Still on SARS

DESPITE the criticisms trailing the activities of officials of the Nigeria Police Force’s (NPF) Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the NPF does not seem to be in a hurry to purge itself of the bad eggs in its midst. The atrocious activities of SARS worsen by the day, just as the list of its victims burgeons, so much so that many see members of the security outfit as licensed criminals. The sense of impunity that SARS officials demonstrate with their lawless actions suggests that they have institutional backing. This needs to be addressed. The SARS issue is evidently becoming more serious by the day. SARS came on board to help improve the maintenance of law and order by dedicating its energy to fighting violent crimes which were escalating dangerously and beyond what the regular police could cope with.

In the short run, SARS appeared to have responded positively to the challenge but drifted thereafter by factoring ignoble personal interests into the execution of its mandate. And since then, there has been no stopping the acts of lawlessness and criminality in its fold. Law and order is good and there can be no replacement for it as it helps to reduce the incidence of self-help, especially in a free society.  But law and order ought to  be maintained without recourse to inhumanity and lawlessness, otherwise the outcome will look like a state-orchestrated or sanctioned anarchy, which is what law and order is meant to obviate. Cases of harassment, assault, arbitrary arrest, swapping of suspects for money and so on still abound and it is quite unfortunate that these acts of illegality are not errors but well-orchestrated schemes to extort money from innocent victims. Ironically, the citizenry which SARS was created to protect are at the receiving end of its cruelty. Owners of smart phones, computers and other devices who carry them in public are potential candidates for extortion by SARS.

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It is not clear how cyber fraud, though an offence, has suddenly become a violent crime that should come under the purview of SARS. SARS personnel dabble into areas that are clearly outside their mandate just because such areas offer opportunity for filthy lucre. They are known to extort money from people at gunpoint; they exhibit morally reprehensible habits such as smoking and drinking alcohol on duty. Many of them dress so shabbily that they are hardly distinguishable from hoodlums. They threaten innocent citizens with violence in the most vulgar fashion whenever they attempt to resist their extortionist schemes. The state cannot and should not continue to keep and maintain such scoundrels with taxpayers’ money. The public outcry against SARS’ brutality is national, an indication that something is fundamentally wrong with the security outfit as presently constituted and run. Through the base activities of the squad, Nigeria is on the verge of wearing the toga of a police state in a democracy! This is unacceptable.  This sorry state should be corrected and speedily too.

The inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, had in the wake of earlier public outcry which indeed culminated in the call for the dissolution of SARS promised to launch an inquiry into the activities of the organisation and reorganise it. But apparently nothing has been done yet in that regard. Me-mbers of the security outfit, rather than being sober, have become even more emboldened to carry out dastardly acts. But that notwithstanding, we still maintain our stance in a previous editorial that SARS should not be dissolved because the factors that informed its establishment are still valid.

But contrary to what the police authorities’ insensitivity to public outcry tends to suggest, we do not support the notion that SARS should carry on with its patently and dangerously flawed orientation. The mandate, operation, personnel and supervision of SARS need urgent retooling. Supervision, in particular, should become more thorough. Supervisors should be held accountable for the misdeeds of their juniors even as the subordinates are also sanctioned for their misconduct. Necessary changes in the outfit should be speedily effected in order to confine its activities within the ambit of the law and rein in the excesses of personnel. Sadly, the activities of deviant personnel have continued to define SARS. We believe that the police authorities lack the capacity to rejig the outfit to enable it to serve the purpose of its creation, unless they are unwilling to do so.