Horror of Police Brutality: A Nigerian widow’s pain mirrors victims’ agonies

The journey into the abyss

It was about two weeks after John Anozie buried his mother in Bende Local Government Area of Abia State, south-east Nigeria, and returned to Lagos to be with his wife, Nnenna Anozie, and their four children, the eldest of whom was less than nine years old at the time.

On the quiet morning of 15 June 2017, just before 8 a.m., Mr Anozie was set to drive out of their compound. As the security guard flung the gate open for him to hit the road, five armed men in mufti stormed in with their guns drawn.

“One of them glanced through his phone, as if checking the photo of his prey, and confirmed their target,” Mrs Anozie recalled.

The men, later identified as operatives of the now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigerian police, were not from Abia State. They were from the Awkuzu branch of the police unit in Anambra State, south-east Nigeria.

They dragged Mr Anozie, 43 years old at the time, out of the car and shoved him into his bedroom at gunpoint. “Anthony Obiozor Ikechukwu, the gang leader, ransacked wardrobes and drawers, seizing cash and a briefcase, which he handed to Emeana Uzochukwu,” Mrs Anozie told PREMIUM TIMES. “They also took our passports, birth certificates and other personal documents.”

When Mrs Anozie tried to call a friend to help take the children away, one of the invaders pointed a gun at her. “He ordered me to hand over my phone, or he would shoot. They collected all the phones they saw, good or bad,” she said.

Before leaving with the helpless Mr Anozie, the police officers took the family’s two SUVs away and the keys to another Infiniti Q45.

Mrs Anozie, who was in her mid-30s, recalled one of the officers as saying, “Look for someone to manage your husband’s business. Nothing in this country, neither the court nor any human being, can do anything about this matter.”

More than eight years on, that threat echoes in her mind. “I thought whatever made Uzochukwu Emeana say this must be very strange,” she said, her voice cracking. “And no wonder, nothing has been done by the police in over eight years.”

SARS, the people’s menace

SARS, which became an affliction to Nigerians, was created in 1992 to fight armed robbery and kidnapping in Lagos before expanding nationwide.

For decades, the police tactical unit was notorious for arbitrary arrests, disappearances and deaths, among other atrocities, which Nigerians endured from the unit’s personnel.

Most atrocities went unreported. Yet, Amnesty International, an international human rights organisation that monitors and documents abuses worldwide, recorded at least 82 instances of torture and extrajudicial killings by SARS between January 2017 and May 2020 in its 2020 report.

By October 2020, the unit’s cup was full, after surviving a series of previous campaigns for its proscription over the years.

The #EndSARS protest, a youth-driven mass action against police brutality, erupted across Nigerian cities. The demonstrations were triggered by a viral video showing how police officers killed a man and seized his car. The campaign, which first took hold online, spread to at least 21 of Nigeria’s 36 states, as young Nigerians demanded an end to police brutality and the disbandment of the rogue police unit.

The protest was peaceful in many places but turned violent in many others, where residents and hoodlums hid under the cover of the protest to loot and destroy public and private property.

As the protests swelled, authorities promptly heeded the call for the disbandment of SARS.

But the protesters wanted more. A #5for5 demands list credited to the leaderless protest circulated widely online. Apart from calling for the disbandment of SARS, the charter of demands also included the release of arrested demonstrators, compensation for victims, a psychological evaluation and retraining of all members of the defunct SARS unit before their redeployment to other police units, and an increase in police salaries. It also included a call for the setting up of independent panels of inquiry to investigate police atrocities with a view to punishing or prosecuting the erring police officers and compensating the victims.

The National Economic Council (NEC), comprising state governors and other top government officials, and led by the Vice President, then Yemi Osinbajo, promptly adopted the recommendation that such a panel be set up across the 36 states and Abuja.

Despite its early success in securing the proscription of SARS and the authorities’ commitment to probe police atrocities and compensate victims, the protest continued. But it ended tragically on 20 October 2020, when security forces opened fire at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, killing at least nine and injuring 48 peaceful protesters, the Lagos State judicial panel of inquiry would later find.

The toll gate attack and many cases of police brutality, most of which predated the #EndSARS protests, including Mr Anozie’s abduction and disappearance, were later relived before the panels of inquiry.

Data from the CLEEN Foundation showed that by January 2021, about 3,044 petitions were filed before #EndSARS judicial panels in 29 states and the FCT, covering cases, including extrajudicial killings, torture, unlawful detention, enforced disappearance, property seizure and extortion by SARS and other police units.

The Abuja panel contributed 295 petitions to the national figure. One of them was Mrs Anozie’s complaint, which detailed her family’s ordeal from Lagos, where her husband was abducted, to Akwuzu, where the atrocity was officialised, and Abuja, where the chase after justice has continued without end.

‘Police failed me’

The mention of Awkuzu SARS sent shivers down the spines of many. Those who went in rarely came out. The cruelty of its officers gained national notoriety.

Emmanuel and Hope Iloanya repeatedly visited the Awkuzu facility after their son, Chijioke, was arrested in 2012. Al Jazeera reported that the then head of SARS in Anambra State, James Nwafor, told the family, “Chijioke had been killed, and nothing could be done.” The family’s subsequent visits to the then police commissioner in the state, Bala Nasarawa, yielded nothing. In 2020, Mr Nwafor claimed Chijioke died during a robbery operation, a story the family rejected.

Mrs Anozie was also consumed by the stories about the inhuman activities of Awkuzu SARS.

The signs of what lay ahead came early.

“They wore no uniforms, had no identification, and acted like criminals, pointing guns at me and seizing my phone,” she said, recalling the day her husband was taken.

She only found out who they were by sheer luck of instinct. She recalled that some members of the gang entered the house, while two of them remained outside.

“Because they seized my phone, I was stranded and approached one of them outside, and he gave me his contact information. I later borrowed a phone to call him,” Mrs Anozie said. “His name is Ibe. I don’t know his other names. I followed up with him, and he told me that I should come to Awkuzu SARS.”

When she first visited the office, she recognised Mr Obiozor, who led the team that seized her husband.

According to her, Mr Obiozor demanded N5 million to allow her husband to speak to her. She refused to give in to the demand, hoping that reason would prevail. However, each time she returned, she was stopped by Sunday Okpe, then Officer-in-Charge of Anambra SARS, and never allowed to see her husband.

For weeks, Mrs Anozie expected her husband to be charged in court, but nothing happened.

Legal experts said the police are obligated to state the alleged offence of a suspect and disclose where the suspect is taken. “A suspect must be charged in court within 48 hours,” Abayomi Amupitan, a lawyer, added. Since they never arraigned him, everything done after his arrest was illegal, the lawyer said.

When SARS failed to take him to court, Ms Anozie filed a right enforcement suit at the Anambra State High Court in Ogidi, Idemili Division, on behalf of her husband.

Nearly seven weeks after Mr Anozie’s disappearance, the Anambra State High Court ordered the police on 24 July 2017 to release or charge him in court. The order was ignored.

Months later, police told the court he died in custody. Another ruling from the same court on 16 April 2018 ordered the release of his body. The police snubbed the order.

Mrs Anozie petitioned the then-Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, whose X-Squad investigation indicted two officers, Emeana and John Eze, while another suspect, “Tboy,” fled.

The police officers denied seizing any property from Mr Anozie. But a Force Headquarters investigation, which confirmed the seizure, found that the vehicles taken by the officers were likely diverted.

The police could not arrest the team leader, Mr Obiozor. Those arrested were later freed on bail, and the case went dormant.

Police investigators found withdrawals from Mr Anozie’s Zenith Bank account days after his abduction. Yet, no prosecution or restitution followed. After a series of petitions and follow-ups, Mrs Anozie believed the silence showed the police were unwilling to act or reveal the truth about her husband.

“There’s a cabal in the force,” she said, breaking into tears, “the police deliberately and maliciously failed me.”

‘It’s enough to kill me’- The torturous journey of chasing after justice

As it became clear the police would not act, Mrs Anozie petitioned the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in 2020, a move that proved to be prescient.

Months later, the #EndSARS protests swept across the country. She said the movement felt like “thousands were finally echoing the pain” her “family had carried” for years.

She contemplated joining the demonstrations but chose instead to continue “protesting through the courts and petitions,” as a mark of her “belief in the rule of law.”

Since she had reported her case to the NHRC before the protests began, her petition was referred to the judicial panel of inquiry set up by the commission in Abuja on behalf of the federal government.

Her petition was one of the 295 received by the panel.

However, her hope soon gave way to frustration.

The accused police officers – Sunday Okpe, Anthony Obiozor Ikechukwu, Emeana Uzochukwu, John Eze, and Oriole (“Tboy”) – refused to honour the panel’s repeated summonses, and the police authorities spurned the panel’s calls to facilitate their appearance.

The case was adjourned about 12 times in two years for the named police officers to appear. Mrs Anozie travelled by air to and from Lagos to Abuja each time. She also told the panel she had received threats from Mr Okpe.

Due to a lack of cooperation from the police to provide necessary information and produce the officers, the panel declared the case inconclusive.

Many petitions ended in a similar fashion.

Of the 295 petitions submitted to the panel in Abuja, only 95, roughly one-third of the cases, were concluded by the time the panel closed two years later. The rest were either withdrawn, struck out, or sent back to the NHRC for further actions, due to factors including police disobedience, as in Mr Anozie’s case.

The panel of inquiry headed by a retired Judge of the Supreme Court, Suleiman Galadima, rebuked Ogbeh Ochogwu, a deputy commissioner of police and head of the Legal Department, for disobeying directives issued in Mr Anozie’s case.

The orders issued by the panel on 4 March, 13 April, and 14 April 2022 were ignored as Mr Ochogwu neither appeared nor produced the case file.

On 25 April 2022, the panel directed Inspector-General Usman Alkali Baba to arrest and produce Mr Ochogwu, but nothing happened.

The panel held that police authorities and their officers failed to disclose Mr Anozie’s whereabouts and had not returned his seized property.

However, it said it could not reach a decision regarding Mr Anozie’s whereabouts due to the hurdles mounted on its way by the police.

It urged the NHRC to petition the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LDPC) to take disciplinary action against Mr Ochogwu. This order was not carried out, according to Mrs Anozie. PREMIUM TIMES’ enquiries from the NHRC also showed that the recommendation was not implemented.

The #EndSARS panel’s inquiry closed, but Mrs Anozie’s dogged search for justice did not.

In 2023, through Falana and Falana Chambers, she petitioned the current IGP Kayode Egbetokun. When the police failed to act, she hired another lawyer, Vincent Adodo, to invoke the Freedom of Information Act, seeking information regarding the case from the police authorities. True to form, the police ignored the request, prompting her to file a lawsuit at the Federal High Court, Abuja, to enforce her right to access information about the case. The police, although served with the suit, never showed up in court for a defence.

The court granted all her prayers in its judgement delivered on 24 September 2025.

In her ruling, Judge Binta Nyako ordered Mr Egbetokun to hand over four officers for prosecution and release the case files, including the 2023 monitoring report, 2017 X-Squad file, and legal opinion, within seven days.

It has been over three months since the judgment, yet nothing has been done. Ms Anozie told PREMIUM TIMES, “What has happened over these eight years is enough to kill me.” As she tried to describe the agony and pain of her continued search for justice, her voice faltered, and she went silent for a moment.

When she gathered herself, she said only her “quest for justice, love for her husband, and concern for her children” kept her going.

‘Justice means nothing’

But five years after #EndSARS and its fallouts, one question lingers: what has changed?

The same culture of impunity, the trigger for the protest, shadowed the judicial panels set up to bring reprieve to victims of police brutality.

Police officers ignored summonses of the panels and continued to disobey court orders. The panels in many states never concluded their probes, while others never made their reports public.

Human rights lawyer and senior legal analyst at Gavel Citizens, a law firm that provides free legal representation for victims of human rights abuses, Sylvester Agih, said the protest “achieved limited success.” Mr Agih, who represented arrested protesters and victims during the Lagos judicial panel’s hearing, rated the #EndSARS protest’s overall effectiveness at three out of 10.

Police killings during the protest and unlawful detention allegations persist after the October 2020 protest.

A 35-year-old victim, Ifeanyi Agbaeze, was left paralysed from the gunshot that hit his chest during the Lekki Toll Gate rally on the memorable 20 October 2020. Speaking with PREMIUM TIMES last October, Mr Agbaeze said he joined the protest because “police kept killing young people and continued telling the youth that nothing would happen.”

He said nothing has been done for him or many other survivors despite winning their case before the Lagos panel.

Mr Agbaeze’s father died three days after the shooting. He did not recover from the shock of learning that his son had been hit. Mr Agbaeze lost his job and can no longer utilise his skills due to the injury. More than five years on, with no compensation, he said justice in Nigeria “means nothing.”

As of April 2024, only Lagos, Osun, Ekiti, and the FCT had paid compensations to families, leaving N1.77 billion unpaid across 25 states, while 13 states had yet to submit their reports to the NHRC.

Yet, for many who received monetary compensation, justice did not come in full measure. According to Mr Agih, the lawyer at Citizens Gavel, which “prosecuted close to 13 cases before the panel and secured about N53 million for 11 individuals,” true justice requires accountability and that officers involved “should have been prosecuted.” Because they were not, “deep trauma has lingered.”

The #EndSARS panel in Abuja recommended the prosecution and dismissal of 28 police officers for their involvement in the extrajudicial killing and enforced disappearance. The NHRC confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that the panel’s recommendations for prosecution, expected to be carried out by the Attorney-General of the Federation’s office, were not implemented.

Soweto Hassan, who took part in the October 2020 #EndSARS demonstrations, told PREMIUM TIMES that “none of the core issues raised during the protest were resolved.” He said the movement achieved only “15 to 19 per cent” of its aims. If anything, he said, it only proved that young people “can challenge authority.”

He said SARS disappeared in name only, adding that illegal roadblocks, extortion and extrajudicial killings continue, trapping the country in a cycle of police abuse.

Pain, trauma without end

The injuries, common to many Nigerian families harmed by SARS, run deep for the Anozies. Mrs Anozie said she and her children remain in the firm grip of “the pain of loss without closure and the hope of waiting without answers.”

The long legal and administrative fight has drained her emotionally and financially. “I’ve spent millions of naira since the first day after the incident,” she said, citing trips to the NHRC, the panel, police offices – all in Abuja – legal fees, and payments to officers in Lagos and Anambra for over eight years.

The emotional toll has been severe.

“The demoralisation, persistent chest pain, constant headaches, shocks, and other complications have landed me in hospital several times. Millions have also gone into just keeping me alive,” she said through tears. “Each time we hear a sound at the gate, it feels like they have come again. We hardly sleep.”

Her children also carry the pain. “Sometimes they go to school and at events that involve their father, they just sit in silence watching,” she said.

Still, justice is Mrs Anozie’s focus. She told PREMIUM TIMES that the “police cannot tell me a sergeant, who said no one can do anything, is above the law.”

“If I could speak to the president or the attorney general, I would tell them to ensure these officers are arrested and prosecuted, return everything they took from my house, and tell us what happened to my husband. If they killed him, let them say it. If not, let them produce him,” she said.

Lawyers, rights groups demand action

In its 20 October 2024 statement to commemorate the October 2020 #EndSARs tragedy, Amnesty International said it still received near-daily complaints of police abuses across Nigeria.

Just four days before Amnesty International issued the memorial statement, on 16 October 2024, a Lagos man died after falling into a canal in Ipaja while fleeing from police officers who accused him of being an internet fraudster. The canal is a stormwater drainage channel near the Federal Bus Stop in the Ipaja Ayobo area. A friend said officers threatened to shoot him and “pushed him to his death”.

Mr Hassan, the activist who partook in the October 2020 protest and the October 2024 memorial rally in Lekki Toll Gate, the location of the 20 October 2020 fatal shooting by security forces, insisted impunity persists because police “remain loyal to the state and political elites.” He warned that “another large-scale protest, greater than the #EndSARS movement, is inevitable. The youth will not tolerate oppression indefinitely.”

Mr Agih agreed, saying, “There might likely be an EndSARS 2.0.” He noted that many protesters left the 20 October 2020 shooting scene “with their grievances,” vowing not to rest “until their demands were met.”

Mr Amupitan, the lawyer, condemned the violation of Mr Anozie’s rights, saying it “defies the spirit of the Nigerian constitution.” He said Mrs Anozie had fulfilled every requirement and urged President BolaTinubu to intervene.

“Officers who flout court orders must be held accountable,” he said. “This is not only about justice for one family; it affects Nigeria’s reputation. When the country fails to uphold human dignity, no other nation will respect her,” said the lawyer.

For reform, Mr Agih said the government should establish a body like the US Marshal to enforce court judgements, considering how much the Anozies have been denied justice due to the non-implementation of court decisions regarding the case.