ajhouse of poetry

PRESS STATEMENT:

Issued 10th October, 2020

END SARS! END POLICE BRUTALITY!! JOBS FOR YOUTH!!!

· RECOGNISE A POLICEMAN’S RIGHT TO BELONG TO A UNION

The Movement for A Socialist Alternative (MSA) declares support for the mass protests erupting across the country.

The campaign is due to the unabated brutality of the Nigerian Police Force towards average Nigerians, with the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) standing out notoriously in reported cases of extortion, wrongful profiling, illegal arrest, extra-judicial killings and oppression of Nigerians.

The resurgence of the campaign that has been spreading across the country like wildfire was caused by the reported case of a young person, who was murdered by the operatives of SARS. The video of this horrendous event soon circulated on social media platforms, which was followed by calls for mass demonstrations by young people, including hip-hop artistes; calls that are still being heeded.

The present campaign has for its object the disbandment of the SARS unit. The government’s spokespersons and the Police have resorted to bold-faces and blackmails that SARS cannot be disbanded and that those calling for its disbandment are criminals. We support the call by Nigerians for . The fact that the Buhari’s regime is defending a brutish and repressive unit of the Police force against the popular demand of the people for its disbandment is undemocratic and can only mean that it is not any different.

Repression, however, is not strange to the Buhari’s regime. Peaceful protest for democratic rights of self-determination have been violently dispersed, in some cases protesters were even killed, without any inquiry or compensation paid to the families of the victims. Initial peaceful protest against the hike in fuel and electricity tariff was also forcefully dispersed. Even now, the regime has attempted to forcefully disperse protests in Osun and Abuja, as protesters stood their ground in the face of tear gases and live ammunition. The MSA condemns the application of force to disperse peaceful protesters and ask that protesters continue to mass and stand their ground.

The atrocities of the Police against average people are the product of the debasement of the Police by the capitalist political class. The fact that they are constantly called upon to wreak terror on protesters set them on a path of acrimony against the civilian population they emerged from. The Nigerian Police also have the misfortune of lacking a Police Union that can speak up for them in terms of ensuring dignifying pay and favourable working conditions. We have a prevalent situation where policemen pay for their boots, uniforms, and must provide for their stationaries or compel Nigerians through bribery and corruption to get these working tools. This also explains why they have the backing of the top hierarchy of the police to act unchecked, because this hierarchy is responsible for the debasement and impoverishment of the ranks.

Of course, the police bosses are themselves unquestionable and unaccountable to the rank and file, granting them liberty to make away with the resources, including pension funds, which should, in reality, be used to provide police rank and file an improved working condition. The reason why the police bosses close their eyes at the atrocities of the underlings is that they are the managers of the scheme of extortion of ordinary people, through random raiding, the illegal arrest of citizens on their way home from work, and even of unemployed youths on their streets, and setting up extortionate roadblocks that create artificial traffic logjam. This, however, reflect the failure of capitalism and a backwardness yet of Nigeria’s 21 years of uninterrupted “democracy”, which continues in a military fashion of denying the democratic rights of the rank and file to a union when in reality those at the top are fully protected.

We call on the NLC and TUC not to remain silent on this and publicly join the campaign to Now, and at the same time demanding for a Police Union. We demand justice and compensation for the families of the persons killed extra-judicially by the police and the bringing to trial of all involved in such killings. We also demand the democratic control by the mass of the working people, via their unions and organisations in the management and conduct of all police affairs and engagement with members of the public. The Human Right desk in all police station should also no longer be an internal affair of the police; this must also comprise of the working masses electing their members in every community to be part of it.

Nevertheless, all over the places where capitalism is practised, and the masses of the poor exist, the Police always wreak terror on the mass to hold them oppressed and subservient to the system.

Therefore, a permanent end to Police brutality can only come about with the emplacement of a democratic socialist society that is organized by the working and poor people for their collective interest rather than the few billionaires who necessarily need instruments of coercion to keep the majority in servitude.

The campaign to must be built and coordinated in the real world while coordinating with the various communities and states where similar protests are breaking out. The present demand to must also be deepened to include various degrees of the economic oppression that Nigerians suffer in the hands of the capitalist state, including demands for a reversal in the recently increased prices of electricity tariffs and fuel and for school fees to remain as they are before Covid-19.

It is noteworthy that this campaign is emerging barely two weeks after a planned general strike was aborted by the official leadership of the labour movement. The streets should also as a matter of necessity link itself with the workers in the factories and work-places, who have been left out in the cold by the decision of labour leaders to suspend a planned general strike. The working-class holds the reins of Nigeria’s economic activities, not the President or his cabinet; a decision to down tools by the workers will strengthen the present struggle against police brutality and broaden it to other areas of economic and political brutalities that average Nigerians suffer on daily basis.

The MSA welcomes this growing tendency for mass struggle, for therein lies the hope and future for a different Nigeria that would put the interest and wellbeing of the mass of the working masses first and foremost. It is only in acting and struggling together can we defeat the undemocratic and oppressive tendencies of the Buhari’s capitalist hordes.

Signed,

Dagga Tolar
Spokesperson, MSA

Issued 10th October, 2020