Police Officer Murdered In Delta #EndSARS Protest

A police Corporal, simply identified as Stanley, attached to the Ughelli Police Area Command, Ughelli, Delta State, was on Thursday shot dead by suspected hoodlums, who hijacked the #EndSARS protest, which began peacefully in the town.

The deceased was reportedly shot by one of the protesters at Otuvwodo area of the town.

Sources said that the incident also caused gridlock and the destruction of several vehicles as commuters on the East-West Road area of Otovwodo junction ran helter-skelter following gunshots that followed the melee.

Security operatives had to fire warning shots before taking the corpse of to the policeman to the station.

Hundreds of youths had earlier taken to major streets of Ughelli in a solidarity protest to call for the scrapping of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigeria Police Force.

It was gathered that some of the protesters met a team of policemen at Otovwodo junction, where the protest walk was supposed to end, and a clash ensued leading to sporadic gunfire between them and the police.

Speaking on behalf of the protesters, one of their leaders, who gave his name simply as Ochuko, said they organised the march in solidarity with other protesters and victims of SARS brutality across the country.

Efforts by one of our correspondents to confirm the incident from the Police Public Relations Officer in the state, DSP Onome Onovwakpoyeya, were unsuccessful as of the time of filing this report.

In Lagos, hundreds of residents, including celebrities, Folarin Falana, aka Falz, and Douglas Agu, aka, Runtown, took to the street on Thursday to demand the scrapping of SARS.

The demonstration, which started around 10.10am, saw the protesters converging on the Lekki tollgate area of the Lekki-Epe Expressway, from where they marched to the Zone 2 Command headquarters in Onikan.

Falana, who rejected the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu’s reform of the operations of SARS, demanded that the unit should be scrapped.

He said, “I am in the protest to express what we are fighting for, which is #EndSARS. We do not want the Special Anti-Robbery Squad anymore; they have been killing us, killing innocent victims, harassing us, violating us every day; so, we need them to be completely abolished.

“We are not asking for reform; we have heard several stories when they said they were not allowed to do routine searches anymore, but they are still doing it, they are still harassing innocent citizens and people are losing their lives.

“We are submitting a petition signed by all of us and addressed to the IG, through the AIG, and all our intentions are expressed in there. We want SARS completely abolished; we don’t reform; we don’t want them to change what they are allowed to do or not to do.”

Another protester, Akintunde Blaise, said SARS men had made looking good a criminal offence, adding that the protest was to demand their freedom.

The spokesperson for the Zone 2 Command, Hauwa Idris, said, “The command knows why they came; they came on the issue of #EndSARS; most of their outcry was that we are in the office and don’t know what SARS men do out there and we should try as much as possible to know what they are doing. But the Deputy Commissioner of Police, admin, Adegoke Fayoade, on behalf of the AIG addressed the protesters.”