Pandemonium was the order of the day in Abuja on Friday as police operatives fired tons of tear gas at #EndSARS protesters to dislodge them from major roads in the metropolis.
The protest was in continuation of the Thursday’s action where they laid siege on the Force Headquarters to demand for disbandment of the Special Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS) in police unit.
There had been outrage across Nigeria over alleged brutality, extortion, illegal detention and harassment of young Nigerians for some days.
Many had called for its scrapping, saying it has caused more harm than good with the social media campaign #ENDSARS and #WarAgainstSARS trending for days.
In Abuja on Friday, shots were fired as the protesters scampered for safety.
There however has not been any recorded fatality over the incident.
The activity also caused a major disruption of vehicular traffic in the Central Area of Abuja.
Leader of the #RevoltionNow movement, Omoyele Sowore, who is also part of the #ENDSARS campaign, tweeted they had managed to secure the release of some of the protesters, arrested, at the Maitama police station.
Some of the protesters, who spoke with The Nation, said they had barely kicked of the exercise when armed policemen came down on them.
“We were just starting. In fact we hadn’t even kicked off properly because as we were still trying to take out our placards, they descended on us beating us up, putting tear gas in our eyes and shooting sporadically.
‘’They could easily have killed people today. They even arrested some of our members. This is the same attitude that has provoked this protest and we will not rest until something definite is done about it.”
Another protester said: “We had barely started the protest than they came and shot tear gas at us and then started shooting. We had to run for our lives.
‘’I could not even see where I was going because my eyes were stinging. I am grateful I did not run into any danger. My eyes still hurt even till now.”