Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.
A campaign to get the Nigerian government to shut down a notoriously corrupt police unit has evolved into the most significant protest movement in Nigeria in decades, with demonstrators across the country calling for sweeping police reforms and an end to human rights abuses by security forces. President Muhammadu Buhari has tried to quell the protesters by promising to meet their demands, even as security forces have responded with a brutal crackdown, including the use of live ammunition, killing at least 10 civilians and injuring dozens more.
The demonstrations began after a video circulated last week of a young man being beaten by police officers apparently from the feared Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS. Members of the unit are regularly accused of kidnapping and torturing civilians in order to extort bribes, and even killing victims who cannot pay them.