Since the 3rd of October all over Nigeria the people go in masses to protest and struggle against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The demand was the disbanding of SARS, a unit of the Nigerian Police, which is accused of illegal „stop and searches“, illegal arrests and detentions, extrajudicial killings, sexual abusement of women and brutalizing of young male Nigerians.
After a video was published where the SARS-unit killed a young Nigerian the people started the rebellion. Already a few days later, on 11th of October, the government announced that the SARS-unit would be disbanded, but the protests contiued and grew even bigger, because another unit called SWAT should be created. At least 100 people were killed in the protests since its start in October, 48 of them lost their lives on Black Tuesday alone, the latest police and military campaign against the people. Police is using hard repression against the protesters and deployed soldiers on strategic points in the capital city of Lagos. That is because the main streets in the biggest city of whole Africa, with 20 million of inhabitants, have been blocked by the demonstrators.
The fact that the protests continue even though the government announced the end of SARS shows, that the people don‘t believe any more in those promises by the ruling classes. The people also protests against the enormous corruption and the oppression of the people‘s rights. This rebellion has caused and is still causing an aggravated political crisis in the country. This political crisis shows that the imperialist rulers, as well as the government, are not able to continue with their politics in the same way any more and by that are a sign of the increasing rotten system of imperialism.
Comments