations across the 36 State Police Commands within the country and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
Furthermore, according to the IGP, the dissolution of SARS formations was in response to the strident calls in that regard by the Nigerian citizenry. He also observed that in the wake of the announced dissolution, all officers and men of the now-scrapped Special Anti-Robbery squads throughout the country were to be redeployed with immediate effect.
According to the Police IGP, even in the wake of SARS’s dissolution, the Nigeria Police Force was not oblivious to the constant need to combat vices within the Nigerian society, including armed robbery, banditry, kidnapping and other violent crimes in the country, which was before now were menaces the now-disbanded SARS squads were created to combat.
Adamu assured that a new policing arrangement to address anticipated gaps in policing strategy in the wake of the dissolution of SARS had been created and would be rolled out in due course.
In addition, as part of measures to prevent a re-occurrence of events that gave rise to the dissolution of SARS, the IGP announced that a Citizens’ and Strategic Stakeholders’ Forum would be formed to regularly interface with Police leadership at all levels and advise on police activities as they affect the general public.
According to the Police IGP, the Force is “constituting an Investigation Team which shall include Civil Society Organizations and Human Rights Bodies to work with the Police in investigating alleged cases of human rights violations.