One Year After Nigeria's Protests Against Police Brutality, Churches Keep Praying

Young people gather at a prayer walk to end SARS, the special armed robbery police unit accused of brutality in Nigeria, on Oct. 17, 2021, in Ogun State. Photo courtesy of Ayoola Olalekan.

LAGOS, Nigeria — At the height of Nigeria’s nationwide #EndSARS protests against police brutality and corrupt governance last October, young people of faith joined and led street demonstrations with prayers and songs. 

SARS, the special armed robbery squad of the Nigerian police force, has been linked to many extrajudicial killings, kidnappings, tortures and extortions. According to a report by Amnesty International, SARS committed at least 82 counts of torture, ill treatment and extrajudicial executions between January 2017 and May 2020. Most victims have been men ages 18-35 of less privileged backgrounds, as the police profile young men as criminals for owning an iPhone, wearing nice clothes or driving a fancy car.

At the height of Nigeria’s nationwide #EndSARS protests against police brutality and corrupt governance last October, young people of faith joined and led street demonstrations with prayers and songs. The #EndSARS protests united people of different faiths, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds to pray together and make demands for a better country. One year later, those connections are still growing, and churches are still praying, with their young people hosting prayer walks.

Many protest leaders created groups on WhatsApp and Telegram, messaging platforms, to share updates and counter misinformation online. Those groups have now become forums to exchange job opportunities and business contacts. 

Baliqees Salaudeen, a media strategist and environmental activist living in Ilorin, led Islamic prayers at a prayer walk in her city during last year’s protests that spread from Twitter to the streets starting on Oct. 3, 2020.

When Salaudeen sensed unease among Christians there — perhaps because they could not understand her prayers in Arabic — she tried to calm them through explanation. 

“I told them I am not laying a curse on them. I am only praying for our country and everyone here, and they only have to say, ‘Amen,’” she said. “The goal was to be able to talk to our leaders and to be able to talk to God.”

‘Churches have not stopped praying’

On Oct. 20, 2020, hundreds of protestors gathered at the Lekki Toll gates in Lagos as had become custom. At 6 p.m., men of the Nigerian army opened fire on the unarmed protestors singing the national anthem and waving the country’s flag, killing at least 12 of them, according to Amnesty International. 

That delivered a heavy blow to the demonstrations; the protests and prayer walk came to an end. Still, the faithful kept praying in churches, mosques and at home.

“Churches have not stopped praying,” said Ayoola Olalekan, a digital marketer and event host who led a prayer walk protest this year. Earlier this month, his church had a remembrance service in which he moderated a panel session of young people talking about the origins of #EndSARS, police brutality in Nigeria, lessons from the demonstrations and the impact of the church.

“My church had a particular Sunday dedicated to the #EndSARS activities where they had a panel discussion on the mistakes and the impacts of the protests,” he said. “Nigerians generally have not stopped praying.”

On social media, young Nigerians are holding a series of commemorative events this month. An example is the 20 days of activism held on Twitter for the first 20 days of October. At the events, Nigerians trade ideas for achieving a progressive country and honor those who died unjustly during the demonstrations last year.

Complementing the physical with the spiritual

Before the prayer walk in Ogun state on Oct. 17, Olalekan had only been protesting on Twitter. But when he saw the feeds from the prayer walk in Lagos, he felt a need to hold one in Abeokuta, the capital city. 

“We thought we could also do something through the spiritual to complement the effort of the physical,” he explained. 

Olalekan and a handful of volunteers worked to organize a local protest — including publicizing the event, inviting ministers, collecting donations and finding a meeting point. Their biggest challenge was the unpredictable security situation in Nigeria, since they knew that some had already been arrested. 

“Everyone was trying to see if the prayer walk was politicized or not,” Olalekan said. “I received a number of calls from people asking if we informed the state government or did other things.” Olalekan said they ended up not notifying the government in advance. 

The protest went smoothly anyway, but they made sure everyone carried the country’s green-and-white flag and that there was no particular dress code. On the road, they met a group of law enforcement agents who ended up escorting them. 

Young people wave Nigerian flags at a prayer walk to end the SARS police unit on Oct. 17 in Ogun State. Photo courtesy of Ayoola Olalekan.

Should religion be part of political protests?

Religion and political protest do not often mix well in Nigeria, which is about 54% Muslim and 46% Christian according to 2018 CIA World Fact Book figures. Rather than encourage people to demand better governance, religious leaders encourage Nigerians to pray — but not protest. 

“Detractors will tell you that it will lead to violence,” said Alausa Issa Sanni, a religious scholar and national affairs analyst living in Ilorin.

Several religious protesters described efforts to dissuade them from holding prayer walks. 

“Some people were saying that there was no need for the prayer walk,” Salaudeen said. “If they were one of those who have been brutalized by SARS, would they still say that?”

Olalekan explained that the pressure from faith groups not to politically engage is one of the reasons why they did not carry placards that specifically asked the government to dismiss the SARS unit. However, he maintained that their activities were carried out as dutiful citizens asking for change. 

“I think the protests and prayer walk are actually interwoven because people were trying to say no to police brutality and bad governance in Nigeria,” Olalekan said. “It was a combination of several wrongs happening in the country at one particular time. You know, youths were trying to say that they’ve had enough, and it was the same with the prayer walks.”

For Sanni, it would be a surprise if protests had happened without an element of prayer involved.

“There are several people who would not have participated if religion was not involved,” he said. “Some people felt that their own role in the protest is to support with prayer. The combination of both is what Nigeria needs. It is what the government needs to see.”

‘I would not have joined the protest’

Timilehin Olayanju, a fitness enthusiast who lives in Ibadan, in southwestern Nigeria, said she would not have joined the protests if not for the prayer walk. She saw flyers and recognized the prayer walk as an opportunity for her to intercede on behalf of the country, an avenue for her to protest peacefully with minimal risk of attack by the law enforcement agents who have used tear gas and guns on protestors in the past. 

“I felt it was a very good opportunity to intercede and pray concerning what was going on,” Olayanju said, “especially because it was getting out of hand and it felt like those that were going for the rally and the protests were being attacked and things were going bad. I thought we needed divine intervention.”

She continued to explain how the prayer walk created an awareness that the protesters weren’t a bunch of “yahoo boys,” a colloquial term for internet scammers in Nigeria.

“The fact that the body of Christ came out corrected that notion,” she said. 

The feeling was that the prayer walk showed young people are crying for an end to SARS for the right reasons, and their identity as a religious movement worked as a sort of buffer against potential police force at the prayer walk.

Impacts 

One year after the protests, police brutality in Nigeria has hardly changed. This has cast the legacy of the protests in a dim and cynical light. Some are of the opinion that the protests did not accomplish anything.

But Sanni believes the prayers were important to sustain the protests while they lasted and that people should understand that protests are effective but have limits. 

“For what we are demanding, the role of protests would put the spotlight on the issue but it will not effect the changes,” Sanni said. “What #EndSARS did was to expose an institutional problem.” 

She said the protests raised awareness among young Nigerians, and now, when they see a policeman harassing somebody by the roadside, the initial act of the first responder is to help the person who is likely being wrongfully mistreated. 

“What we saw during #EndSARS is that the religious sentiment is always there,” Sanni concluded. “You cannot achieve anything without the involvement of God. If you want to change the system, as we engage in physical protest, we need to also bring God into it because nothing happens without his consent, so we have to involve him if we want to succeed.”

Pelumi Salako is a journalist from Ilorin, Nigeria. He reports on underreported human interest stories and has bylines in Al Jazeera, African Business Magazine, The Sahelien, Pulse Nigeria, HumAngle, Brittlepaper and elsewhere.