#EndSars and #BlackLivesMatter: The Parallel Histories of Police Violence in Nigeria and the U.S.

The Police Force in Nigeria (1960); photograph: https://www.legit.ng/ and The Chinatown Squad, an infamously harsh police unit in San Francisco, in 1905. Photograph courtesy Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

On December 10, numerous activists, politicians, and celebrities affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Movement penned a letter to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari demanding justice for those attacked by police and jailed for participating in protests against military and police violence in October. The letter calls for the ban on peaceful demonstrations to be lifted, the release of jailed protestors and journalists, the return of confiscated passports and government IDs, and the unfreezing of bank accounts.

The letter comes after the globally trending #EndSars movement in October that called for the dissolution of the Nigeria Police Force’s (NPF) Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The movement was sparked by the October 4th release of a disturbing video showing SARS officers dragging two men from a hotel in Lagos and shooting one of them in the street. With people around the world calling for the immediate dissolution of SARS, the Inspector General of Police even announced the unit’s disbandment and President Buhari promised citizens immediate reform.

However, celebrations of such promises were cut short as citizens were quickly angry to learn of the NPF’s plans to merely redeploy SARS officers into other jobs of law enforcement. So, citizens continued to protest for the complete dissolution of the unit. As Lagos administered a 24-hour curfew in response to continued protests, citizens refused to back down and gathered at the Lekki Toll Gate Plaza on October 20 for a peaceful protest that ultimately ended with Nigerian security forces opening fire on the crowd, killing ten people and injuring hundreds more–– an event immediately dubbed the #LekkiMassacre on the internet. Citizens and supporters around the world are now demanding that the country provide justice that has yet to be served, mirroring sentiments that are clearly echoed in the BLM-backed letter to President Buhari.

The letter displays a much-needed solidarity between #EndSars and #BlackLivesMatter. Though the two movements are in seemingly entirely different environments and contexts, it is clear that there are shared patterns of perpetual police violence in both countries that protesters are responding to. Moreover, the letter reminds us living in the United States that policing is a threat to black lives around the world. U.S.-centered struggles against racial justice feed into already U.S.-centered notions of blackness that work to erase the existence of the black diaspora in Latin America, Africa, and so on. When we intentionally widen the scope of #Blacklivesmatter to include those outside of the U.S., we get closer to the root of racial violence by exposing its already global implications.

What should tell us even more about why habits of police violence in the U.S. and Nigeria practically mirror each other are the countries’ similar historical origins of policing that they share. Namely, colonial policing in Nigeria and slave patrols in the U.S. These two institutions shared the function of economic and political exploitation that typically targeted black and poor people–– today, their remnants leave self-perpetuating violent stains on Nigeria and the U.S.

#EndSars and the History of Policing in Nigeria

The #EndSars hashtag first surfaced in 2017 in response to multiple instances of SARS’ habits of extortion and violence. Since then, protests steadily rose until finally culminating into a nationwide protest this year that spanned 21 states and a global online movement calling for the immediate dissolution of SARS.

SARS is one of many units situated in the NPF. The unit was launched in 1992 for the purpose of combating armed robbery and other serious crimes. SARS has long been known for its extortion with officers frequently stealing money, property, and other valuables belonging to suspects and their families. But the NPF’s violent and exploitative tendencies existed long before SARS, dating even further back to the colonial era.

While local police forces had existed in Nigeria pre-colonialism, the modern day NPF’s roots date back to British invasion of the country. When the imperial power first violently conquested Lagos in 1861, it immediately established a small police force for the purpose of facilitating imperial control, naming it the Armed Police Force. Since the force struggled to recruit indigenous civilians into the police, they recruited some chiefs and “important residents” in rural areas–– elite Nigerians were immediately alienated from the general public in the realm of law enforcement.

As colonial rule expanded throughout the country, local police forces were established to ease colonial expansion and domination of the indigenous peoples; their main purpose was to suppress opposition to colonial occupation, allowing for the uninterrupted economic and political exploitation of the population. These forces eventually either constituted the Southern Police Force for the Colony of Lagos and Southern Provinces or the Northern Police Force for the Northern Provinces–– numerous local police forces accompanied both. The modern-day Nigeria Police Force was thus established in 1930 through the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern police forces.

These foundational colonial-era police forces were never intended to protect the entirety of the indigenous population. Rather, the forces were used to protect imperial property and violently force the imperial subjects into subordination by surveilling them, subduing any possibilities of resistance, and using the indigenous elite as a means of consolidating and disseminating their power. Seeing as the elitist and oppressive institution had become so interwoven with Nigerian society, independence in 1960 did not mark a sudden relief from the police brutality and inequality citizens had endured during the colonial period.

“After independence, Africanisation of the police only resulted in superficial changes” says Dr. Foluke Ifejola Adebisi, a senior lecturer at the Law School of the University of Bristol. “The Nigerian police had imbibed a culture of brutality, exploitation, suppression and oppression.” The NPF continued to do what it was designed to do, which should be expected.

#BlackLivesMatter and the History of Policing in the U.S.

#BlackLivesMatter was cofounded in 2013 by three black organizers: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. The online movement formed after George Zimmerman was acquitted on charges from his fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen, in Sanford, Florida in February 2012. The movement expanded in 2014 after the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, two unarmed black men. Black Lives Matter gained even more momentum as people protested the deaths of other black victims of police violence such as Sandra Bland, Philando Castille, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, and Alton Sterling.

This year, the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and others brought on an increase of support for Black Lives Matter with people gathering to protest around the world. For many people, it seems as though police brutality in the U.S. is a rather recent phenomenon; however, this reality is not at all unfamiliar for black people. In fact, such violence dates back to the founding modes of policing in the U.S.

In the South, slave patrols served as the original foundation of policing in slave-holding states in the early 1700s. Slave patrols were units of white volunteers given the power to use “vigilante tactics” to enforce laws having to do with slavery. The patrols surveilled enslaved people, ensuring that they would not escape. They also worked to halt uprisings led by enslaved people. More generally, slave patrols existed to maintain the economic exploitation of black people, protecting the slavers’ “property.”

Even as slave patrols were formally dissolved after the civil war’s ending, policies such as Black Codes and Jim Crow laws gave police officers the right to enforce the subjugation and segregation of black people. Black Codes enforced restrictions on how, when, and where African Americans could work, how much they would be paid, how and where they could travel, where they could live, and also limited black voting rights. While the ratification of the 14th amendment did make the black codes illegal by giving formerly enslaved blacks constitutional equal protection of the laws, Jim Crow laws merely replaced them two decades later. Jim Crow laws enforced public segregation of black and white people in spaces such as libraries, schools, and water fountains–– and police forces had the job of punishing whoever broke such laws. Police officers continued to do what they were created to do in the U.S.–– surveil and oppress black people.

What These Shared Histories of Policing Tell Us

With the Nigeria Police Force having its roots in colonialism and many modern-day American police forces being originally created to protect the property of the upper class and enforce the racial hierarchy, we can easily see their shared original functions of economic, political, and racial subjugation. Such forces were inherently created to enforce the racialization of the countries’ populations for the purpose of maintaining economic profit and political domination of the elite.

The parallel origins of oppressive policing in Nigeria and the U.S. should tell us a lot about why police forces continue to be threats to black and poor people around the world today. Their shared histories give us a glimpse into why these forces even emerged in the first place, providing us with the understanding that the countries continue to bear the weight of violent institutions that were never created with the intentions of protecting black and poor people.

The global orientation of the threat of policing to marginalized peoples should encourage us to globalize our efforts to stop police violence and notice common patterns of police brutality that are shared between different countries, providing us with a crucial understanding of how policing has functioned around the world.