 Well, we're back with the breakfast as we talk about what happened in two years ago. I mean, we're talking about October 20th 2020, of course, this is 2022, we'll be joined with a guest. But just before then, a bit of a background, you know, to what transpired, few weeks in October 2020, a lot of young persons, young Nigerian held nationwide protests denouncing years of extrajudicial killings, torture and other ill treatment by officers of the special anti-robbery squad called SAS, the unit of the Nigerian police force. The people were organized under the banner of hashtag NSAS and quickly gained international support at the time as part of a global movement for the recognition of Black Lives Matter everywhere. NSAS also became an avenue for young people to voice dissatisfaction with bad governance that has contributed to Nigerian officials' widespread lack of accountability for misbehavior. The protesters or the protests actually ended not as planned because of what happened on October 20th 2020, when security forces shot at peaceful protesters at Lekitogate in Lagos. The report said that it killed at least 12 and injured so many at a time. And so there were widespread looting, property damage and coffers were declared in several states. And in response to the protests, the president had said he was going to disband, you know, the units called SAS. Now a lot has happened, you know, inquiry was also set up in all of this. But this morning, we'll start with the conversation about police brutality, freedom of speech. Two years after, what's really going on, David Ondei joins the conversation this morning. He's a journalist, investigative journalist. David, it's good to have you join us. Thank you for having me. All right. So I'd like to share your thoughts. Two years after we're here today, and this is going to be, you know, movement. If I'm not mistaken, it probably would have started. Some migrants would be gathered at the Lekitogate. But how do you feel and what are your thoughts about today? It's a very somber day. It's, personally, it's not a day that I'd look forward to because the memories of this time two years ago. I'm just memories of something that happened, like on TV or social media or in some foreign place. It was right in my vicinity because I lived in the area. So even in the lead up to that evening, from the morning right up onto the events of 6.50 p.m., I was sort of plugged into what was happening on the ground. I almost made the decision to actually be there. I changed my mind at the last minute and decided to stay at home. If I had gone there, who knows, I might have been one of those who are dead or missing by now. So there's a resonance that this dates. There's an emotional resonance that he has and it's not a day that I look forward to. But zooming out from my own personal memories of October 20th, I think that that day was really that something changed in the Fourth Republic. I think because up until that point, it's not as if the Nigerian government hadn't done things like this elsewhere in the country and it's not as if the lives that were lost mattered less than the lives that were lost at Leckito Plaza on October 20th. But typically when this kind of thing happened, it was the case that maybe you do it in OD or you do it in Zakibia or you do it in Zaria, places that were sort of out of the line of sight of Nigeria's media. So you could almost get away with it because people simply wouldn't know. And those locations are two, they are not prominent locations in the public imagination. So people just couldn't relate. But when for the first time, I think since maybe 1993, when something similar to this happened following the annulment of the 1993 elections, for the first time in the generation, we saw a government role in the military into the largest city in the country, the most visible location in that city because Leckito Plaza is possibly the most recognizable landmark that, you know, on the central business district of the biggest city in Nigeria. And they wrote in the military and shot people, did so very brazenly. I think that was the day that something changed. Like, I can't say exactly what it was, but even I myself just following what was happening, that was when I realized, okay, you know, even though I had planned to sort of stay at fight to the bitter end, that at this point, okay, one actually has to leave the country because something has actually changed. When it gets to the point where a regime starts to do this kind of thing, shoot unarmed civilians dead in the streets, that means that it's open season on everyone else. That means that it's going to be protesters, it's going to be student unionists, it's going to be journalists, feminists, anybody who had, you know, academics, anybody who is perceived to be a threat by virtue of being outspoken and being an incident, that person is going to become a target. So this happened on the 20th of October by the 8th of November, I personally had left the country and I was just one of many who fled around that time. Most of us who fled are yet to come back and have no intention of coming back at least until this particular administration is out of power. So this, when the date comes to mind, these are the thoughts that I have in my head about it. It's two years down the line, you know, the protesters floated some demands, you know, the five demands as they are called. Some other demands came up, which are more than five, but the major demand and the major cry by the protesters was for the disbandment of the Special Anti-Rubbery Squad SARS. That is special to me, so I must put out a disclaimer there. Has police brutality become a thing of the past? From your point outside Nigeria, your observation, you're well aware of the things going on in the country today with the disbandment of SARS. And should the protests have been about a bit more than just, you know, ending SARS? So in answers to your first question, no, police brutality still continues, maybe not as presently as it did prior to October 2020, but it's still very much a thing. I have a friend who runs a, I don't know if I'm calling it an NGO or an advocacy organization that interfaces with victims of police brutality in Nigeria. You might know her, her name is Reno Douala. And almost on any given day, if she doesn't receive two or three reports about something relating to either police harassment or police brutality, then something's wrong. So it's still very much a thing. However, I think just that that specter of young Nigerians rising up almost in unison to demand something and to engage in civil disobedience, I'm not sure that was something that the authorities were used to. And I think as a result, even though it hasn't stopped, but at the very least, based on my own personal observation, the authorities are less likely to defend it in the open. They are less likely, the way they were very blasé. I don't know if you recall, sometime in, was it 2018 or 2019, someone that used to be, I think he was a PR of police in Lagos. I forget his name now. Yeah, his name was Abhayomishogunle, I think. And he made a very sort of very flippant comment on social media, something to the effect of how many retreats to end SARS. Like he was actually making a mockery of the campaign, which was then just an online campaign. That's how the authorities used to interact with this thing. They treated it like it was a joke. But I think after October 2020, they don't dare to interact with it that way anymore. You know, you have like the current PR of police in Lagos, for example, someone who goes out... Your namesake, incidentally. Yeah, sometimes one of you are related. Well, we are, but anyway, that's another story. So this is someone who kind of goes out of his way to try and, even when it's not really, under his control, but it goes out of his way to try and make the point that, hey, we're not your enemies. We're not your opposition. We're actually on the same side, which isn't something I think the police used to do before. But I think just the fact of what happened in October 2020 has sufficiently spooked the police hierarchy and has sufficiently spooked the authorities in Nigeria that they feel like, okay, we actually have to try and maybe be a bit conciliatory to this youth demographic, because we don't know, we've seen what this black people love. We don't want this to recur. But zooming out of that for a second, in a wider sense, has anything actually changed? Has anything actually improved? Not really, because the structural issues that created the problem of, you know, police harassment and widespread police brutality and police illegality and criminality and lovelessness in Nigeria, those issues have not been addressed. So issues such as, for example, police welfare, you know, that has not been addressed. Issues such as, for example, the fact that every year when the police need to get their budgets passed, the Senate, and I have this on very good authority, the people in the Senate committees that have approved these budgets will actually tell the police to go and bring X, Y, Z some money if they want their budget to be passed. So the police is already underfunded. But even if they want that, you know, pathetically small budget, that inadequate budget to be passed, they need to go find money from somewhere. Nobody knows where. And obviously you and I are the ones who end up paying that cost very, very directly. So the quote, unquote, corufos on the streets who are responsible for a lot of these atrocities that you hear about, they are not just doing it of their own volition. A lot of it is coming from higher up. Because even the people, the people higher up are also under pressure from the people above them. And ultimately it goes up to the politicians. So these structural issues have not been addressed. So ultimately the building blocks for potentially another answer as an explosion are still there. We don't hope it happens again, but the structural issues have not been addressed and they're still there. So good luck to us all. All right. So David, you have talked about structural issues. And even prior to the protests, we know that there's an act, the police act of 2020. You also have the police trust fund act of 2019. And with all of this, everyone, the essence is that it should actually guarantee the protection of human right. It should sort out all of these issues. And we will not be at this point where we're talking about police brutality. What do you make of this? The fact that structures have already been in place, and with the structures that exist, and with the fact that there's also a recommendation and further proposal by government, it feels like police brutality still continues. What exactly does the problem lie? Well, if you recall in 2020, when the Police Reform Bill passed and the old Police Act was repealed, I wrote a comprehensive review of the so-called Police Reform Act. And what my conclusion was in the review was that essentially this was not an act that significantly changed anything that was already on ground. This was an act that just merely restated a lot of what was in the old act. One of the biggest problems that I pointed out was that the wording of the act was very ambiguous. So in Nigeria, typically, when you are granting executive power to any agents of state using legislation, you have to state very clearly exactly what power it is that you are granting for what purpose, under what circumstances it can be used, to what extent it can be used, with whom and against whom, all these things have to be stated in very, very clear language. Even if it means the legislation has to bridge a thousand pages, let it bridge a thousand pages. Because if you leave any sort of gray area, it's going to be used for arbitrage. That's just the reality of legislation in Nigeria. However, I pointed out at the time that this so-called Police Reform Act did not do that. It just sort of brought some very open-ended things into law that can be interpreted in any way whatsoever that the police, be it the ones on the streets, or be it the higher-ups, see fit. I pointed out, for example, that there was a clause in the bill which stated that essentially it used the phrase, in the opinion of any police officer. Something to the effect of a police officer can affect and arrest using any methods that he deems fit. If, in his opinion, it might prevent a crime from being carried out. Essentially what the implication of that phrase was was that in the subjective opinion of a police officer, which is not determined by any scientific method, just if a police officer wakes up on the wrong side of his bed, looks at a young man, maybe holding an iPhone 14 or something that says, you shouldn't be able to afford that. And he knows nothing about this person. He can just say, you know what, I'm going to arrest you on suspicion of being an internet fraudster or something. And it's perfectly legal to do that. Because that, essentially, has been left open-ended. It has been written into law by implication. And I pointed out that these are the issues in business. So it's not about writing new legislation. It's not about creating new executive bodies. It's not about putting things down on paper. Because, I mean, it's very easy to write laws. What's not so easy to do is to deal with the outcome, both foreseen and unforeseen of those laws, and to enforce those laws properly. So, yes, a lot of, I mean, going back to the Baxon Law years, lots of regulations and, you know, all sorts of committees have been convened. Lots of paper has been expended in trying to regulate the activities of the police, in trying to reform the police, in trying to change the welfare situation of the police. But it's not about just putting stuff, first of all, what exactly are you putting on paper? Is it realistic? Is it specific? Is it enforceable? Or is it just committees that are just convened in this sort of fire brigade manner so that people can collect extra codes and sitting fees? You know, and then, you know, at the end of the day, they produce something, some half-baked reports, which obviously is not implementable and is never implemented until the next time when we've run through the whole charade again. Because I think that's what we did once again in 2020. Okay. David, you know, before we run off, I mean, I earlier said this personal to me, June 4, 2019, I'm sure you're aware that, you know, police, the South officials almost took my life and I never came out the same. It's well documented. I was a journalist during my work and I got picked up by South officials and they almost took me out. Now, what I discovered and what I've come to, the conclusion I've come to, is that you have some of these people in the police or wearing uniforms but are criminals. You know, they behave like criminals, act like criminals, you know, carry out criminal activities with police uniforms. And I want to talk about the character and the makeup of a some of these police officers, like they call them bad eggs. What needs to be done about the conduct of the officers themselves, you know, because yes, indeed, we have poor pay, yes, and you have policy failures like you have in other parts of the world. But these are not reason enough for anyone to carry someone's child, throw him in a boot and say pay me $50,000 or else will not release him. You know, it shouldn't be done. So how can this be addressed? The character of the people who find themselves or find their way into the police force of Nigeria? So I think the primary problem with that is that the recruitment process for police officers and the recruitment process for police recruits is very, very different. A lot of Nigerians don't know this. So if you're if you're going to become a police officer who stays in an office and who gives commands, who gives orders, you go to the police university, which is a good deal in kind of states, right? And I have relatives who have gone to that place. This is an actual university. You come out with a degree. It's a proper educational course. It's a four year program. Now, if you are a police recruits, on the other hand, the quote unquote, quote unquote, like the people who manhandled you in 2019, those people are essentially just picked up off the streets. You have all sorts of characters who are completely unvetted by the way. So you have actual criminals, people who have been to prison being recruited into the police force. You have cultists being recruited. You have, you know, all sorts, just random people. There is no vetting process. So getting into the police university and getting to the police college are two completely different processes. And in my opinion, that's something that needs to be changed because elsewhere, how it happens is so in in the US, for example, even though there is no national police force, but each city and police departments, the standards are broadly similar. There's a there's a police training academy. Everybody passes through the same police training academy. Whether you're going to end up becoming the inspector or the commissioner, or whether you're just going to be officer XYZ, you know, patrolling down the streets, everybody passes through the same standardized program, right? Everybody's taught certain things. There are rules of engagement, which are, you know, taught to everyone, firearms handling, all sorts of things. Now, even though they have obviously have their own deep seated policing issues in the US, but you can see that it's not to the extent that we have it in Nigeria, because at least that baseline that has been established in Nigeria, that is not the case. In Nigeria, if you're going to be an officer, you are trained at a very high level. In fact, I'm sure you're aware of this, that even within the Nigerian police force, senior police officers really do not like the, you know, the the sergeants on the streets. They don't like interacting with them. I've spoken to a senior police officer who described those people as very unfortunate people. They do not like them. They feel in danger. They feel in danger. They don't even feel safe around some of them. Exactly. So that recruitment process that segregates the training experience of officers and recruits, in my opinion, that is something that needs to be changed. Because if recruits and officers can pass through that same police university experience, or at least there's a police academy experience that incorporates aspects of that police university training, I think you will have better qualified, better trained people on the streets handling AK47s. You are not going to have ex-amrobots and ex-coaches and ex-militans on the streets, cocking guns and pointing it at. You are telling, telling you that I'll shoot you here. Nothing will happen. Okay. So quickly, as we course this down, if you follow the conversation, you would see that hashtag answers movement has been likened to, you know, the OB movement or OB supporters. And I wonder why that comparison. Now prior to this time, we know that there are a lot of persons who were of the opinion or who perceive, you know, those who are protesting as very violent people. And we understand that across the entire country, there were different, you know, issues that happened. And so there were rampages, people, people took advantage of the situation. But I'd like to share your thoughts on this. Why do you think that the PTALB movement ahead of 2023 elections, and those who support PTALB are likened to those who are part of the NSAS movement, which already has a bad image to some extent? So it all boils down to the reality that people are the demographic in power or the age that graphic in and around power is not used to young Nigerians acting as a collective and outside of their control, outside of what they dictate. They're used to more or less being in control of how young Nigerians tend to behave. They know that if they push certain buttons, people can be relied on to react to certain way. They divide and rule tactics that they use are generally very effective. So when NSAS took place, and for the first time, all those tactics fell flat. They pushed all of the buttons that they normally push. And nothing happened. There were no leaders to bribe or to arrest. And then the whole thing would fit all out, which obviously was one of the things that I tried to do. All the initial beatings and intimidations and whatnot, those things didn't work. They didn't drive people off the streets. The offers of financial inducements to people who tried to appoint themselves as leaders, those things didn't work because the generality of young Nigerians rejected them. This was a very new phenomenon. And it was also a very scary phenomenon from the point of view of those who were empowered because for the first time they were not in control. You may or may not know this, but there was actually a significant number of these quote unquote prominent Nigerians in the political and business spaces who actually fled Nigeria temporarily during NSAS because they genuinely did not understand what was happening. And they were afraid that this was turning into some sort of Nigerian Arab Spring kind of moment. They were genuinely afraid that people who actually got onto their private jets and fled because they didn't understand what was happening because the sites of young Nigerians acting as a collective outside of their control was just that terrifying to them. So I can understand how they picked that comparison to the bit of the movement because it's a similar kind of thing where this is somebody acting outside of the major two political establishments, right? Because you'd expect that somebody who has any kind of national movement would either have been backed by the money of the APC or the money of the PDP. But here in this case, you have some guy running on the platform. If I'm not mistaken, the Labor Party has had exactly one successful governorship election in entire history in Nigeria, has never come close to winning a presidential or senatorial or house representative election. They've had one governor, Adam Toshio Molle. This is a very small party. And then this guy is a candidate for that party. And then young Nigerians of their own volition turned him into a national phenomenon. That is not something that this establishment is used to see because this is outside of their control. That's why they make that comparison. That's why the bit of movement is also something that is scary to them because it's not something that is under their control and they don't can't predict how it's going to end. So I can understand how they make that comparison. But me, I'll just be close with this on a personal level, I don't like to make that comparison because it implies that somehow the entire movement was somehow partisan political movements that had something to do with Peter. I don't agree with that. They might make use of the same tactics, but in many cases it's not even the same people. I think it's just a new paradigm of youth engagement in political spaces that Nigerian establishment is just going to have to get you going for. David, thank you so much. We have to go at this point. We appreciate your time and your thoughts as well. Thank you for having me. All right then. We've been speaking with David Ondeye, he's an investigative journalist who was not anywhere around us and that's the much we can take at this point. We'll take a break when we return. The conversation continues right here. Please stay with us.