The Republic

In October 2020, Lagos youths took to the streets in protest against police brutality with a simple demand: the dissolution of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). For years, the SARS unit has perpetuated harm against the average Nigerian youth. As a result, the protests quickly gained traction across social media, southern Nigeria, and spread to many parts of the world. In northern Nigeria however, the protests did not seem to gain as much traction with only three northern states—Kano, Kaduna, and Plateau—taking part in the protests.

On 10 October, the Arewa Youth Consultative Council, a group aimed at unifying the people of northern Nigeria (colloquially referred to as Arewa), wrote an open letter to President Buhari affirming their support for SARS. In the letter, the council labelled the demand for the dissolution of SARS as unpatriotic, reckless, and callous. They stated that SARS had been instrumental in tackling insecurity in the North and, instead, called for a structural reform of SARS. Shortly after, in other northern states like Borno, Jigawa, and Zamfara, ProSARS protests began to spring up and northern youths took to the street to express their support for the rogue police unit. On 15 October, 19 northern governors gathered for an emergency meeting and spoke against the #EndSARS protests happening in the South. They expressed that SARS had been an immense help in curbing insecurity in northern Nigeria and dissolving SARS would offer insurgents in the North more leeway to wreak havoc in the region.

This response was met with distrust from the South; many believed that the North sought to protect their collective interest and not the collective interest of the nation. The #EndSARS protests, although they began because of the brutality of the police unit, had morphed into a demand for better governance. While there were factions in the North that expressed their support for the #EndSARS protests, given the contextual factors surrounding the protests and a history of regional differences between the North and the South, many believed that the lack of support for the #EndSARS protests was driven by anti-South sentiments.

A hashtag, #SecureNorth, surfaced on social media days after the inception of the #EndSARS protests and was a call for the incessant plague of insecurity in the northern region to be addressed. For decades, the North has dealt with insecurity caused by the Boko Haram terrorist group, banditry, and ethnoreligious conflicts. While these issues are salient in the North, the timing of the #SecureNorth protest was suspicious as many believed it did not spring from a genuine intention to draw attention to the insecurity in the North but, instead, was a political tool to distract from the ongoing #EndSARS protests. On the other hand, many northerners believed that the #EndSARS protests intended to undercut President Buhari’s leadership and to install southern leadership. In the end, #SecureNorth failed to distract from the #EndSARS protests and, instead, highlighted the increasing divide between the two regions.