Veteran actor, Jide Kosoko, says Endsars protesters had made their points after the third day of the two week long protesting advocating for the disbandment of the “notorious” Police unit, SARS.
End SARS is a decentralised social movement, and series of mass protests against police brutality in Nigeria. The slogan calls for the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a notorious unit of the Nigerian Police with a long record of abuses.
The protests which takes its name from the slogan started in 2017 as a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #EndSARS to demand the disbanding of the unit by the Nigerian government.
In a recent interview with PREMIUMTIMES, the Actor said, “I want to advise our youths, look at that beautiful EndSars rally, I was so happy about it at the beginning but after the third day, I was no longer comfortable. Because they had made their point after the third day, and because they had started extending it to other things; I knew from experience that it wasn’t going to end well. The assignment given to Special Anti-Robbery Squad was a responsible assignment but the people responsible for the assignment failed to do it. Thus government needs to retrain them, there should be aptitude tests for people enlisting in the military and paramilitary.
The actor also said he has no regrets campaigning for President Muhammed Buhari in 2015. During the interview with PREMIUMTIMES, he said although he is disappointed in some of the actions of President Buhari but he can’t say the President is totally bad.
“So many things are responsible for the situation we find ourselves. I can’t speak for the government but I can’t say Buhari (government) is totally bad. I’ve never said so, and I may not say so, but I am disappointed in some of his actions.
Buhari knows that discipline is his watchword, I wanted to believe him then, but he should know that in getting a corrupt-free society you would face quite a lot of antagonism. It’s just like a dog eating bone and you want to collect the bone, it would be a tug of war. I believe him and personally, Buhari is not corrupt, but so many things are still going on. This means that prompt action must be taken to ensure that those things stop.
On whether he has any regrets campaigning for Buhari, “No I can never. I will ask you and ask all the Nigerian youths going up and coming down saying different things. Let them show us who to follow, do you know who will do well, do you know? You don’t know.
