John Okon was expecting a baby when he was apprehended by men of SARS on November 9, 2018. Five days later, he was prevented from seeing his newborn who came hours after he was tortured to death.

Mr. Okon, a cook to former Gombe Governor Ibrahim Dankwabo, was accused of stealing four TV sets a day before his arrest. 

“After enduring five days of brutal, inhuman torture, Mr. Okon gave up and the police quietly took his remains to the morgue,” Chidi Odinkalu, a rights activist who has been following the case since January 2019, said.

No one has been held responsible for the tragedy, and Mr. Okon’s young family, his wife Joy and two children, is being made to live with the agony each passing day.

Chibuike ‘Sleek’ Ikeagwuchi was a budding artist in Port Harcourt whose parents say was shot dead by police.

The 20-year-old had just finished his secondary school examinations and was waiting for university admission. He had taken up a gig in music, entertaining people in downtown Port-Harcourt as a way of protecting himself from being redundant.

“He was shot from behind without offence. They just wasted this boy,” his father Dominic Ikeagwuchi tells Peoples Gazette.

A greengrocer, Sleek’s mother Agnes Ikeagwuchi remains inconsolable and says she misses her son’s support. 

“Whenever I returned from the market, he would help me with the load and sometimes hawk my pawpaw for me,” she said.

She also had high hopes that Sleek would turn the family’s fortune around if his music career blossomed. That dream has now been cut short.

“I have always wished to have six children. Now, my fellow humans have killed my last son that helps me,” Mrs. Ikeagwuchi says.

John and Chibuike are just two of many who have been killed in incidents linked to SARS.

It is not clear when SARS was founded, but some reports suggest this happened in 1992 and that the police unit was established as an intelligence-driven arm to fight armed robbery and related crimes.

Based on findings by civil society groups such as Amnesty International, SARS appears to have deviated from that core mandate and developed a reputation for brutality. 

It was disbanded on October 11 in response to the ongoing protests, but protesters are not convinced that the police are committed to reform.

On October 9, unarmed #EndSARS protesters barricaded a road in Ekpoma, Edo. The police got infuriated and shot dead two protesters, one witness Uriel Godswill tells Peoples Gazette.

In Rivers, rights lawyer Okparaolu Chris says he was protesting because he had been a victim of SARS harassment in Port Harcourt. 

He says, “SARS agents overtook my car, pointed guns at me and ordered me out of the car. They eventually left when they realised I’m a lawyer.”

Ayanetie Daniel tells the Gazette that he was arrested alongside his friend by SARS in Port Harcourt for driving a white Mercedes SUV. Ayanetie says the policemen searched their phones and saw a message from a friend in Malaysia. “And they took that up and said we are ‘yahoo boys’,” Mr. Daniel says.

Mr. Daniel claims they were taken far away from the spot of their arrest and forced to write incriminating statements. He also claims the SARS agents extorted N50,000 from each of them. 

“None of our family knew where we were, so we pleaded and they took us to Trans-Amadi from ATM to ATM,” Mr. Daniel says, agreeing that SARS should be scrapped.

Nigerian citizens are constitutionally guaranteed freedom of movement, but the police often breach such rights. 

Young people, irrespective of their profession, are frequently frisked by police officers and having an iPhone, laptop or luxury car is normally enough basis for an arrest.

Goodluck Jonathan signed the Same Sex Prohibition Act into law in 2014. Given that law, queer people say they are often harassed and intimidated by police for being queer.

Matthew Blaise is one of them. Blaise tells Peoples Gazette that five police officers humiliated him in Lagos in July. He says, “They dragged my ears, dragged my hair and almost slapped me. I was repeatedly called a disgrace.”

Very Eric, another survivor of police brutality, says SARS arrested him and his friend in their room, accusing them of homosexuality. 

“We were not caught in any act of homosexuality,” Eric says. “They just invaded our privacy by searching our phones, and they beat us mercilessly after forcing us to write statements.” 

This report is supported by Gatefield Impact Initiative.