The protest started shortly after the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, announced the dissolution of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad.
A good number of young anti-SARS protesters on Sunday stormed the Nigeria House in New York with the demand for transparency in the disbandment of the police unit in Nigeria.
The protesters said operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad found wanting should be sacked and not redeployed.
The protest started shortly after the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, announced the dissolution of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad.
But the protesters, who bore placards with different inscriptions including, “We no want audio ban”, said they were not buying it.
They argued that previous commitments announced by the force to change the behaviour of SARS operatives and other personnel had no effect.
One of the protest organizers, Miss Omobolanle Adams said: “We are not buying that because they told us in 2017 that SARS had been banned from a lot of things, but they continued.
“We don’t want back-door politics; we don’t want back-door negotiations.
“We want President Muhammadu Buhari to speak directly to us. We want justice for people that were murdered, raped, and assaulted.
“We want the SARS operatives responsible brought to book and at the end of the day; we don’t want them redeployed to other units. We want them gone.”
Recall that on Friday, the president in a series of tweets assured Nigerians of his determination to end police brutality and bring “erring personnel to justice”.
Buhari said his administration’s “determination to reform the police should never be in doubt”, and sued for calm.
Meanwhile another leader of the protest, Peter Johnson, reiterated that the reported dissolution was not transparent.
He said: “They gave us a very generic message. I, personally, feel like we need to see actual results.
“We need to see a plan of where the operatives are going, because people are still going to die,” he said.
Addressing other protesters, the 23 year old ‘Papi’ Ojo(the artist, model, and choreographer who stole the show as the ‘blue-guy’ in Beyoncé’s “Already” music video) said he relocated to the US at the age of 11, and was afraid to visit home because he had lost two uncles to SARS.
“As I speak, I am still afraid, but I can’t keep living in fear anymore because I have relations back home calling me to help.
“So, I am begging everyone here that is afraid like me to stand up and help in whatever way we can to effect the desired change back home,” he said.
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