The weeks-long protests that have broken out in the Nigerian city of Lagos, the most populous city in the African continent, have sparked international condemnation and vows from local police to get the situation under control by employing all means necessary.
The protests, which have been violent at times, are focused on police brutality. These protesters originally wanted the country’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), which has been accused of extrajudicial killings, to be disbanded. The government dissolved the unit, but the protests continued over police brutality in general.
Mohammed Adamu, Nigeria’s Chief of Police, reportedly said, “Enough is enough.” The BBC reported he ordered the country’s police to “use all legitimate means to halt the further slide into lawlessness.” The news outlet reported at least 69 people have died, however, the official death toll is something that has been disputed by protesters. The Financial Times spoke to one person who said he counted at least 15 bodies on the same day the country’s official death toll was zero.
The protests remained tense. In Lagos, a crowd set a police station on fire.
Obianuju Catherine Udeh, a disc jockey in the country of 206 million, described some of the chaos during a livestream, according to the paper.
The BBC reported that President Muhammadu Buhari dissolved the notorious police unit, but the protests continued and called for more police reforms. The alleged killings that stemmed from the protests were also a source of tension in the country.
Protesters sealed off one of the country’s major roads and stormed a terminal at an airport, the Wall Street Journal reported. The paper reported that aside from the demand for police reform, the virus pandemic has damaged the country’s economy, and more than 55 percent of Nigerians are underemployed or unemployed.
The city has been under curfew, and residents are only allowed to leave their homes between 8 AM and 6 PM.
Al Jazeera reported the government deploys cleaning crews to try to respond to buildings set on fire and other debris from the unrest. “As much I would love to clean up my state and have my state back to its normal form, we the youths didn’t make that mess – the hoodlums hired by the government did that,” Chelsea Balls, a 36-year-old entrepreneur, said.
TRENDPOST: Riots, protests, and demonstrations against government brutality and corruption, declining living standards, crime, and violence will erupt across the globe as the “Greatest Depression” worsens. Civil wars will spread into regional wars. The future is seen in the financial and human devastation that politicians have wracked on populations across the globe when they launched the COVID War.
