Youth across the nation have reiterated their demands to ending the peaceful nationwide protests, following the announcement of the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigeria Police Force (FSARS) by the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu.
These demands come against the backdrop of documented consensuses on the lack of trust in the system to implement the disbandment, which have also been expressed in trend lists phrases on Twitter like “Audio” and “Let Buhari”. Both suggesting a bogus attempt by government to discontinue the protests, and citizens request for the President to further lend credence to the dissolution of the police squad in more legally binding claims via a live broadcast.
The demands tagged #5 for5 have been captured to provide more clarity to Government and outlined as follows:
- Immediate release of all arrested protesters
- Justice for all deceased victims of police brutality and appropriate compensation for their families
- Setting up an independent body to oversee the investigation & prosecution of all reports of police misconduct (within 10 days)
- In line with the new Police Act, psychological evaluation & retraining (to be confirmed by an independent body) of all disbanded SARS officers before they can be redeployed
- Increase police salary so that they are adequately compensated for protecting lives and property of citizens.
It’s also noteworthy that the #EndSARS hashtag which remained top of Twitter trends for well-over 24 hours and attracting global attention, has now been modified to #SARSMUSTEND with supporting hashtags such as #EndPoliceBrutaility and #SarsMustGo in order to reinforce the social movement. This is owing to the social networking site’s algorithm which is understood to surface new topics/trends over old ones based on increasing frequency.