SARS: Let’s not hasten to celebrate, By Fanen Ihyongo

SARS: Let’s not hasten to celebrate, By
Fanen Ihyongo

Don’t be too quick to celebrate the dissolution of the federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) by the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu. I differ on his decision. SARS’ good side was more than it’s bad’s.

I hope scrapping SARS will not mean giving license to armed robbers, kidnappers and bandits to terrorise and kill Nigerians at their mercy?

SARS needed to have been reformed, restructured, reorganised, its officers retrained and reequipped.

It’s true SARS men have been brutal, having gone extreme in the discharge of their duties of recent, they had fought crime and reduced criminality to some minimum levels.

President Buhari is supposed to build more offices, renovate police barracks built 50 years ago and provide a better salary package for SARS, instead of allowing the unit to be scrapped. This would have reduced corruption among the officers.

Those who had called for the disbandment of SARS had issues with the anti-robbery squad, but the situation had been different in other areas. When preparing a beans portage, you extract the rotten beans. Those guilty of brutality and extrajudicial killings were supposed to have been punished accordingly. Then reform the entire Police Force, beginning from recruitment and posting as well as training of officers and supervision by the IG. This was not done. To mobilise officers into SARS was not on merit but on connection, a retired Assistant Inspector General (AIG) in Kano told me yesterday. “More often, policemen came to me to give their names to be mobilised. It shouldn’t be so,” retired AIG Bashir Albasu, now a monarch, said.

Recall that the upsurge of armed robbery in Nigeria some years ago was brought under control by SARS. Recall also that many SARS officers were injured, some lost their lives while protecting us.

Police misconduct is not peculiar to Nigeria. In US, a training programme is ongoing to discourage police misconduct, after months of protests over the use of “excessive force.” The training, called Ethical Policing Is Courageous (EPIC), encourages officers to intervene if they see misconduct within their ranks; if they see their colleagues behaving badly to citizens. It makes no meaning if you disband SARS and allow the culprits within the unit to be walking freely.

I believe SARS’ excesses and horrifying acts came as a result of the civic duties we gave them of late, such as attaching them to rich men and political bigwigs. I mean we used SARS wrongly. Of course, SARS had put the country in a quandary, abusing human rights and murdering innocents for long. However, its dissolution today may be because its officers stepped on the toes of one big man in the country, not because we cried out. It is possible some evil Nigerians might have sponsored the nation-wide protests. Note that security remains our greatest challenge in this country. No fewer than 12 persons were feared killed by gunmen in a Kaduna settlement only yesterday. The number of victims will be much higher across states; let us not celebrate SARS disbandment too early.

Fanen Ihyongo is a journalist and a writer