#EndSARS: ‘Nigeria has failed to stop impunity of SARS police’

Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 08:21 am

Nigeria has failed to tackle the impunity enjoyed through the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), whose brutality and corruption is “becoming more and more brazen,” human rights enterprise Amnesty International stated Tuesday in a report. 

“Last weekend, the Nigerian police introduced but any other ban on events patrols by means of SARS and different tactical squads of the Nigerian police, the fourth such ban in 4 years, amid developing anger over harassment and abuse by means of officers,” Amnesty stated in the report. 

The Minister of Police Affairs, Muhammad Maigari Dingyadi, has also announced an investigation into infractions by using the police unit, it said.

  “This is yet some other lame strive to rein in this unit of the Nigerian police, which is infamous for the massive torture and other ill-treatment of Nigerians,” Osai Ojigho, Director of Amnesty International Nigeria, was quoted in the document as saying.  “Such abuses will only be prevented when SARS officers are held to account for their actions and face disciplinary or criminal punishment if they are found to be accountable for human rights violations,” she said. 

“To date, the Nigerian authorities have yet to exhibit a proper dedication to ending the lawless activities of SARS.” 

Amnesty International said the Nigerian government in August 2018 set up a judicial fee of inquiry to check out SARS’ activities and to make recommendations for reform, but the commission’s file has but to be made public almost two years after it submitted its findings to the government. 

“Amnesty International is again calling on the Nigerian government to trap this second to display the country’s commitment to human rights and fulfil its obligation of keeping the police to account,” stated the report. 

In a document posted in 2018, Amnesty recorded how young men have been subjected to “various forms of torture and ill-treatment by way of SARS officers in a bid to extract confessions from them, punish them for perceived criminal offences or to extort cash from them.” 

The record published that SARS officers “are infrequently investigated or delivered to justice for their crimes.” 

When some cases grew to be recognized to the public, the police typically promised to investigate them, which used to be in most instances by no means carried out, it said.

(AnadoluAgency)