Today, October 20 makes it a year many Nigerians, especially youths, who worried by police brutality, and activities of a police unit known as Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), embarked on a historic protest hash-tagged #EndSARS, were killed in their numbers at Lekki Tollgate in Lagos.
The #EndSARS protest started on the 8th of October 2020, and was held in about 11 states, Lagos, Abuja, Oyo, Abia, Rivers, among others.
Lagos appeared as the headquarters of the protest, people assembled at the Lekki Tollgate to demand for the dissolution of SARS and to show their grief about what is happening in the country at large.
The protest was peaceful until at some point when some hoodlums began to loot shops and set some government properties ablaze.
However, at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos, the protest kept moving smoothly as food, drinks and other things were distributed at the toll gate, people didn’t really feel they were not in their houses as they all came together in one voice to speak their mind.
The narrative, meanwhile, changed on the 20th of October 2020, as the Nigerian Army stormed the tollgate at about 6.50 pm in the evening.
Amid the waving of Nigeria’s flag, the peaceful protesters, unarmed, were shot at, several of them reportedly killed and many escaped with diverse bullet wounds. It was a day that can never be forgotten in the history of Nigeria.
The Nigerian Army initially denied shooting the protesters, but embarrassed with several pieces of evidence, later said they shot at the peaceful protesters but with blank bullets.
Nonetheless, forensic investigation revealed that the bullets shot at the people which got some of them injured and killed were bullets registered under the Nigerian Army.
The EndSars protesters were at the Lekki Toll Gate to lend their voice against police brutality. They accused SARS, a tactical unit of the Nigerian Police of various atrocities, including extortion, rape, abduction, torture, and extrajudicial killings.
What has changed?
The Nigerian Police, amid the protest, on the 11th of October 20, 2020 disbanded SARS and later replaced it with Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT).
Although SARS has been disbanded, nothing seems to have changed. The very reasons Nigerian youths embarked on the historic protest that ended on a gorry note, are still there. In fact, they are too visible for all to see.
Nigerians still witness the activities of SARS in the operation of the Nigerian Police Force like arbitrarily harassing people, extorting them of their money, brutalising, involvement in extra-judicial killing and a lot more.
Even after the ‘Lekki massacre’, it seems things have gone worse as videos of uniform men extorting and harassing Nigerian citizens now suffice on social media regularly.
For many Nigerians, nothing has changed, the activities of the police in the country, many argue, remain the same.
As today marks one year since the unforgettable Lekki massacre happened, the prayer of many is that the people who lost their lives during the protest continue to rest in peace, and others that lost one part of their body or more, that God should continue to show his mercies towards them.