Halfway into the #endSARS riot, it became evident that the police was not the only target of the seething public anger. Understandably, as the symbol and face of government, who also earned for itself the notoriety of unfairness and unjustifiable brutality, the Nigerian police deserved its place at the centre stage of the protest. However, the police symbolism covers a much broader spectrum of virtually all individuals and institutions with the wands of state authority. Accordingly, the riot opened well known ugly details about the relationship between Nigerian leaders and their citizens. In addition to that, it facilitated enhanced understanding of the dilemma of the Nigerian police and perhaps why we seem inextricably trapped in the current internal insecurity web. Again, albeit a protestation against the brutality of the police, it unexpectedly tore open not only the cruelty and insensitivity of the Nigerian Army but also that of many of its elected state government leaders. Poor citizens trooped out in their hundreds of thousands in several states to reclaim the food items donated to them to survive the COVID–19 pandemic that government officials hoarded in secret warehouses to resell later.

Besides the accidental discoveries already pointed out, the riot at least led to many state governments setting up commissions of inquiry to investigate the atrocities perpetrated by the Nigerian police, particularly by members of the now-defunct SARS. Pieces of evidence from many of these commissions proved that SARS was like a cemetery harbouring rotten and smelly human bodies underneath beautiful tombstones. At the very least, those revelations justified the purpose of the protests in the first place. It confirmed the authenticity of the claims by those who initiated the protests and how the SARS were inordinately brutal and often crossed the redlines of human rights. But the question remains whether the Nigerian youth that executed the protests accomplished the objectives. The government appears to have satisfied three out of the five demands of the protesters. Arrested protesters regained their freedom. There seems to have been some justice for some deceased victims of police brutality. Thanks to some of the commissions of inquiry set up in several states. However, there is no evidence that the psychological evaluation and retraining of disbanded members of SARS happened. Police welfare does not also appear to have improved. Some good questions at this point are: Is the Nigerian police now better behaved since the riot compared with their pre-riot culture? Have the Nigerian police expunged brutality as part of its culture?

After the ugly crescendo of the states counter–riot operations led by the military at Lekki tollgate, which left several protesters severely injured and dead, the police inadvertently stroked the honeycomb. The bee which stung them afterwards triggered both the abandonment of the police and the police abandoning its duties. Infiltrated and hijacked by hoodlums, the riot turned destructive. The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) headquarters in Marina Lagos, Television Continental [TVC] office building in Ketu, the Bus Rapid Transit [BRT] in Oyingbo, the Federal Road Safety Commission and the Vehicle Inspection Office in Ojodu Lagos were either vandalized or torched. But more daring was the killing of police officers in several states such as Enugu and Lagos and the burning of no fewer than thirty police stations. However, the police could not get further help because of the Nigerian military’s irresponsible and senseless handling of the Lekki tollgate containment operation, which attracted a barrage of local and international condemnation. That bungled operation also made it more challenging for the police to receive additional support from similar sister agencies. The barbarism and unjustifiable wastage of the lives of defenceless protesters equally showed that the military-civilian relationship is not significantly different from that of the defunct SARS group. Abandoned by other sister agencies, the police had to deal with its problem alone. Unfortunately for the police, it could not face the enormity of public anger directed towards them without external help, which was not going to come. They started abandoning their workplaces, and many of them stopped putting on uniforms.

For several decades, the police in Nigeria gradually transformed into the symbol of bribery, corruption, inequities, and unfairness. But as the face of government, the Nigerian police authentically reflected the image and culture of the underlying statecraft operators. It is a well-established truth that a critical incentive for aspiring to political positions in Nigeria is the chance to privately pocket publicly owned resources. Ordinarily, that would not have become the norm if the Nigerian police did not, unfortunately, buy into that culture. The traditional custodian and enforcer of the rule of law descending into such behavioural cesspit was repulsive to the citizens. The efforts of the police to drum up goodwill from the citizens using such refrain as “the police is your friend” was like water poured upon stone. However, it sustained its culture of bribery, corruption, inequities, and unfairness by resorting to intimidation and the injection of maximum doses of fear on its victims. They resorted to brutality, which the SARS group championed. Nerve-chilling stories of extreme callousness, inhumane barbarism, and extrajudicial killings through which many of these members of SARS purportedly extracted information from suspects readily made them a loathsome species of humankind.

The Nigerian police bungled their goodwill with the public substantially. Rather than being the house of justice, it became the marketplace for trading on injustice. Consequently, the severity of a criminal’s offence and the depths of infringement on other people’s rights does not mean that such a person will face the law as required. The police can quickly cleanse any such criminal’s offences with the correct quantity of the “hyssop of bribery”. Again, an innocent person can easily be terrorized and intimidated by the police to part with some bribe or their lives. Worse still, police rarely intervene in situations where they are needed except there is monetary inducement to do so. Frequently, the only way to get the police to go after a known thief is by providing them with some illicit financial incentives. Bribe taking from motorists is a common phenomenon and an integral culture of the Nigerian police. That stinking culture made the police neglect what matters most to the public: fairness and equity. And thus, when the enforcer of the law is also the champion of its subversion through bribery and intimidation, the people would ordinarily despise them and possibly call them to order. That was what the #endSARS protest set out to do.

Some have also argued that the culture of inequities and unfairness has made the police fail woefully to contain the internal security challenges swallowing the country. Those holding this opinion blames the police for the current level of insecurity in the country. Double standards and the palpable absence of the level of patriotism demanded of national police has made it convenient for ethnic militias, criminal herders, and religious insurgents to gain ground across the entire country. Unbiased police have all it takes to obtain credible intelligence from local communities where they operate efficiently. As such, if the Nigerian police institution were substantially patriotic, it would have proactively nipped most of these crises in the bud. However, the distractions of the Nigerian police seem to becloud their appreciation of their role in internal security. Ideally, maintaining the peace within the country is the duty of the police and, perhaps by extension, the Nigerian Civil Defence Agency. Today, people rarely remember the police as the force that can protect them from criminals lurking in every corner of the country. Many police stations in the country today are ironically guarded by local vigilante groups.

What did we learn from the end SARS protest? The first is the capacity of the Nigerian youth to effectively organize themselves, articulate shared goals and coordinate its financing and implementation without any clear leader. Despite its infiltration by hoodlums, allegedly sponsored by the state, the protest coordination enjoyed maximum sanity. Second, government security forces’ riot management and containment strategy show how they still function within the military mentality mode despite being in a democracy. Understandably, the country has been under military hostage for decades but has failed to reform its military when it returned to democratic rule. Third, that level of raw insensitivity of our leaders further manifested in many state governments hoarding of food items that were meant for distribution to ordinary people to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a huge shame to discover that some of these items were already being sold in open markets by government officials responsible for keeping and distributing them to those who need them the most. It is a massive show of how most state governments are insincere with their citizens. Fourth, the Nigerian police are in a severe dilemma. Although we expect much from them in terms of the country’s internal security, yet they are so poorly taken care of to be motivated enough for the risks that their jobs demand. The gravity of such neglect partially explains the depths of an unacceptable culture that defines them. Fifth, the police-citizens relationship needs serious reconstruction through the reform of that institution. Substantial demands of the demonstration hinged on the police’s inadequate appreciation of their supposed relationship with the citizens. The citizens expect them to be genuine enforcers of the rule of law. But the police cannot live up to that expectation unless it learns to uphold the values of fairness and equity and exhibit the same in enforcing the law among the citizens.

The youth has made significant contributions to enhancing the effectiveness of our justice system through that protest. The fightback both through the governments’ shameless containment strategy and alleged infiltration of the demonstration to scuttle it further shows the difficulty in authentically enthroning the rule of law. Unfortunately, unless the Nigerian police comprehensively buy into and enforce the rule of law, we cannot successfully eliminate the cloud of insecurity that has come upon us. The public demands that the police acts with fairness and equity. That also requires significant value reorientation within the police and a compensation package commensurate with the inevitable risks of standing by the truth.