SARS and The Rule of Law-Prof.Yemi Osinbajo

LAST Tuesday, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo directed the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, to overhaul the structure and operations of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit unfortunately more famous for rights abuses than success in fighting robbery and kidnapping. Just one day after, Mr Idris announced a number of measures to restructure and refocus the anti-robbery squad. The measures were of course largely cosmetic, considering that they neither go deep enough nor offer fundamental understanding and revitalisation of the controversial squad. One proof that Mr Idris does not intend a fundamental reform of the squad is the arrest and detention of the Premium Times reporter, Samuel Ogundipe, by the police, with SARS deeply involved, for alleged offences unrelated to robbery and kidnapping. It was clear all along that the squad had achieved notoriety, and the police were content and frequently eager to deploy that fearsome notoriety for objectives that were in many respects unconstitutional and less than salutary and patriotic.

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Mr Ogundipe’s arrest came on the same day the acting president gave the directive on SARS. In a statement issued by his spokesman, Laolu Akande, Prof Osinbajo said: “Following persistent complaints and reports on the activities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) that border on allegations of human rights violations, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, has directed the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to, with immediate effect, overhaul the management and activities of SARS and ensure that any unit that will emerge from the process, will be intelligence-driven and restricted to the prevention and detection of armed robbery and kidnapping, and apprehension of offenders linked to the stated offences, and nothing more. The acting president has also directed the IGP to ensure that all operatives in the emerging unit conduct their operations in strict adherence to the rule of law and with due regard to International human rights law and the constitutionally guaranteed rights of suspects. The operatives should also bear proper identification anytime they are on duty.”

The directive is unambiguous. In fact, one of the sentences contained in the directive to the police is poignantly specific. It orders the reformed squad to restrict itself to the “prevention and detection of armed robbery and kidnapping, and apprehension of offenders linked to the stated offences, and nothing more.” Nothing in the allegations against Mr Ogundipe, not to talk of the charges filed against him in court, suggests robbery or kidnapping. Yet, SARS played a leading role in his distress. Indeed, many analysts who grudgingly welcomed the directive to reform and restructure the squad showed deep scepticism about both the capacity of the police leadership to carry out the ordered reforms and the willingness to remedy the damage the squad has done to policing in Nigeria. The sceptics were even more afraid that going by the appointments made into police leadership over the years, the law enforcement agency did not seem able to demonstrate the emotional and intellectual capacity to reform the entire Force, especially the squad they love to describe as dreaded.

Less than 24 hours after the presidential directive to restructure and revitalise SARS, the police hierarchy immediately announced wide-ranging measures to demonstrate their compliance. They did not give themselves time to study the problems they were being asked to manage and reform, and they also took no time to empanel some of their best brains — surely they have them — to meet minds on the abuses Nigerians had complained about, and which the presidency latched onto to order fundamental remediation. Instead, more officiously than substantially, the police hastily centralised the operations of SARS under a commissioner of police answerable to the IGP in the mistaken belief that one of the squad’s weaknesses was the lack of high-level supervision. The police hierarchy then listed a number of measures that do nothing but tinker with the structure and operations of the squad along lines that had proved nugatory in the past years.


The cosmetic police measures, more than anything else, indicate that it will be business as usual. The treatment meted out to Mr Ogundipe, the arbitrary freezing of his bank account, the hostility of the SARS operatives who interacted with the Premium Times editors, and the intimidation of the detainee and his media establishment all point to the fact that fundamentally nothing has changed or will change in the structure and operations of the police to elicit the new police envisioned by the acting president. The problems of the police are deeply fundamental, and involved the anomalous and inoperable political structure of the country itself. Neither the acting president nor the police boss has suggested in words or actions that they acknowledge this problem. Even as far as tinkering goes, the police, as currently constituted, are not properly managed, supervised and funded to deliver the change the country desires.

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The directive on SARS is unlikely to deliver more than a short-lived cosmetic change. Mr Idris cannot give what he does not have, and his men are too far gone to help him or help nudge the Force in the right direction. The police will continue to expose a few of the bad eggs in their midst, but they have proved incapable of asking themselves why the corruption and brutality in SARS and the wider police establishment subsist, or why these maladies have proved difficult to tame for so long. Even the presidency has been incompetent to ask itself why the police have been unamenable to change, why the military have nurtured a culture of brutality over the decades, as the 2015 Zaria killings illustrate, and why the Department of State Service (DSS), especially under its immediate past director-general, perpetrated appalling abuses right under their noses.

This is, however, not to say that Premium Times could not have managed the story that pitched them against the police better. Publishing the bromide of the IGP’s official report barely a day after it was submitted to the acting president seems to be sailing near the wind. Premium Times could have paraphrased the outcome of the investigations, intentionally omit some of the details, and attribute items of the report to sources within or close to the police hierarchy. It is not clear whether it was altogether a wise idea to slam everything on their web site.

Nevertheless, the media in Nigeria must be grateful that Premium Times baited the police and helped to expose their dilatoriness, not to say their incompetence and lack of professionalism. When the smoke of battle clears, the media are likely to embark on rigorous self-examination to help them determine whether in the circumstances and chronology of events surrounding the IGP’s interim report on the DSS invasion of the National Assembly, the news reports and journalistic investigations, complete with evidence of bromides of official letters, were well handled.

Given their customary haughtiness and lack of vision, the police are unlikely to embark on that beneficial and extraordinary self-scrutiny.

Even though Prof Osinbajo has understandably not taken far-reaching measures on SARS as an ailing subset of the police, he must be commended for broaching the topic and doing something about it, no matter how ephemeral, and regardless of the vacillations of the past. Given his law background, it is doubtful whether he does not appreciate that it will take more than a directive and a few suggestions to get the police performing its role in accordance with the rule of law and the constitution. He must know that very fundamental measures are required to birth a new and effective Police Force.

The presidency of which he is a ranking member has done little to midwife the change required in that law enforcement sector. After all, the long-standing complaints against SARS and the campaigns of the #EndSARS warriors that lasted for many months did not receive any serious attention until early this week, probably against the run of play.

Worse, who can forget that the police themselves feigned ignorance of the issues advocated by critics of SARS, even as they attempted to blackmail the public for demanding an end to the high-handedness and arbitrariness of the police and the anti-robbery squad? Hopefully both Prof Osinbajo’s directive and the desultory response of the IGP will constitute the first tentative steps in getting an elected government to respond appropriately and sensibly to the yearnings and aspirations of those who voted them into office.

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