By Yetunde Bada
More people and voices are calling out to the Nigerian government to scrap a department of the police which has reportedly wreaked havoc and brought tears on the people it set out to protect.
The #EndSARS campaign means an abolition of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad department of the Nigeria Police and it began as a twitter campaign over two years ago.
The twitter campaign gained notoriety recently when a student, an onlooker, was killed by the police on the sidelines of a protest against SARS brutality on the people and when two men were dragged outside of a hotel and one of them shot dead in plain sight.
The Canada solidarity protest began at 2:00pm in Vancouver with the rendering of the Nigerian national anthem. Afterwards, the people marched amid chants and calls for better action by the Nigerian government.
The Nigerian government, in response to the protests last week, scrapped the SARS department and replaced it with SWAT but Nigerians allege that it was the same players in different jerseys and called for a total scrap, overhaul and reform of the entire police.
A participant at the protest spoke with CFUV 101.9 FM in Victoria: ``I went to Vancouver to take part in that protest because it is time to liberate Nigeria from police brutality. The unrest has been a long time coming.
``We are known to be a resilient people worldwide, but it has come to the point where extra-judicial killings, unnecessary murders by the police has got to stop. They are there to serve, not maim and kill because they carry guns.
``While we were on the issue of police brutality, we also called on the leaders to sit up and wage a true war against corruption, over-bloated legislative salaries, insecurity, vast unemployment and the needless loss of lives of precious Nigerians,’’ he said.
The campaign has recoded over 30 deaths including 2 policemen as the youth are not letting up on a long-overdue fight.
Aside Vancouver, there have been solidarity protests in Victoria, Toronto while other provinces have picked different dates to join the movement.
Protests have also broken out in the UK, America, Germany, Russia among other countries. Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey, Nigerian celebrities Davido, Naira Marley, Whizkid, their US counterpart Kanye West and footballers Mesut Ozil have also backed the protests.