19102020 - #EndSARS: Stop Army's planned Op Crocodile Smile

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16 — Vanguard, MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2020 Send Opinions & Letters to: opinions1234@yahoo.com EndSARS, StartSWAT, labour and a wrinkled leadership THE President and Command er-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Muhammadu Buhari, thinks Nigerian youths are lazy and want to be spoon-fed like babies. Some other arms of the country’s wrinkled leadership believe that the youths are hooked on Big Brother Naija and other inanities. So it came as a shock when the youths rose 12 days ago to demand an end to impunity by insisting that the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, be scrapped for degenerating into an extortionist agency and a killer squad. Not many took notice of the protests that took off on a small scale. Within days, like a wild Australian dry season fire, it had become a wildfire raging out of control. Misreading the issues, the Buhari government thought all it needed do was to announce the disbandment of SARS and the establishment of a supposedly new outfit called the Special Weapons and Tactics Team, SWAT. It was poor comedy. What special weapons are to be deployed or used different from those of SARS? What new tactics different from those of SARS? Structures, especially national ones, are not conjured; they take some planning and execution, so when the Inspector General of Police, IGP, announced the scrapping of SARS and simultaneously, the birth of SWAT, it only meant that SWAT was existing side by side with SARS. Otherwise, it was a renaming ceremony of the SARS; a rebottling of old wine with the liquid content remaining the same. It is incredible that the Buhari government could not read the youths. That it did not know the open truth that ‘EndSARS’ was actually a demand for an end to impunity, unimaginative governance and reckless increases in fuel and electricity prices. How can a government fail so abysmally to understand that ‘EndSARS’ was symbolic; a mere rallying cry for a youth movement that is alive, creative and smart? Nine days before the EndSARS protests began, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and the Trade Union Congress, TUC, had aborted national strikes and protests against the suffocating cost of living. At that time, the Buhari government must have congratulated itself for scuttling the protests. But if it is critical in thinking and reflects, it would have wished the trade union-led protests went on because they had an identifiable leadership it can talk and negotiate with. The EndSARS protest also show that the trade unions do not have a franchise for street protests and that whenever a vacuum occurs, others will fill it. This is not new in our contemporary politics. In the critical days of July and August 1993 after the military had annulled the June 12 presidential elections, a deadly war raged between the rabid generals that wanted to continue military rule, and the Nigerian people who wanted democracy. The leadership of the trade unions under Comrade Paschal Bafyau not only refused to side with the people, but openly supported continued military dictatorship. Pro-people civil society organisations and patriots led by the Campaign for Democracy, CD, moved in to play the vanguard role. It succeeded in mobilising millions of Nigerians in street It is incredible that the Buhari government could not read the youths; that it did not know the open truth that ‘EndSARS’ was actually a demand for an end to impunity, unimaginative governance and reckless increases in fuel and electricity prices protests, surpassed in our history only by the January 2012 strikes and protests. In those days, only the National Union of Bank, Insurance and Financial Institution Employees, NUBIFIE, openly called out its members to fight on the side of the people. When military misrule continued under the Abacha regime and that gang refused to de-annul the presidential election, the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, in July 1994, broke ranks with the Trade Union Movement to call spectacular strikes against the military dictators. The Buhari government became quite desperate last week to stop the EndSARS protests. It sought to negotiate with the leadership, but the protests and their leadership, like fuel price, are de-regulated. It then called an advertised meeting with some official civil society leaders who, despite a communiqué, could not stop what they did not start. Then in desperation, it turned to music star, Davido, presenting him as the protest leader they could negotiate with. It was a disaster particularly for Davido who merely rambled and read a five-point demand by the protesters which was a waste of time. This is because the demands were well known and variously published. Even the IGP he read it to must have had several copies of the demand before Davido met him. I felt sorry for Davido, an otherwise talented young man who did not put on his thinking cap. I knew Davido’s grandfather, Comrade Ayodele Adeleke. He was Secretary of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives. On the eve of the country’s independence, the trade unions were split into two acrimonious centres: the radical All Nigeria Trade Union Federation, ANTUF and the conservative National Council of Trade Unions of Nigeria, NCTUN. The two centres on March 7, 1959 at the Dayspring Hotel, Enugu met to see if they could sort out their differences. Davido’s grandfather chaired the meeting and applied so much wisdom that both centres agreed to dissolve themselves and establish a single centre, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC. Comrade Adeleke, who in the Second Republic became a Senator, applied a lot of wisdom in helping to resolve the labour crisis; it is that wisdom Davido lacked when he agreed to stop a national protest he merely bumped into; how was he to talk to the demonstrators in the streets when he does not even know them? These strategies having failed, last Tuesday, government sent the army to stop the protesters who were singing and dancing on their way to the National Assembly. The soldiers brutalised the protesters but could not break them. Next day, armed thugs were assembled and unleashed on the protesters in Abuja. Then last Thursday, thugs armed with machetes, guns, knives and sticks were driven in beautiful buses to the Alausa protest ground in Lagos, and unleashed on peaceful protesters. Armed thugs were similarly let loose in Kano where the youths were protesting against insecurity. Then the Nigeria Army which tagged the peaceful protesters “subversive elements and troublemakers” threatened to further brutalise them. Somehow, the leadership of the army still manages to live in the inglorious past of military misrule with its warped logic that the army’s loyalty is to whoever is the President and not to the Nigerian people. The Buhari government also banned protests in Abuja; where did it derive such unconstitutional powers? These protests may just be the beginning. Bob Marley in ‘Natural Mystic’ sang: “There’s a natural mystic blowing through the air. If you listen carefully now you will hear. This could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last". Repackaging and rebranding of SARS is not enough BY REV. MATTHEW MA THE past few days have not been the best for the Nigeria Police Force. The widespread protests over the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, began as the massive young population became tired of SARS’ operations. They are demanding reforms of the police squad, which has been characterised by immense brutality, assault, illegal arrest, extortion, and the killing of peaceful protesters. Despite forcing the Inspector General of Police, IGP, to disband the unit, they are not satisfied as they want total police reforms and the officers in the squad department to face justice. The Police Department had never been so humbled and overwhelmed by Nigerian youth since its many years of establishment. What we are seeing does not only call for repackaging and rebranding of the police force, it also calls for an assessment of the police institution, its operations, and psychology as well as police conduct and style. While the ongoing condemnation against the Police Department occurred as a result of the scandalous murder of youths in Nigeria, it is on a record that before then, violent police conduct has been rampant in Nigeria. Available data show that police brutality has become a systemic epidemic. In Nigeria, between 2013 and 2018, police brutality caused 841 deaths (NTS, 2020). The spike of the killings is not only limited to the police, there are reported cases linked to other military agencies as well. Civilians are being extorted, tortured, and killed by armed officers, particularly members of SARS. The victims of these crimes are still waiting for justice because the anti-torture law that aims to provide justice has not been implemented. Despite a law criminalising torture that was passed in December 2017, SARS officers continue to act with impunity as if they are above the law. The What we are seeing does not only call for repackaging and rebranding of the police force, it also calls for an assessment of the police institution, its operations, and psychology as well as police conduct and style lice. In 1829, Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police Force. He became known as the 'Father of Modern Policing', and his commissioners introduced a list of policing principles that remain as crucial and urgent today as they were two centuries ago. His nine policing principles are: 1. The fundamental mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder. 2. The ability of the police to perform its duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions. 3. Police must secure the willing support of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the people. 4. The degree of cooperation of the people that the police are supposed to safeguard diminishes proportionately to the essential use of physical force. 5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion, but by continually demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law. 6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is insufficient. 7. At all times, the police should maintain a good relationship with the public. By doing so, the public will come to believe the ancient tradition that says that law enforcement agents are for the community and the public is for the police. The police are the only members of the society paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of recent arrest and torture of protesters have sparked several demonstrations across the nation to demand the end of SARS. The cases of brutality have prompted Nigerians to call for a reform of police through protests and campaigns. Hence, the continued and sustained protests are a result of long-term sentiments against the police force in Nigeria. The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and properties of the citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. This main objective of police agencies is rooted in the nine principles that informed the establishment of the modern concept of pocommunity welfare and existence. 8. The police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary. 9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it. While all the principles are against police brutality, numbers two and six recognise that the power of the police, which is to fulfill their functions and duties, is dependent on the public approval of their existence, actions, behavior and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect. It also acknowledges the use of physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is insufficient to obtain public cooperation. To ensure observance of the law or to restore order, the police must use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a policing objective. These two principles not only oppose the brutal behaviour of the police but also make it clear that in all aspects, they should be civil as well as obtain legitimacy and approval from the public. Thus, we cannot tolerate violence in the same community whose taxes sustain the police agency. The profile of grievances against the police force ought to have been reviewed and evaluated long before now. In that light, those found guilty ought to have been excused from duty and quarantined until they are satisfied to be mentally and emotionally fit to provide policing functions. This notion brings us to the importance of psychological assessments and emotional intelligence of police officers. Managing police agencies and officers, therefore, requires constant capacity building training and exposures. This idea should begin with the recruitment and enrollment stage. Police officers on duty face a range of potentially stressful situations and events like any other person. These could predispose them to stress, fatigue and misconduct. In the words of Professor Oyesoji Aremu, often, they could also develop several traits like cynicism, aloofness, suspiciousness, neuroticism and addictive behaviours. Most often, these have not been profiled by police management before police promotion, especially when they are due for evaluation. The protest we see from our youth means that we have not learned our lesson as a nation. This protest also means that the Police Reform Act of 2019 of the disbanded Eight Senate is a failure. Some of the sections in the reform show that some lessons are not learned, given the litany of police brutality, thus evoking the national protests that greeted it. Our police still terrorise people at checkpoints and roadblocks. Anyone who travels from the Middle Belt to the Eastern part of Nigeria will testify to the kind of treatment by SARS at these checkpoints. We condemn the police brutality caused by these protests. We stand to learn from this by demilitarizing the police when relating to the public. In the words of professor Aremu, Nigeria not only needs to end SARS, it also needs value-added policing. In other words, we need a police culture that protects the sanctity of human life. This notion is also called mission-based policing. Police agencies in many countries of the world are more autonomous than what we have in Nigeria. Continues online: www.vanguardngr.com Rev. Ma, S.J, is a Jesuit priest and doctoral student in public and social policy at St. Louis University in the state of Missouri, USA.
Vanguard, MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2020 — 17 Send Opinions & Letters to: opinions1234@yahoo.com Solidarity forever! OLD men do not rebel. It is the young who have the energy to revolt. They have nothing to lose. Until recently, I was almost tempted to give up on the Nigerian youths. Have we not dismissed them as “lazy”? But they have surprised us. Only a fool would dismiss what is happening today. Revolts and revolutions have been a recurrent feature of the human condition. It is in the nature of human beings to rebel if they feel short-changed or believe their social conditions are hopelessly beyond redemption. I have studied revolutionary theories from Ted Gurr to John Dunn and Vo Nguyen Giap. Revolutions are more potent than nuclear bombs. They can sweep away an empire in hours. The French Revolution of 1789 was the mother of modern revolutions. It was a bourgeois revolution that overthrew the monarchy and the old feudal order; the culmination of the vision of Enlightenmentthinkers such as Rousseau, Buffon, Voltaire and Diderot. They dreamt of a society based on freedom, equality and government based on the popular will. The French Revolution was itself inspired by the American Revolution of 1776 which overthrew British imperialism. The Americans themselves drew inspiration from early enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke who taught that it is the right of all peoples to rebel against unjust government. The French Revolution was unfortunately a bloody event as was predicted by political thinkers such as Edmund Burke. It led to the Bastille, the Guillotine and the Great Terror.It is a truism that revolutions tend to devour their own children. This is what happened to Robespierre and Danton. The French Revolution gave birth to the first antislavery revolt in world history, precisely in the French colony of San Domingo, which is Haiti today. The Haitian Revolution of 1791 has been captured memorably in the epic work of the Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, in his book, The Black Jacobins (Allison & Busby 1980). James re-enacts the extraordinary drama of slave leaders such as Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines who took their own fate into their own hands. Haiti became an independent nation on January 1, 1804. Toussaint deployed Haitian soldiers to support Simon Bolivar in his anticolonial revolutionary war in Latin America on condition that he would emancipate the Black slaves. Haitian soldiers were also sent to support Abraham Lincoln during the American civil war of 1861-1865 on condition that Lincoln would emancipate the benighted slaves of America. The Emancipation Proclamation happily came in 1863. The 20th century opened with the Mexican Revolution of 1910 which overthrow the 30-year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, while setting the country on the democracy and modernisation. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia which led to 70 years of world communism succeeded less on account of the ingenuity of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin and more due to bad luck and folly. The international imperialist war had begun in 1914. Hunger and starvation afflicted the peasants. Tsar Nicholas II was a weak and indecisive leader whose reforms were too little and too late. He foolishly allowed a demonic mystic by the name of Grigori Rasputin to infiltrate the monarchy. It was to prove the undoing of the Romanovs. The Chinese Revolution led by Mao Zedong in 1949 was yet another milestone. Mao was a selftaught petit bourgeois who spent many years as a library assistant It would be a grievous mistake to unleash the army and the dogs of war on them; we will only be creating martyrs; the protest might deteriorate into a revolution whose outcome nobody can control at the University of Beijing. He spent his free nights reading Marx and equipping himself with the intellectual tools of rigorous social analysis. Mao redeemed his country from centuries of humiliation by foreign barbarians. His “cultural revolution” campaigns in the sixties, however, were a ghastly misfortune that resulted in the death of an estimated 20 million Chinese. But there is no doubt that Mao was the architect of China as we know it today. A decade after the Chinese, Fidel Castro and his rabble of guerrillas successfully overthrew the brutal and corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. One of the commanders of the Cuban Revolution was the Argentine doctor and Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara de la Serna who became one of the icons of my generation. The Cuban Revolution turned the tables against Yankee hegemonism throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Although Fidel was accused of dictatorship, Cuban socialism achieved considerable success in areas such as public health, education, employment and social solidarity. Cuban soldiers also played a key role in the liberation of Southern Africa. The Eastern European Revolution that began in 1989 brought down the Berlin Wall and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Empire.I was a graduate student in those heady days. I recall being invited to the 60th birthday of the great sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, at the time Warden of St. Antony’s College. Port and Champagne flowed freely as we marked that extraordinary moment in history. In revolutions, nobody is small or inconsequential. The seeds were sown as far back as the seventies in the writings of the Nobel laureate Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. In 1989, an obscure pastor by the name of Laszlo Tokes in the Romanian provincial town of Timisoara, went on hunger strike when the authorities clamped down on him. Very soon, thousands of youths joined him. Before long, Romania was in upheaval. The old communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were lined up and shot. Laszlo Tokes later became a member of the European Parliament in Brussels. Years ago, I had the privilege of having lunch with him at a posh Brussels restaurant. The Arab Spring began in December 2010, innocuously enough, with a young unemployed Tunisian graduate by the name of Mohammed Bouazizi. Bouazizi was assaulted by a policewoman because he could not produce a permit for the vegetables he was hawking. After vainly seeking for justice, he decided to commit suicide by pouring petrol and setting himself ablaze. He was badly burnt but did not die immediately. President Ben Ali was forced to visit him in hospital.Alas, he came too late. Bouazizi died on January 4, 2011. All hell broke loose. I lived in Tunisia and know the country well. The youth rose up peacefully in their millions and no army could stop them. The dictator and his family fled to Saudi Arabia. The Arab Spring spread to Libya, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Egypt, Mauritania, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Old tyrants came down. The Arab world has never been the same ever since. In August 2019, Sudan was the latest country to experience the upsurge of people’s power. The arrow head of that movement was a 22-year old student of architectural engineering by the name of Alaa Saleh. Alaa caught the world’s imagination by her signature white gown whilst atop the roof of a car, with her finger pointed skyward. Nigeria’s youth revolt has onlybegun. The trigger was arrest and torture of a young man in Ughelli by the SARS who also commandeered his Lexus Jeep. But the roots of their disenchantment run deeper. The leaders of this revolution are everywhere and nowhere. They have used crowd-funding and electronic bitcointo raiseN25 million. Volunteers have been distributing food and soft drinks. They have composed themselves with nonviolent discipline. But their grievances cannot easily be dismissed. They say they are tired of police brutality, corruption, poverty, unemployment, violence and insecurity. They demand nothing less than a New Nigeria. Someone has threatened them with civil war. But what they are going through is war already. They will not be cowed down. Wisdom requires that we engage with them urgently. It would be a grievous mistake to unleash the army and the dogs of war on them. We will only be creating martyrs. The protest might deteriorate into a revolution whose outcome nobody can control. Solidarity forever! DEATH SQUADS MASQUERADING AS LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS: Getting to the roots of the problem BY OLA BALOGUN NOW that tongues have loosened, expos ing the horrendous misdeeds of the dreaded SARS outfit to public scrutiny, many Nigerians have discovered with shock that the the widespread instances of torture and extra-judicial killings attributed to SARS operatives bear a close resemblance to the horror tales associated with the activities of death squads in past situations in other parts of Africa, such as in Idi Amin’s Uganda or in apartheid South Africa... Ethiopia under Mengistu’s iron fist, Dr. Hastings Banda’s murderous regime in Malawi, and Sekou Toure’s merciless recourse to a barbaric reign of terror behind a hypocritical ‘socialist’ facade are all examples that spring readily to mind in this connection. The revelations about the sinister goings on in the SARS police units are also reminiscent of the manner in which killer units proliferated under dictators like Mobutu, Eyadema, Siad Barre, Sergeant Doe and co. The same ugly phenomenon also reared its head during the Rawlings era in Ghana, culminating in the barbaric assassination of three high court judges who were killed in horrendous circumstances by goons allegedly unleashed by a ruling triumvirate consisting of Jerry Rawlings, his wife and his cousin, Kojo Tshikata... Looking further outwards, we also find troubling parallels during the rule of South American despots like Pinochet in Chile or Battista in Cuba. The question that we therefore need to examine is: Why does the chilling saga of SARS horror tales bear such a close resemblance to the terrible examples of the use of instruments of state terror by rogue regimes in Africa and elsewhere? Where does the common thread lie? Interestingly enough, by claiming to have solved the SARS problem by simply setting up a new police unit to replace it, the Buhari administration has been attempting to deflect attention from the real issues that have been brought to the fore by the current unrest by seeking to portray the misdeeds of SARS operatives as misguided actions by a few rogue elements... This is of course entirely misleading! What an unholy exercise in deception! Fortunately, the young heroes who have taken to the streets in many Nigerian cities to demand a thorough overhaul of the fundamental structures of the Nigerian state are not buying any of the false narrative that the powers that be are attempting to propagate. Most remarkably, our youths have been astute enough to discern the fact that far from being a simple aberration, the phenomenon of SARS is closely linked to the fundamental issue of how Nigeria is to be governed! As a result, the logical upshot of the current demonstrations is that the #EndSARS uprising needs to set the stage for a revolutionary overthrow of the present system of governance in Nigeria. To understand why this should be so, we need to beam a spotlight on the reasons for the repeated failure of the various forms of governance that have been embarked upon by virtually all the post-colonial African states, be it in North or in sub-Saharan African countries, and be it under the guise of parliamentary rule, presidential rule, military rule or alleged Marxist systems of government... What has really happened is that the transition to independence has largely been a mirage, due to the fact that colonial rule by European powers was replaced by internal colonisation by a power hungry elite that has stepped into the shoes of the erstwhile colonial masters. As a result, the various constitutions and forms of government that have been enacted in the SARS has now been exposed as the extreme tip of a variety of instruments of coercion that have been systematically deployed by the Nigerian ruling elite since our accession to nominal independence 60 years ago wake of the emergence of independent African states have almost invariably only had a single aim in view, which has been to entrench the dominance of an entrenched ruling elite... At the end of the day therefore, our internal colonial masters have been no different in essence from the White minority rulers in South Africa and Rhodesia in terms of their willingness to deploy all available instruments of repression to ensure their hold on power... Viewed from this perspective, it is easy to understand that SARS did not come about by accident! In reality, SARS has merely been one among various repressive instruments that have been deployed (and still continue to be deployed!) by the Nigerian ruling elite to maintain a stranglehold on power, so as to be able to continue to loot the nation’s resources with shameless impunity. Thus, SARS has now been exposed as the extreme tip of a variety of instruments of coercion that have been systematically deployed by the Nigerian ruling elite since our accession to nominal independence 60 years ago... By extending the debate beyond the SARS phenomenon in order to call the overall structure of governance into question, the Nigerian youths are definitely pointing in the right direction! They appear to have instinctively understood that the real issue lies with the confiscation of state power by a greedy elite class that has political, civil service, military, academic and business components, which means that the ugly phenomenon of SARS cannot be eradicated without a thorough overhaul of the apparatus of governance itself... Manifestly, the current youth uprising in Nigeria is quite capable of snowballing into a fullfledged revolution, but the question that needs to be asked is: Are our young heroes suitably equipped ideologically, and are they well organised enough to be able to impose a viable alternative to the system of government that they are seeking to replace? In this connection, the on-going impasse that has resulted from the initial success of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt as well as more recently in Sudan provides much food for thought. Are we going to end up the same way in Nigeria? How can our youths avert the danger of paving the way for a group of military opportunists to emerge and turn the hands of the clock back to the benefit of the ever-resurgent greedy ruling elite once the revolutionary uprising would have swept the present power structure away? There is obviously a pressing need for more mature and experienced heads to seek to offer political and ideological guidance to our youths at this early stage for the purpose of providing adequate guidance (not leadership!) to the young lions and lionesses who have currently embarked on the glorious path to a long overdue Nigerian revolution. To succeed in full, there is obviously a need for our heroic youth activists to be provided with the political and ideological tools that they will require for ultimate success. Therefore, now is the time for workshops to be organised by well-meaning intellectual patriots of all ages for the purpose of proposing economic, social, ideological and political models that the youths can build on! WHO WILL BELL THE CAT? *Dr. Balogun, a veteran film maker and political activist, wrote from Lagos C M Y K
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19102020 - #EndSARS: Stop Army's planned Op Crocodile Smile

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