– To pay N10 million compensation to each victim
Three years after the #EndSARS protest, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) community court of justice, has found the federal government of Nigeria guilty of human rights abuses in its response to the protest in October 2020.
The court ruled on Wednesday that the Nigerian government’s actions, particularly its disproportionate use of force at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, breached several international human rights standards, including articles 1, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11 of the African charter on human and peoples’ rights.
The court mandates the Nigerian government to pay N10 million in compensation to each victim named in the suit.
It will be recalled that the End SARS, widely written as #EndSARS, was a decentralised social movement and series of mass protests against police brutality in Nigeria that mainly occurred in 2020.
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The movement’s slogan called for the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a notorious unit of the Nigerian Police known for its long record of abuse against Nigerian citizens.
The protests originated from a Twitter campaign in 2017, using the hashtag #EndSARS to demand the unit’s disbandment by the Nigerian government.
The movement experienced a resurgence in October 2020 following further revelations of the unit’s abuses, leading to mass demonstrations across major cities in Nigeria, and widespread outrage on social media platforms.
The hashtag #EndSARS accumulated over 28 million tweets on Twitter alone. Solidarity protests and demonstrations by Nigerians in the diaspora and sympathizers occurred in many major cities around the world.
Notably, the movement was predominantly led by young Nigerians and expanded to include demands for good governance and accountability, amidst unprecedented hardship in the country.
