Almost all protests against police brutality start with the police killing an innocent man. In Nigeria, on October 3, 2020 just after the independence day celebrations that was met with pessimistic statements against the government, a man was shot in Ughelli, Delta State by men of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). They drove away his Lexus SUV. Since the formation of SARS, a storm was formed. And now, that storm was culminating into something the Nigerian government had constantly ignored—police brutality. The video showing the men of SARS drive away went viral. Beneath the video someone commented, ‘Nigeria is a Mafia Jungle.’ Then came the hashtag which had been used for years anytime the police killed a Nigerian, #EndSARS. 

The youths of Ughelli took to the streets immediately, demonstrating against the shooting of the young man. The city quickly became a hot zone as the police attempted to disperse demonstrators with live bullets. On social media, everyone was watching. And four days later, a declaration on Twitter by influencer Rinu Otitoloju Oduala for a three days protest at Alausa, the Lagos State government house, took the protests offline and to the streets. 

Nigerian musician Azeez Adeshina Fashola, popularly known as Naira Marley, backed out of the protests after an Instagram live conversation with the Nigeria Police Force PRO, DCP Frank Mba who had given promises to look into the issue of SARS. This instagram live which happened on October 6 was seen as a government tactic to stop the protests Rinu had called for. This spurred more distrust in the government’s handling on police brutality. SARS, up to that time, had been disbanded four times. Many Nigerians had turned to Segun Awosanya, an online activist who was at the fore of pushing for police reforms to get their loved ones released from the custody of the police. 

Rinu stands at barely 5’2 ft. In pidgin, she’d be described as “person wey full ground.” Her face has become a meme across social media. In one of the pictures, she is giving an angry stare at the police and in another, she is giving a warning, her index finger and facial expression in total synchronization to her revolt. During the protests she was on locs. That Wednesday when the protests started, she and a few others refused to leave the front of the Lagos State National Assembly. They had brought sleeping bags. Their cars were parked near where they slept. In the middle of the night, like thieves, the police attempted to arrest the protesters. Rinu tweeted about the threat they were facing, their deflated tires, and the harassment from the police. The reaction from twitter was sharp and active. Immediately, a vigilance of sorts was set up. Retweets, and replies and more tweets with the hashtag #EndSARS went viral. Every few minutes, Rinu gave an update and description of what was happening. 

The next morning, more protesters went to Alausa. Another vigil was kept. Individuals started bringing in food, water, drinks, a generator was fueled, a speaker was rented, the canopies the police had seized were returned, and Fela Kuti’s Beast of No Nation and Zombie blasted through the speakers with young men and women screaming along to the lyrics. By the third day, the presence of Nigerian comedian Debo Adebayo, popularly called Mr. Macaroni, pulled in more protesters.

But in between all these activities, a request for 40,000 to 50,000 naira was made at 1:33am on October 9, by Feyikemi Abudu to feed the fifty protesters who had held the barricades at Alausa. In five minutes, 50,000 naira had been raised. In 12 minutes, 200,000 had been raised. In 16 minutes, 312,000 naira had been raised. In 53 minutes, 515,000 was raised. In 5 hours, 788,000 naira had been raised. And thus started a process that would sustain the #EndSARS protests for the next two weeks. Feyikemi equally requested for volunteers, she herself volunteered to serve the protesters. In almost 10 hours, in a single day, 1.3 million naira had been raised. The burden of logistics and disbursing of funds fell on Feyikemi who started identifying other areas of need in the protest. 

The injection of finance gave a seriousness to the protests, Nigerians were here for the long haul. After three days, Rinu announced that the protests she’d started would be called off. She later tweeted “The main reason we stopped the 72 hours protest was because the RevolutionNow protesters tried to hijack our movement!”

The response on social media showed that these protests that had begun would not be called off by a single person. The protests would last as long as people wanted it to last. No single person or group of persons was going to be given the power to call off the protests. And nobody would claim to be a leader of the protests. The constant response to the question: who is the leader of the protests, was replied with: we have no leaders. In a country where the youths were always told they are the leaders of tomorrow, this response was not just a rejection of the patronizing nature of the government to the protesters, but a clear indication that the youths had seen through what the government wanted to do; get leaders who they could target. Authorities in Nigeria always did this, found the leaders of protests, called for negotiations which usually quelled the spirit of the protests and made offers to protest leaders. Many activists who refused to kowtow to government demands usually ended up hounded, imprisoned and many times going to exile. Or they end up dead.

It was on Monday morning, the 12th of October, that Lagosians woke up to a self-declared public holiday. The Lekki Toll Gate was barricaded by protesters, there was no going through the toll gate from both sides. It was a rude awakening to some who saw the #EndSARS protests as a nuisance. To many, this was the spirit of defiance they had been praying to see for a long time. Shut down Lagos! Some tweeted. Another location for protest was chosen by protesters, Berger. Who was controlling these people? Who was their leader? “We have no leader,” or “we are all leaders,” was the response. The protesters at Lekki Toll Gate on that morning formed a human chain, their hands linked, their numbers few, their demand, unequivocal and one. A picture showing the few protesters was posted on Twitter, it went viral. They called for more people to join them, and by 10 a.m. young Nigerians had taken over the streets. Feyikemi directed funds towards Lekki. Food. Water. First aid kits. Traffic started building up all over.

The Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu would later come to the toll gate to appeal to protesters but no one was ready to listen to him. No one was going to leave. They would have to be uprooted if they had to leave. In short, their declaration was, “We pin here!” At the Lekki Toll gate, it was not surprising to see delivery men with their motorcycles stranded. Some returned to their companies unable to make deliveries. Others found a way around going through the toll gate. Many others just stood in solidarity, the fight was also a fight for them. Social media was fed with videos from various protest grounds. At Bariga, a young man, Fikky, rapped in Yoruba about SARS. His viral video connected him to Adey, a producer who invited him to his studio and helped produce the song titled End SARS. Another video would go viral of a young lady saying, “we will soon tackle Buhari, he has been a bad boy, he has been a bad boy!” The next few hours a hashtag was carved, #BuhariHasBeenABadBoy. Protesters in Kano and Scotland chanted, “Buhari is a bad boy!”

With each growing day, the protests grew from city to city, from state to state, from region from region. The protests grew organically, spreading. With each new state joining the protests, there was a reinvigorated energy in the demand that brought everyone together.

In Abuja, the protesters faced teargas, water cannons, and the police. They pinned. In Anambra, protesters marched from Awka to Akwuzu SARS where human rights atrocities had long been committed. In Enugu, when governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi declared to the crowd of protesters that Enugu was in God’s hands, there was a unison ‘no!’ The people didn’t vote in God. ‘Enugu is in your hands,’ the protesters responded. In Port Harcourt, the governor, Nyesom Wike banned protests. The next day, protesters flooded the streets demanding an end to police brutality. Then Nigerians in diaspora joined the protests. This externalization of the protests turned it to a global struggle. The world was watching. Twitter gave the #EndSARS hashtag a symbol, a clenched fist painted green, white, green. From London, to Helsinki, to Ottawa, to Washington D.C, to Chicago, to Pretoria, young Nigerians were demanding for an honest disbandment of SARS. As the protests raged on, the police started detaining protesters. A viral video of a man dragged into a police station, followed by gunshots, sparked more anger. How could young Nigerians protest police brutality and the response from the police was more brutality? Each day, under bridges, on the roads, at the toll gate, under the sun, in the rain, protesters carried placards, flew flags, painted their bodies and danced in protest against police brutality. 

Feyikemi was still disbursing funds for feeding, and now not only did protesters have access to First Aid kits but also ambulances. A call center was set up to handle requests from all over the country. Legal representation of detained protesters across the country was handled by Modupe Odele and Adetola Onayemi, who trained and organised a team of over 700 lawyer volunteers across the country. The Feminist Coalition undertook the task of ‘fundraising in order to sustain peaceful protests and ensure the safety of Nigerians exercising their constitutional rights.’ A total of 77million naira was raised and over 56m disbursed. Then the government, through the Central Bank of Nigeria directed banks to block the accounts of #EndSARS protesters who donated funds to the #EndSARS movement. The Feminist Coalition switched to bitcoin for donations. 

On the 18th of October, Segun Awosanya, known as Segalink on Twitter, labelled the #EndSARS protests as an insurrection. Peaceful protests had taken place all over the country despite the police being violent to protesters. This labelling, in a country where the government had killed Shiite protesters, was a legitimization of the military on protesters. Two days later, on the 20th of October, just some days after the governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki had declared a curfew on the state, the Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu also declared a curfew. The curfew which was announced at 12pm was to start at 4pm.

The curfew was a government strategy that followed destruction of properties by  hoodlums who attacked protesters all over the country. In Abuja, videos were seen of hoodlums being brought from outside Abuja to attack protesters. In Lagos, hoodlums armed with machete attacked protesters at Alausa. Some were caught and beaten. In all these, the police stood watching, doing nothing.

The announcement of the curfew was met with defiance in Lagos. Nigerian journalist Pelu Awofeso covered the protests at Alausa as the protesters waited for the worst to happen with the clock ticking down to four o’clock. At Lekki Toll gate, the protesters were no different, they were not going anywhere. They waved flags. Sang. Some shouted ‘we die here!’ At 4pm, CCTV cameras were removed from the toll gate. The picture of the men removing the cameras was posted on social media. The curfew was postponed to 9pm. Social media was filled with warnings to the protesters who defied the curfew to leave. Others sent their strength and prayers to the protesters. How did the response to a demand to stop being killed become more deaths? A man with a microphone urged the protesters to wave the Nigerian flag as they sang ‘solidarity forever we shall always fight for our rights.’ Some protesters livestreamed on Instagram to show the world they were not bowing to government pressure.

At around 6:30 pm, army vehicles from Bonny Camp left for the Lekki Toll gate. When they got there, they found young Nigerians waving their flags, seated on the floor. These young Nigerians thought that by waving those flags, the soldiers would see it as a sign of peace and not shoot. The lights at the toll gate went off. And gunfire rang out. A Nigerian disc jockey, DJ Switch, who had been on Big Brother Naija to play music for the housemates on weekends was this time streaming a massacre to more than one hundred thousand people. The world watched as sounds of bullets rang and protesters tried to remove a bullet from someone. The Nigerian Army picked up the dead bodies as they shot, as though fighting an enemy and not its citizens. The police later came to the scene and killed more people. 

In all these, President Muhammadu Buhari did not utter a word. Everyone on Twitter asked, when will Buhari address the nation? He eventually did, in what looked like a pre-recorded video. Then the shock came, the president did not make any mention of the shooting. He only warned against further protests, as if what Nigerians had seen at Lekki Toll Gate was a movie scene. And then the government finalised the massacre by saying it never happened and no one died. The goal was to silence a generation which had used the slogan soro soke.