What makes a revolution?
Revolution does not come about by chance. It’s an alchemy of time, place, people and circumstance. It also doesn’t happen overnight – but in the wake of last year’s End Sars uprising against police corruption, a new generation of activists and instigators boldly moved Nigeria into a more optimistic and inclusive future.
Looking back in order to move forward, we examine the youth revolution that brought the establishment to its knees and ask: what’s next for Nigerian activism?
LAGOS, NIGERIA
“There was the scary realisation that I or my loved ones may be victims of oppression at any moment. Survival was my propeller” RINA ODUALA
The First Wave
The only accurate word to sum up the events that took place in Nigeria in the month of October 2020 is historic. For two weeks, young Nigerians took to the streets across the country to call for the scrapping of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (Sars) – a rogue unit of the Nigerian police force known for carrying out atrocious acts of police brutality. The unit was created in 1992 in response to increasingly widespread cases of robbery, kidnapping and other violent crimes the Nigerian police force wasn’t able to properly handle. Vested with so much power, the unit, inevitably, began to abuse it. But the End Sars movement didn’t happen overnight – rather, it was a culmination of events that first reached boiling point in 2016.
The archetypal victim of police brutality in Nigeria is young, male and usually alone – driving, walking, jogging, waiting, breathing, existing. Conducting stop-and-search tactics, Sars officials
