 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we are joined by Cheedo Onuma, who's a Nigerian journalist. He's writer. He's also the coordinator for the African Center for Media and Information Literacy. And we are going to be talking about the end SARS protests, which have been taking place in Nigeria for the past many weeks. So the SARS is of course a special anti-robbery squad, which has been accused in Nigeria of a lot of atrocities against people, including killing, torture, all kinds of atrocities. And these have been, of course, going on for many years, but a recent incident which took place early in October. The video footage came out and ever since, people have been taken to the streets in massive numbers, especially young people. And a couple of days ago, there was even an incident where armed forces and police reportedly fired at the protesters needing to deaths. So we have with us Cheedo to talk about all this. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yes. So first of all, I just wanted to ask right now from the reports you have been getting over the past few days, what has been the kind of, what has been going on on the ground? What has been the kind of mood of the protesters as well, if you could talk a bit about the reports you're getting from Nigeria? Well, as I said, thanks again for having me. It's quite tragic. It's quite unfortunate what's going on. And it's getting worse from the pictures and videos we were seeing. We've been asking, and when I say we, I mean civil society activists, human rights activists, those concerned and interested in the situation in Nigeria, for the president to come out and speak to the nation to let people know that we have somebody in charge. Because what is going on now from reports we are receiving, the impression you get is that nobody is in charge. So people are taking laws into their hand. It's gradually slipping out of protest into lawlessness. Banks have been attacked, media houses have been attacked. And this was aggravated after the incident that happened a few days ago when the military was deployed. And that angered a lot of the young people who were protesting and they literally took the laws into their hand. And since then, there has been a vacuum of leadership. And what it has meant is that all manner of people, of course, created by states, you call them whatever you want to call them, miscreants, hoodlums. These are monsters created by the states and they've taken advantage of the lawless situation that we found ourselves. Interestingly, the president will be speaking, he's built to speak at 11, at 7 p.m., rather, Nigerian time. That's in the next 20 minutes or so. So we'll wait to hear what he has to say. The danger is also looking at reports from other parts of the country that there are attempts, which usually happens to turn it into a regional ethnic or religious thing. And there are sporadic killings and cases here and there of killings based on revenge, on ethnic or religious grounds. Absolutely. And in this context, of course, one of the many media reports have pointed out that the protests against the SARS units, it's something that has been going on, that the sentiment is something that is not obviously just spring out of the blue. It's been a complaint, it's been an issue for quite a long time for many, many years. So could you maybe also take us a bit through the kind of record these units have and what has been their function in the state? Well, it's really not about SARS. It's about all security architecture of in neocolonial states like Nigeria, which essentially has very impressive, whether it's labor that is embarking on peaceful protests to demand for better welfare for workers and so on. The same has been the attitude of the states. They use the security forces, they use the military whenever they feel like. The SARS unit, special anti-rubbery squad units started many years ago in response to criminal activities in first in Lagos, then spread around much later, spread across the country. But over time, because the state itself has not been able to secure its citizens and citizens, not just ordinary citizens, including the law enforcement agencies. They are training, poor training, poor infrastructure, poor welfare and all that. What you find is that these people in turn visit the mayhem and violence they experience from the state on citizens. So they have, their pay is quite poor and you give them gone and you set them loose on the streets to supposedly protect criminals. They become the bandits themselves and use their guns to extort money from young people. And the police force in Nigeria is essentially colonial. The only thing that differentiates it from the colonial forces, the Nigeria that is in, it's in the name. So the whole question of violence, extortion, dehumanization of citizens that happen during the colonial era is essentially happening in the new country. So now what we see because of new media technology, because of social media, we get real time pictures and videos of this happening. If not for technology, if not for social media, a lot of these stories that we hear today, these violence against citizens by the police, but specifically the SARS unit, nobody would. We may hear them, but we probably won't have evidence to support the claim. So it's been a long history of tortures, violent attack by the state through its security agencies against citizens. And because the state, as I mentioned, is incapable of reining in these people, because they're also essential part of the state. The security forces have taken laws into their hand. We saw it a few months ago. Even the attack on the Shiite Muslim protesters in Abuja. Before then, a few years ago, it was the protests that brought them in contact with soldiers, and soldiers killed so many, so many of them. So the state in Nigeria has not been known to, the state in Nigeria essentially has always deployed force as a means of stopping protests and as a means of ending any peaceful demonstration against the state. So the violence that the SARS unit is visiting on citizens, it's just from the playbook of the state. And of course, there is also the economic angle to it now that they know that the state doesn't care. We have the gun, we can do whatever we want. Why not? So they go after young people, the way you dress, the way you look, they will pick you up, set your phone, ask you to send money to their account, take you to the bank to make withdrawals and all kinds of, and these reports we are coming in and piling up and nobody was doing anything about it. Obviously, the hierarchy of the police seem to have been in on it because the reports were widespread with evidence and for many years. So there was no reason, there is no way they would say they didn't know this was going on. Then it started from extortion and detention and violation of rights to then going to their stream form of death where people are unable to meet their demands, they could go ahead and shoot you, kill you, maim you and nothing, nothing would happen. So in a sense, the outrage that is going on in the country today is a response to years of hunger, of sitting hunger, of people feeling helpless. Now they think maybe rightly so that this is an opportunity to revenge or get out on a pound of flesh because up until now, as I speak to you now, nobody, not a single police officer has been indicted, not a single police officer has been called out or punished. He just tells you how unserious the state is in dealing, even when they say answers, you would think that which is one of the demands of the protesters that release all those who have been detained. Unfortunately, the releases we've been seeing so far are being done by the protesters. They are the ones who's going to the prisons or police stations to release people who were illegally detained, arrested and detained by SARS officers. So in a sense, it's unfortunate, but that's the reality is that we saw this coming. It's only a logical response to a situation that had really gotten out of hand. Yes, in this context, I also wanted to maybe ask you a bit about the policy framework of the state itself. And now you mentioned some of the economic issues people are facing across the country, respective of which background they come from. Could you maybe talk a bit more about maybe over the past 20 years or 25 years, what is the kind of economic policy framework that the state has adopted? And how is that, for instance, affected the youth who are maybe today in the forefront of protests? Well, that's really the reason for all of this. We say we have a democratic government in place, a government that doesn't listen to the yearnings and aspirations of the people. Essentially, the state in Nigeria is neocolonial and they still in tune with IMF and World Bank policies and the implementation of these policies, of course. Not just in Nigeria, across West Africa, across Africa and indeed across the world, have dire consequences and implications. Just last month, the government increased the cost of petrol and increased the cost of electricity. It was essentially a recommendation from the IMF World Bank to enable, to facilitate more loans. So there was supposed to be a protest by organized labor, late last month. And as usual, the state was able to get around labor, whether I don't know the as details, but at the end of the day, labor called off the strike. So citizens were still willing from that shock of increasing the price of petrol and increasing the price of electricity when the NSAS demonstration started. So it fed into each other, once a demonstration built on the back of frustration, violation of rights, then hinged on the diminishing economic power of citizens that you do not have electricity. You are increasing the cost of electricity when you can even supply enough electricity for citizens to use. You are increasing the price of petrol. When the roads are death traps, people can move. You're comparing the cost of petrol. Nigeria is an oil producing state. You're comparing the cost of petrol to Saudi Arabia, for example, where the minimum wage, the minimum wage in Nigeria today is less than $50 a month. You're comparing it with countries where you have minimum wage of anywhere between two or three thousand or more. You're comparing it with countries where you have social infrastructure in place, health, education. On about 70 to 80 percent of Nigerians send their children to private school. No matter how you it's private school. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's good, but at least it distinguishes it from the public school, so-called, which has completely collapsed. 70 to 80 percent, if not more of Nigerians seek private medical help when they are sick. The public hospitals are all but collapse, you know. So you have the people who have been decimated economically. There is nothing that the state offers to them in terms of health, in terms of education, in terms of welfare. And the state continues to brutalize and push citizens to the world. This, what you see today happening is just the necessary outcome of that. People are fed up, they are tired and say, we can't take this anymore. And people are saying stuff, things like, oh, if we if we don't die at the barricades, we will most likely die of hunger. We die in our homes. We die from bad health conditions and so on. So it becomes a catch-22, catch-22 situation. All of this, when you put all of this together, it's just a cocktail of problems and that's what what is exploding in the country today. And in this context, I also wanted to ask you maybe say a longer term perspective question. In the sense of course, across the world, we've seen waves of protests happening in many such countries, both in Africa and in other continents as well. And many of the demands being of course similar, especially at this age, many of the demands against police brutality, against the neoliberal policy framework you talked about. And most of often the question is asked in terms of from the mass protests from the absurdities that we see happening at the ground. Is there a possibility of structured demands arising or have they already arisen, which look at say engaging say the state or the people for structural change and reform. So do you see such demands being raised? And could you maybe talk a bit about that? Well we hope so. That's the idea. It's interesting that the current crisis in Nigeria happened when people on the left are trying seriously to organize in anticipation of things like this. And now it almost caught on our worth. We find that we're scrambling to scratching our heads to say why did we keep this so late in the day? How do we take control of this revolutionary fervor that is currently going on? So it's a big challenge. It's something we are looking at, we're reflecting on. The Nigerian situation is a bit complicated. All the ethnic religious cleavages, the fault lines that were put in place by colonialism, then of course the neoliberal conditions that people live in today. So you're not just dealing with a clear-cut situation. There are a number of factors that the balance in all of this is intricate. We will have to be sure to get it right in a way that takes into consideration the sensibilities, the desires which is an aspiration of all the groups. But having said that, I think it's important to say that that's the only way to go. This unstructured, uncoordinated approach is not going to solve the problem. We've seen it before. We've known how it ended, how the state has responded. In between all of these, there have been some structured demands by civil society groups trying to highlight some of the some of the key issues that people across the country, whether in the north or in the southern part of the country, are going through. For the protestants, they've made initial demands which the states, including the needs to disband the SARS unit and prosecute people who have been found guilty of committing any atrocities or crimes, but also providing compensation for those who are victims. But that only scratches the surface in the gamut of things that ailed the country, which are essentially economic and how they deal with that. It's something that progressive forces would need to sit down and reflect deeply on and engage in a structured and coordinated manner. And I hope going forward, these are some of the things that, like people are meeting their discussions within groups in the country and also outside the country on what needs to be done less than we're hoping that this doesn't generate any further and that at the end of the day people would sit down and make these demands. The good thing about all of this is it's just shown the capacity of citizens, of young people, how far they can go in pushing their demands. It will be difficult now going forward for the states to take people for granted, knowing what they've been able to achieve, what they can do. So it's left for those who want to bring about real credible change to take advantage of this opportunity, of this opening and present at least a minimum agenda that speaks to the welfare of citizens across the country, to the economic emancipation of citizens across the country. Absolutely. Thank you so much, you know, Numa for speaking to us. We'll stay in touch with you as the protests continue over the coming weeks as well. You're welcome. Thank you so much for being in touch and I appreciate your time. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.