Reflections from my personal experience with SARS

 Reflections from my personal experience with SARS. 

After everything that has happened in the past month, I reflected a little and wish to share my thoughts. 

 I had an interesting encounter with the SARS officers, all agencies are usually created with the intention of doing a lot of good yet a lot of this good achieved revolves around the officers who go out into the field. 

My experience goes thus, 

When I was in my finals in schools, I stayed off-campus in a fenced house protected by barbed wires, the SARS officers came around to my area, on this particular morning they got interested in my place. A co-tenant was outside the gate, on sighting them she got scared by their brutish appearances(you sabi as SARS dey look na:the guns and all) and ran hastily inside, closing the gate behind her, the SARS officers saw her and concluded the house was a place of interest and decided to investigate. She hurriedly closed the gate behind her and shouted to us 'SARS SARS SARS'!(apparently, SARS already had a name for disruption, that fueled her fears and actions when she saw them).

 I was in the bathroom trying to get ready for an early morning class so I didn't even hear a lot of what was going on because the water was running. 

So the SARS officers drove their wagon to the front of our place, and saw that the gate was locked,they tried hard to force it open, they banged really hard and hard shouting … "open dis gate o, i tok sey may una open dis gate… una go see wahala  for this house if una no open am o…" there was a whole lot of shouting, the voices were scary… warlike-in-nature, they assumed we the inhabitants were yahoo boys who had skeletons to hide. 

This assumption (likely taken based on their previous encounters, when people run on sighting them, assume they are guilty…) was what led to the following run of events. 

One of them jumped the fence barbed with electric wires and unlocked the gate from the inside, the others entered. 

Las las we entered one chance.. they didn't so much look like gentlemen.. 

The next thing was they started banging on each door, I'll compare this to FBI-themed movies in which when a suspected criminal is about to be busted, you know the way the doors are always brought down… it was almost close to that, I actually felt for the doors, thankfully they were resilient ones. 

The officers got to my door and banged it very hard, I left the bathroom and put on my shorts, caught my breath and said a little word of prayer, then got the keys… clank.. clank.. the door opened up and I was face to face with a fellow Nigerian(one would have thought they don't have the same blood that runs in mine), I looked cool, he looked gruff, with the sides of my eye catching a glimpse at his Ak-47...I said in a conciliatory tone 

'Officer, why all this na, why the banging of doors?' 

He replied '' what do you do?''

'I'm a student' 

"which school

'OAU' 

afterwards his aggressive tone matched my conciliatory tone, then after taking some quick glances at my room from the veranda, he replied 

"we dey do all this to check if people get guns for their rooms, we raid one house for dat side some days back and we see guns for deir rooms… "

 I said 'okay'... 

 they left me and continued their raid before they eventually left the premises… no apologies were made (they weren't even aware they caused a lot of inconveniences..)If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything as if it were a nail, the officers had begun to see every person as robbers. 

When Nigerian youths went all out into the streets to protest the brutalities, insensitivities, exploitations of those who were supposed to be friends, it was to call the immediate attention of the authorities. 

SARS was created to curb the menace of robbery and crime, I assume the job description required officers who were tough-looking, aggressive and daredevil-in-actions, but when these officers now use their power to harass civilians who don't have guns like they do - it becomes something else. The abnormalities include:

The approach of the officers, they use force and coercive techniques to get what they wanted, for instance someone is on a bike, stopped and asked to bring out his device,any refusal leads to being slapped, harassed or even bungled into their wagons. 

Extortion : once any mobile application relating to earning money is detected on the device, you are very much likely to part away with huge sums of money depending on how much money you appear to earn or else risk being thrown into cells with no specific charges.

Continuous extortions : once you're marked, they keep coming back for more and more again. It now leads to a cycle.. yahoo boys make money online, SARS officers must also collect their percentage.. 

This even got bigger, if anyone involved in forex trading, freelancing has an encounter with them, a percentage must be parted away with forcefully. SARSquad had turned to something else, every young Nigerian earning some money had become a target, no one was exempted. 

The demands were not so much, since Nigerian Leaders all have their children abroad who are beyond the reach of SARS, they found it hard to relate with things therefore protests were to call serious attention to what was really happening in the country… Thankfully popular entertainers added their voices which hastened the disbandment of the squad. 

* * *

During the lockdown, palliatives were donated by donors to the government, the distribution was very poor and the people were hungry… News got around that the palliatives were being kept in stores, and the common man is saying 'I'm hungry and the palliatives are lying fallow.. Day 1,Day 2,Day 3…..Day 10..nothing from the government, no one is talking about the distribution of palliatives..' 

The EndSARS protest then became a meeting point for whoever had a bitter grudge against the government, and things went south. Lives lost, properties destroyed, curfews, palliatives looted and movement restrictions.. I felt sorry for how things turned out. 

Nigerian leaders get elected with the basic promise of making life easier for the people, they should know better, that's why they are leaders…. Truthfully every country on earth has challenges, yet no one is asking for a perfect system,all that's needed is for the  government to provide an environment where every Nigerian can get the most out of their lives - and that is not a tall order. 

It is true that uneasy lies the head of he who wears the crown, that is why all leaders are generously compensated to do their jobs, there is no excuse for not delivering.. zero excuses! 

One of the most bothering moments included when it took so long a time for the President to respond to issues, with his aides citing an excuse that all the facts weren't available... again leaders should know that you don't need to have all the facts before you make important decisions.. where is the place of instincts? or how exactly are Nigerian Leaders different from the citizens.. 

This writeup is purely relational, and hopefully passes the right message to everyone to look at things from a different perspective.. 

Three vital points I think should matter when evaluating leaders in future elections, we should look at their past records and ask these questions. 

Do they put the people first? 

Do they build bridges between the citizens? 

Do they never stop thinking of a better tomorrow for the country? 

From all I have written here, one major skill appears highly under-rated in Nigerian institutions : EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE! If every Nigerian developed this skill, things will turn out differently. 

I rest my pen. 

Tim Adetolu