Midway into a new documentary entitled #ENDSARS, the raucous ricochet of gunfire and the grief-stricken and heart-piercing screams and wailings of harried youths enkindle the haunting memories and pathos of that gloomy Tuesday night in October 2020.
It was one day that would remain indelible in the minds of Nigerians at home and the Diaspora.
Many would recall that for 10 days in October 2020, young Nigerians took to the streets to peacefully agitate for the proscription of the Special Anti Robbery Squad, SARS, a dreaded (ostensibly now disbanded) unit of the Nigeria Police Force that had gained notoriety for its reckless and cavalier modus operandi.
The expansive ground of the Lekki tollgate was the convergence point of the protesters while a greater multitude employed every social media platform available to keep the embers of the agitation aglow.
There were other convergences across the state and beyond. And, it beggared no surprise that the wave of protests, hash-tagged #ENDSARS, gained so much traction across the world as iconic figures in politics, business and entertainment lent their voices to the demand to end police brutality in Nigeria and proscribe the SARS.
By October 20, the nationwide protests had reached a boiling point. As the nerve-centre, Lagos was understandably on tenterhooks. This, inadvertently, availed unidentified hoodlums an avenue to infiltrate the ranks of peaceful protesters, torching several police stations and public properties while sending Nigeria’s most important state into a tailspin of mindless and unfathomable destruction and instability.
The ensuing chaos and arson led to the intervention of the Nigerian Army with the unsavoury aftermath.
The foregoing is the theme of the new documentary with the eponymous title #ENDSARS by emerging documentarian and Nollywood enthusiast, Seun Oloketuyi. The documentary, which premieres August 28 on merostream.com, tees off with the history of the SARS, its founding objectives and perplexing degeneration into a dreaded, despicable and deadly police unit. It unfurls with a meticulous tick-tock of the events that preceded and crescendoed on October 20 and, you could feel from the collage of social media videos, the anger and the angst, the boisterousness and seriousness of the protesters, and the terror and tragedy of the invasion of the Nigerian Army.
One of the things this documentary does is help recall and remind us of that day that flipped the script on peaceful protests in Nigeria. How innocuous protesters became endangered species; and how the tenuous peace of Lagos State almost snapped. As far as documentaries go, #ENDSARS fulfils some of the elements of a good documentary with the subject, form, audience experience and, arguably, purpose.
But there is a sense of déjà vu that trails watching this documentary. You have seen all the videos before. In fact, if you have seen CNN’s vaunted ‘special investigative report’ into the Lekki shooting, which the global news channel gleefully termed ‘massacre’, you may not bother about this. With its global reputation of investigative journalism, the world waited with frenzied expectation when CNN announced that it was releasing the special report. However, when it aired, it fell flat in the face of robust and rigorous journalism as it turned out to be a mere aggregation of protesters’ videos like, alas, Oloketuyi’s #ENDSARS.
If you are looking for something new, a different angle to what you have seen and read about the ENDSARS protest or closure on what exactly happened that night, Oloketuyi’s #ENDSARS is not the material to go for. But, kudos to him and his team, the documentary will serve as an indubitable reminder of October 20 and the roles that some of the state actors played.
