#ENDSARS: Data Visualizations of Current Police Brutality in Nigeria

Nigerian Youths Protesting (nairametrics.com)

Introduction:

Currently, Nigerians are protesting to end police brutality by a special unit called the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (F-SARS). This stems from the fact that Nigerian youths have experienced inhumane actions in the hands of this special police unit.

In this article, we at DotunData looked at the ENDSARS movement and noticed there were no available datasets on SARS criminal reports. We, therefore, decided to conduct an online survey that documents individuals’ experiences with SARS. We present some of our findings in this article.

What is SARS?

According to the New York Times, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was created in 1992 and charged with tackling the problem of violent crimes in Lagos. It operated as a faceless, 15-member team that traveled in two unmarked buses, its officers often wearing neither uniforms nor name tags.

SARS takes a stop and frisk approach to target individuals and has been responsible for brutality, extortion, and various atrocities, killing too many Nigerian citizens

Nigerian Police chasing EndSARS protesters in Abuja (Business Day)

What is the ENDSARS Movement?

The ENDSARS movement is a series of ongoing protests by Nigerians asking for the disbandment of the SARS unit and seeking justice for those who have lost their lives by this police unit. The protests both online and offline have raised huge awareness of the issue at hand.

The ENDSARS movement has currently led to the disbandment of the SARS unit in Nigeria but the protesters still want to see more done through justice for the families that were killed and to ensure such repressive forces do not exist anymore.

Data Visualization for SARS incidents

In an effort to understand the impact SARS have had on Nigerians, we decided to create an online survey to ask for SARS experiences from individuals. This survey relied on self-report of actual victims of police brutality in Nigeria. The survey is ongoing but we have decided to create some visualizations so far.

Gender Demographics:

We took over 60 individuals who experienced SARS brutality at least once. Our respondents were 70 % male, 25% female, 1 % non-binary and 3% preferred not to say.

Figure 1: Gender Demographics

Age Group Demographics:

The majority of our respondents are youth between the ages of 26–36. This is very representative as about 75% of the Nigerian populations are youths and are the target group of SARS.

Figure 2: Age Demographics

Location of SARS Incidents:

From our survey. people are more likely to be harassed in populated states like Lagos and Abuja which are consistently bustling with youths.

Figure 3: State in Nigeria experiencing SARS brutality

Occurrences of SARS Incidents:

We also noticed that many of our respondents have experienced SARS attacks about 1 to 4 times and for others more than 10 times. For a situation that can ultimately lead to the death of the victims, this is a huge problem that needs to be addressed.

Figure 4: Number of times a person was ever stopped by SARS

SARS Officers’ Accusations

Our survey highlighted that most respondents were accused of being online fraudsters, prostitutes, robbers, drug users/dealers and in some cases nothing. The fact that individuals are not accused of anything but still have to deal with harassment from SARS is a major problem that needs to be addressed immediately.

Figure 5: Accusations levied by SARS officers

Months of SARS Incidents:

From our survey, we noticed that the Summer/Christmas vacation months such as July and December had the most SARS incidents.

Figure 6: SARS incidents by months

SARS Over The Years

We also noticed that SARS incidents have constantly persisted over the years from 2015–2019 in spite of previous protests and police reforms. This is why the protests have not stopped even though the government announced that they have disbanded the SARS group

Figure 7: SARS over the years

SARS Incidents By Time Of Day :

We noticed most incidents often occur between 12 pm — 6 pm during the day. This is peak business hours in Nigeria, with many citizens trying to make a living in a country experiencing high rates of poverty and unemployment of its citizens.

Figure 8: SARS incidents by time period.

Next steps :

We built endsarsdata.com, for data collection and analysis of SAR incidents. We intend to make our datasets publicly available for individuals who want to draw more insights. Please share endsarsdata.com with as many people as possible.

Call to action to support the END SARS movement :

Here are ways to support the SARS movement

1. Share our online survey on social media.
2. Retweet, Share and Educate yourself about the #EndSARs movement online.
3. Join peaceful protests against SARS globally.
4. Donate to organizations leading the charge such as the feminist coalition
5. Finally, we need the Nigerian government to become more accountable to its citizens.

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