Coursing through different social media platforms at the weekend, I couldn’t resist the temptation to screen-grab this tweet from former minister of communications, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, as she threw her weight behind the #ENDSARSNOW campaign.
In the tweet, the former minister recalled how her son, who was standing in front of the gate to the family home almost got shot by men of the police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) who accused him of loitering. Yes, ‘loitering’ in his own house! And they had already corked their gun at him, threatening to shoot him if he said one more word. Thankfully, he had the presence of mind to keep quiet.
The ex-minister’s tweet opened a floodgate of reactions as many of her over-20,000 followers recalled their own experiences with the dreaded SARS men. One, @YeleBademosi, told the scary tale of how, less than two minutes from his home, he was ‘kidnapped’ by SARS at Lekki, last October, driven to Ajah and eventually to Ikoyi, where his phones and the N51,000 cash he had on him were taken. He was then driven to the Mainland, where he was forced to transfer money from his US bank account to his GTB account, to enable him to withdraw more money to give them. His ordeal lasted from around 10:30 pm to about 1:30 am. And all through, he was never told his offence”.
Another follower recalled how SARS men broke into his apartment and arrested him, for videoing them with his phone as they beat and harassed innocent pedestrians along the street. After thoroughly beating him and a cousin of his, who was at home with him, they took them away and dumped them at the EFCC cell in Ikoyi.
And yet another follower claimed some SARS men arrested his uncle several months ago and insisted he had to be bailed with money. However, when the family members were ready with the money, they were told the uncle had been transferred to Abuja. They have yet to trace neither the arrested man nor the arresting officers till this day.
Following the thread on the ex-ministers tweet alone, it would be safe to conclude that almost every family, especially those who have nobody in government, has one SARS story to tell – which explains why the angst against the kill-and-go policemen is so widespread.
It is so widespread that whoever is not in support of the #ENDSARS coalition today cannot be said to be insensitive or uncaring, he is simply brain-dead. As brain-dead as those against the Black Lives Matter movement. Which explains why I’m also in support.
However, I differ with the anti-SARS coalition on the point of what they want done, which is to ban that police unit. Nobody seems to be saying that the operatives should be sacked, jailed or even shot. Even the alternative call for #REFORMSARS appears to even anger the proponents of #ENDSARS more than the SARS operatives do.
How do I know this? Simple! I used my home as a social laboratory.
I spent a large part of Friday and Saturday arguing with, and re-educating, my two undergraduate children. And the issue was neither the governorship election in Ondo nor President Muhammadu Buhari’s presentation of the 2021 budget to the National Assembly. It was not even about even about the incessant gas tank explosions that have been blowing up lives and property, nor the Covid-19 pandemic that has seen them sitting at home for the sixth month now. No!
Both of them, understandably, subscribe to the #ENDSARS campaign, and I have the unenviable task of convincing them on why they cannot go out to join the street protests. I have employed, empirical reasoning, emotional blackmail, and even invoking my dictatorial paternal authority. Still, I can’t swear that I have totally succeeded.
While my daughter is ready to bet her Netflix subscription that the traditional newspapers have been paid by the government to either blank out the reports of the protests or slant their reports to favour the government, her brother swears by the thunder of Amadioha that a prerequisite for employment as a SARS foot soldier is that the prospect must be an ex-convict. Nothing I said could convince him otherwise. So, as some form of compromise, we settled for the middle ground; that prospects are not necessarily ex-convicts, but that they must have a criminal record to be considered for employment. Six and half a dozen, you’d say. But that was the only way I could call a temporary truce – to continue the re-education another day.
And that is the way I think the government can also buy time out of the current faceoff with the nation’s angry youths. We can actually disband the controversial police unit now, to calm already frayed nerves, even as we immediately begin the process of coming out with a more acceptable replacement – so that we do not hand our country over to armed robbers and all manner of criminal gangs. And I’m not talking about ‘regular criminals’ alone. There would also criminals in uniform. Armed with guns bought by taxpayers.
Banning SARS would not be the first ‘stupid thing’ our government has ever done to keep the country from exploding. It cannot be more stupid than keeping victims of Boko Haram attacks in less-than-human IDP camps, while we accommodate ‘repentant’ Boko Haram fighters in choice apartments, give them scholarships to go study abroad and reabsorb them into our army after less than three months of ‘deradicalization’. Yes, banning SARS cannot be more stupid than giving Nigerian Army uniforms and guns to Boko Haram soldiers to go fight Boko Haram, and expecting that we can ever win the war against terror.
So, as the protests continue to spread to other cities, and things gradually get out of hand, I fear we are increasingly moving farther and farther away from a more realistic middle-ground solution to the problem – a situation that is not helped by the fact that both the police authorities and the government have deliberately reneged on earlier promises to sanitize the vexatious unit.
I see a situation whereby the pressure from the protests becomes so much that the government is eventually forced to cave in, and ban SARS. Then, the personnel who have caused us all this pain (and who should ideally be in jail or keeping a date with the hangman) are simply redeployed or reabsorbed into other police formations and units. Yes, we could disband SARS, but we would not have disbanded their warped brains nor retrieved their guns. Talk of old wine in a new wineskin. They would carry over the same mentality into the regular police. And that is not even saying that the regular police force is peopled by saints.
So, between the two extremes of ban-SARS campaigners and the authorities egoistically insisting on treating the itch, instead of leprosy, lies a compromise position of an honest and far-reaching reform of our police template. So, rather than rehash the tired cliché of not throwing away the baby with the bathwater, I’d rather remind our protesters that Yoruba elders believe beheading a patient can never be a cure for his headache. Unfortunately, the Igbo also counter that if the ear refuses to heed several warnings, it might become necessary to cut off the head, so that the ear goes with it.
With the Special Anti-Robbery Squad caught between these two polar positions, we just have to return to yet another Yoruba advice that loosely transliterates thus: Let us pour out everything and pick them up afresh.
…Somebody, please, tell Wizkid; Buhari is a young man
If Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, at 30 years of age, still calls himself a kid – as in his ‘Wizkid’ moniker, why on earth would he then expect a President Muhammadu Buhari, who is only just 77, to be happy with being called ‘Old Man’?
It is understandable, therefore, that the ‘Old Man’ part of the singer’s response to PMB’s tweet wishing POTUS Donald Trump quick recovery from his controversial Covid-19 positive test. While Buhari had tweeted to show solidarity with Trump (which is a nice thing to do, by the way), Wizkid had tweeted a response asking PMB to remove the log in his eye before going after the speck in Trump’s eye – asking him to leave Trump and address the incessant killing of Nigerians by operatives of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
Curiously, many of those reacting to Wizkid’s post, from the Buhari crowd, either glossed over the SARS bit or ignored it outright, even when that is the most vexatious issue in the country right now, spawning protest rallies in some parts of the country last week. They seemed more interested in the ‘disrespectful’ Old Man bit. I guess it has to do with what our elders always said about the unease of old women whenever dry bones are mentioned in proverbs.
So, Wizzy, Star Boy, or whatever they call you, get it into your thick skull that our spring-chicken president is still a youth. In fact, he is part of the same youth we were told in our Civics classes, years ago, are the leaders of tomorrow. That ‘tomorrow’ is only just coming.
Of course, I can understand why my emeritus President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Garba Shehu and that other Delta woman, who sometimes talks before she thinks, and whose current portfolio I can’t honestly place right now, would be very angry at the Ojuelegba crooner. They know where Wizkid is coming from, and fully understand that although many of us refer to our dads in informal conversations with friends, as ‘my old man’, the term OLD MAN may not always be a harmless endearment.
Yes, Wizzy, we know you come from a Yoruba tribe that has this unique way of respectfully disrespecting elders. Your people would subtly wrap an insult in a coat of sugary endearments – sometimes kneeling or prostrating (as the case may be) to deliver it. It’s usually so respectfully done that if you’re the type who does not pay much attention to details, you’d walk away smiling sheepishly, without knowing you’ve been thoroughly insulted.
That’s why, even inside the Molue, we hear such statements as ‘e respect ara yin o’ (a seemingly patronizing way of telling your superior/elder to behave himself – or telling him that he has just behaved like a delinquent). And if such an elder does not still get the message and backtrack, the earlier insult is followed by an even less-veiled response like, ‘mo ma yeye yin’ (I’ll mess you up). And they’d say it with all the full genuflects. And there is still my ‘best’ of them all: ‘Agbaya ni yin, sir’. My nearest translation of that would probably be: ‘you’re a delinquent adult, sir’.
So, despite all the “royal we”, “plural you” and other respectful plural pronouns, those of us who can read between the lines know that all those worshipful pronouns have never stopped the users from yanking caps off their elders’ heads.
