SARS: WHEN THE HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED

 

If Facebook is on its normal sedate intellectual cruise, Twitter is an inferno right now.
The rage is palpable and the smoke is rumbling into the Blue street. For the third night now protesters are sleeping in front of the Legislative houses calling for an end to the existence of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad a.k.a SARS.
It is originally a sub unit of the Nigeria Police created as a special squad to track down elusive or hardened suspects.
But over time this special squad deviated from their course and began to hunt down youths especially suspected of cyber crimes.
In the days of yore it was simply arresting for wandering which the Yoruba’s called ” Won ko mo roga”
Now the story is different.

Profiling.
Their profiling is worrisome and by all means wrong. Young men wearing certain types of clothes, armless shirts, hoodies, T-shirt on jeans, combats, Bermuda shorts, Afros, dreads, tattoos, carrying backpacks and laptops and driving from sedans to SUVs to Jeeps are targets and many have been arrested, detained and even killed.
Worse, the first demand are phones and to check details in those phones at gun point.
These profilers themselves fit into the profile of their suspects. Many SARS officers have muscles like rocks and wear revealing clothes to enhance them. They themselves wear dreads, armless tee-shirts, combat fatigues , boots and look more like cultists or militants than officers. They wear fierce looks and they derive their love from their guns and the fact that it is. weapon of intimidation so they are often the aggressor.
The fear of them is the beginning of wisdom and to approach them you need caution patience and tact with copious internal prayers.
Staring at a SARS officer is akin to staring at death.
And so with another killing of a young man in Delta, anger reverberated across the country as protesters began to come out to call for an end to police brutality, extra judicial killings, harassment and wrong profiling of many young Nigerians.. The male folk are the most vulnerable.
Why should a male want to drive his fellow male to extinction?
Celebrities have hit Twitter, where most things get done and have taken the protest to the streets to continue to protest until something is done.
Why must mothers be afraid of sending their sons on errands with the family car only for him to end up dead and bleeding on the streets? Why should a man who works and make his money legitimately be cornered and be asked to show his account details and then gunned down if he resists?
A husband who runs to the supermarket for milk and eggs encounters SARS and makes a journey of no return. Countless scary stories.
It’s always aggression and putting fear into another male. We are just coming through COVID, we are trying to survive, then this.
We’ve been on reforming the police for a longtime, SARS officers should be deployed to fight in the North East to combat terrorism if they have nothing to exert their energy on.
Otherwise that squad needs to be scrapped.
It has deviated from its duty and has turned into a monster.
The protest is turning to a full blown movement with people even starting to join abroad.
I read a story that SARS are trying to fight back.
But the protest is gaining strength by coalition.
The hunter has. become the hunted.
#EndSARS

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-Dolapo

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