SARS is the acronym for the special ant- robbery unit within the Nigeria Police Force, which was itself placed under the jurisdiction of the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Departmen (FCID). SARS was founded in 1992 by a former police commissioner Simeon Danladi Midenda. The major reason SARS was formed was as a result of the killing of Col. Rindam, a Nigerian Army Colonel, allegedly by police officers at a checkpoint in Lagos. The death of the army officer had angered members of Nigeria’s then-ruling military and soldiers had been dispatched onto the streets of Lagos to “fish out” those responsible for the killing of Col. Rindam.
The fear of the msoldiers that were let loose searching for the errant policemen responsible for the Colonel’s murder led to many policemen withdrawing from their duty posts while others fled their work for an extended length of time. The absence of policemen on the street literally for week at the time increased the crime rate in the state. SARS was formed as a reaction to this development, with only 15 officers said to be operating in the shadows without knowledge of the soldiers that had laid siege on police duties and formations within the state, monitoring police radio chatters.
Also, due to the existence of three already-established anti-robbery squads that were operational at that time, Midenda needed to distinguish his squad from the already-active teams or formations. Midenda named his team the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a name that stuck for more than two decades. After months of dialogue, officers of the Nigerian Army and the Nigeria Police Force came to an understanding and official police duties began again in Lagos.
The SARS unit was officially commissioned in Lagos following a ceasefire by the army after a settlement was reached with the family of Colonel Rindam.
Despite its lofty beginnings as a necessary child of circumstances, SARS personnel soon lost its way. Before the unit’s recent demise through an announcement from the Office of the Police Inspector General banning its activities, the image most Nigerians had of SARS personnel, especially its members that operated undercover, was that of mostly rough- looking and armed personnel with tattoos, red eyes, mean-looking demeanors clad in rough jeans.
It didn’t help that most SARS personnel never wore their uniforms when interacting with members of the public. It was thus an irony of sorts that the same SARS personnel took to stopping and extorting youth and other members of the public they deemed “roughly-dressed”!
Many examples of the rough ways of SARS personnel abounded, much of which fuelled the public clamour for the unit’s recent demise. Sometime in August this year in the Palmgrove area of Lagos, SARS officials drove roughly in a mini bus and blocked a commercial bus, not minding the accident that could have happened in the middle of the busy road. Then all passengers in the commercial bus were told to get down. They refused to say why they gave the order for passengers to disembark from their bus in the middle of a busy street , even as those enquiries were made. Instead, SARS personnel threatened the passengers with the guns they carried menacingly.
Interviews from other commercial bus owners revealed that the action of the SARS personnel in that situation was nothing new. They further revealed that once such happens, SARS personnel would begin to extort money from the passengers of the commercial vehicles in that situation for an offence they knew nothing about, as it happened in that case.
Checks by NigeriaNewsAbroad have revealed that SARS personnel resorted to unwholesome acts as extortion, kidnapping, harassment and illegal arrests of citizens, instead of carrying out their sole duty of providing security to residents of the areas within which they operate.
Kolade Johnson was killed last year by SARS officers in April last year. There is equally a viral video of a SARS officer who pulled the trigger and opened fire at a vehicle and the bullet hit a lady.
Two members of the public who spoke to NigeriaNewsAborad at Iyana-Isashi in the Ojo Iyana-Iba area, of the state gave their own accounts of their unpleasant encounter with SARS personnel. when one of them recently went on an errand for his mother.
According to Nnemeka Abogu “My mum sent me to buy building materials so I asked my friend to follow me, we were inside a Keke nape when we saw the sars officers inside a mini bus, they stopped our Keke nape and bundled us inside their mini bus, they started accusing us of being Yahoo boys, we had no dreadlocks, we were nicely dressed, so I don’t know why we were accused of such. They started shouting at us, I was scared because at first I thought they were kidnappers, they asked for our phones but we were not with our phones at that time; we left our phones at home. Then they accused us of fraudulent activities which was confusing. We were slapped and harassed and the N30,000 I had with me was taken from me by the SARS officers. I kept telling them that my mum sent me on an errand, it was when they went through the item list I had on me that they finally allowed my friend and I to go, it was so embarrassing and I was scared because I have heard so many terrible stories of how young guys had been killed by SARS officers, but at the end they gave me back my money, I am a 23 year old student with a small sharwama business, I am not a criminal’.
‘The SARS issue is a tip of the iceberg. Any group of people can print FSARS on their shirts, hire a vehicle without plate numbers and start kidnapping people for rituals, that is why people go missing most times, this madness has to stop” one of the protesters for the #EndSars said.
A Nigerian musician Peter Clarke gave his own experience of what happened to him on the 3rd of October 2020 in the hands of Sars officers.
“A police officer pepper sprayed me and cocked his gun and was about to shoot but people who gathered actually stopped him from shooting.
I’m stunned, eyes are red. No young man is fucking safe in this country. E no get how you wan blow reach.’
He further revealed that the incident happened in the Lekki area of Lagos.
In April last year, a trending video surfaced online of Sars officers mercilessly beating a young guy, the young guy kept shouting. ‘you have no right to check my phone”. But passersby couldn’t do anything to stop the assault.
26 year Rukayat Alli also gave her own account of what happened to her December 2018” “Few days to Christmas, I was returning from work when SARS stopped my colleague and I at the ikeja terminal. We were walking when they stopped us and asked for our phones, these men were in mufti, they were in a Toyota Sienna vehicle and on seeing them we just knew they were SARS officers. They told me to open the apps on my phone. I did because I was already scared, I had Bitcoin and it wasn’t a criminal offence to have Bitcoin. I was not involved in any criminal activities but they accused me of such, took me to their Sienna and great fear came upon me. They didn’t even drive to any police station, they took my phone and transferred all my Bitcoins before letting me go.’ I was called all sorts of names that day, it was a really bad experience for me, I lost money to those people. I later learnt the same group of people extorted money from people in that same area”.
Rukayat and traumatized Nigerians like her certainly don’t mourn the recent demise of SARS.