Dear friend,

In August 2020, we launched the POBIN Project to document the stories of victims of police brutality in Nigeria. The idea came in June, a few days after Tina Ezekwe was killed. People took to social media to register their anger about the death of the 17-year-old going about her day. There was a wave of hashtags calling for justice. But a few days later, everything petered out. This was becoming the norm—someone gets killed, we call for justice for a few days, everything ends. We forget too quickly.

A group of us decided to create a platform, a repository of sorts, for stories of victims. There’s an avalanche of unreported cases beyond the small fraction that become trending topics on social media. We thought it was a worthy cause to be deliberate in seeking out these stories and writing about the victims beyond the tragedies of their deaths. Who were they? What were their dreams? Who loved them? Who did they love? Who will remember them?

Beyond the private remembering by those who knew them, we wanted to collectively preserve their memory. After all, police brutality is a nationwide problem.

The database that started with six stories last year has continued to increase. During the End SARS protests, people were open, more than ever, to share their stories. We worked with wonderful volunteers—writers especially, who spoke to relatives of victims online and at judicial panels. Perhaps we cannot bring justice to their loved ones, yet, but we hope that having these stories will continue to inspire us to demand more as a people. 

The project is also starting to reveal more than we intended. For instance, we didn’t know when we started documenting these stories how much of Nigeria’s history it was going to lead us to. The oldest record on our website dates back to 1981 when Dele Udoh was killed. The 24-year-old sprinter, who had competed in the 1980 Summer Olympics, was in Nigeria for a brief period. His death was attributed to “accidental discharge.” According to Udoh’s friend who recounted this story, it was around that time that the term “accidental discharge,” which is widely used till date, was popularized by Sunday Adewusi, the then-Inspector General of Police.

Besides looking into the past, we also want the archive to become a data resource on policing and police brutality in Nigeria. We can begin to ask questions such as how many deaths can be linked to a particular police unit? What day of week has the highest rate of arrests/killings and why? How many deaths has a particular officer been directly or indirectly involved in?

The End SARS protests last year ended with more deaths of our people and no one has been held accountable. None of us will forget October 20, 2020. There are countless tangible reasons to despair in Nigeria. But remembering is resistance too.

We appreciate the support we’ve received from you so far. In the past year, we got a total of 494000 naira. It was spent on token payment for writers, website hosting + domain renewal, and CAC registration. In April, we sent a six-month breakdown of expenses to our donors.

To do more work in the coming year, we will be needing you in different capacities. We need access to more relatives of victims in different locations across the country, access to old newspapers and archives to find these stories, collaboration with journalists working in media outlets, assigned journalists to follow up on cases of killer police officers, communications, social media management, and so on.

This is where you come in. If you’d like to work with us, please fill this form.

Another way you can support is by donating here. 

Video submissions of certain brutalities complete with date, time and exact locations are also welcome. And if you see a tweet or a post on Instagram about someone killed by police, please mention or DM us @pobinproject

When we started this last year, we knew it was going to be a long-term project. There’s a lot of learning and figuring out along the way. We are always open to suggestions. Please email us at info@pobinproject.com or send a DM on Twitter @pobinproject.

Thank you.