There Is No SARS Unit Anymore, Police Reassure Nigerians
Olohundare Jimoh, the Assistant Inspector General of Police for Zone 2, has repeated that the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) has been dismantled and no longer exists within the police organization.
He further denied that old SARS operatives were reorganized into new tactical teams.
Following the recent fatal shooting of Mene Ogidi, a 28-year-old man in Effurun, Delta state, videos of police officers engaging in altercations with citizens have gone viral online.
However, the AIG reported that the majority of the recordings resurfacing are old, dating back as far as 5 to 6 years.
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Jimoh stated this in an interview with Channels Television‘s Sunrise Daily on Friday, noting that everything learned from the ‘EndSARS’ is being implemented.
“The SARS has been disbanded, and there is no area where the Old SARS were migrated into another Squad or formation for them to do anything.
According to him, former SARS officers were not dismissed from the police because they were “conventional police officers and general duty officers,” but were instead redeployed to different units within the force.
He further stated that major reforms and retraining courses had been implemented following the disbandment of the contentious unit, with the assistance of international human rights organizations.
“A lot of internal human rights organisations, including the Red Cross international, and others even participated in ensuring that we reshape the behaviour of all these personnel.
“While I was CP Lagos, the Red Cross was in my office to ensure that those people who were rehabilitated in terms of performing their duty and ensuring that they continue to respect human rights and dignity and their behaviour is in contact with members of the public, conform with the international best practices, so they were very debriefed”.
He further addressed the recent videos circulating online of police officers mistreating people, saying,
“Eventually, all the videos that you are seeing online, outside the incident that happened in Delta, are extremely old videos, some of them dated to about 5 to 6 years ago, that people are now tagging as something that just happened.
Despite this, he said that the Inspector-General of Police had formed a high-level team to look into all the viral films and see whether any current abuses had occurred.
“If there is any recent case among them, those responsible will be identified and dealt with appropriately in line with the law,” he said.
ASP Jimoh warned Nigerians to refrain from disseminating unsubstantiated material online, warning that disinformation might jeopardize public trust and national security.
“We want people to understand that if you help the police, you are helping Nigeria. “Whatever you publish should be based on facts,” the official stressed.
He also urged individuals to check videos and complaints before sharing them, saying that the police were not aiming to conceal legitimate cases of malfeasance.
“We want individuals to make sure that before sending a video to another person, they double-check if it is accurate or not. There are numerous incidents that occurred 5 to 6 years ago, but we are not putting anything under the rug,” he stressed.
