The past three weeks of Nigeria’s EndSARS protests have me listening again to late Nigerian Afrobeat star and political activist Fela Kuti’s “Sorrow Tears & Blood.”
Nigeria has been a proudly democratic country for 21 years, but its law enforcement and military retain many of the worst habits of a previous era. The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) is an elite, corrupt force involved in everything from citizen harassment and unlawful arrests to kidnappings and extra-judicial killings. Young Nigerians, particularly anyone with signs of wealth but no obvious links to power, are regularly targeted and “arrested,” and their only hope of release is paying an extortionate amount of cash.
The Oct. 20 shooting of unarmed, peaceful protestors in Lagos was a turning point, and a lot rests on where things go from here. As with the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, for these young Nigerians the protests have become about more than police brutality. They are about fixing a country’s weak governance and lack of accountability. They are about restoring hope.
