When Nigerian student Yele Bademosi completed his Bachelor of Medical Sciences degree programme in the UK in 2013, he had many options, including not to return to his native country, Nigeria. Just three years earlier, in 2010, a report by Network on Police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN) had revealed that hundreds of Nigerians had been murdered by the Nigerian Police Force, in extra-judicial circumstances.
It is now more than 6 years down the line and Bademosi looks relatively successful in Nigeria but not happy.
“[In] October 2019, I got kidnapped by SARS,” he opened up, in a series of tweets, referring to Nigeria’s infamous Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a Nigerian Police Force unit under the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department headed by a Deputy Inspector General of Police.
Apart from being the co-founder and chief executive officer of Microtraction, a venture capital firm that invests $25,000 for a 7% stake in Africa-focused startup companies, Bademosi also runs Bundle, a social payments startup for cash or cryptocurrency.
“I was less than 2 mins from my home,” he said. “They refused to listen to anything I said and took me from Lekki, to Ajah then all the way to Ikoyi, whilst stopping and harassing other young adults, I’m not sure how many cars they stopped and robbed.”
Bademosi said he was forced to withdraw from his US bank accounts on noticing he didn’t have enough funds in his Nigerian bank accounts.
“They forced me to open my US bank accounts and said I should transfer USD from my Bank of America account to my GTB,” he said. “I cried and prayed because I didn’t know what to do and couldn’t understand why and how this was happening. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life. I couldn’t call anyone, no one knew where I was, and if they harmed or killed me, there was nothing that would have happened to them. It didn’t matter what I had done, or who I was, all they saw was a young man and they were hell-bent on taking as much (as) they could from.”
A Story That Cuts Across
For the past three days, Nigerians, a majority of whom are young people, have been on the streets of the country’s major cities protesting more of this brutality by the police and demanding the total scrapping of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit.
“Ending SARS is important for the Nigerian tech industry,” tweets Mark Essien, CEO and co-founder of Hotels.ng, a leading hospitality startup in Nigeria and one of the many startups in the country hugely affected by the police’s abuse of power.
“Your coders and other techies are disproportionately affected,” he says. “It is in your businesses best interest to get SARS stopped. Staying neutral is the same as supporting what’s happening right now.”
Joining Essien in the call is a host of other startups, including their employees and many other lone voices.
“For several months,” states Paystack, a leading payment startup in Nigeria, “several members of our team suffered experiences which can only be described as horrific.”
A gruesome photo shared by one Egbewunmi Mayowa, a Senior Software Engineer at Interwitch, Africa’s second startup company to achieve one billion dollar valuation captured the horror vividly. In the picture, Mayowa’s skin appears deeply cut into, peeled off and permanently charred, a memory he would carry with him for a very long time.
“SARS did this to me!” He says. “My only sin was carrying a laptop bag. I am just one of the few people privileged to be alive #EndSarsNow #EndPoliceBrutality ”
Re-echoing Mayowa’s plight is Yinka ‘Wuyi, an on-air personality based in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve center, where most of the VC investments in Nigeria happen.
“It was at least 20 mins past the curfew time when Mr AKS 2 started reading through my texts — randomly asking me about my relationship with different contacts,” he says. “When satisfied, he switched to my photos and scrolled as far back as 2018. The whole time, Mr AKS 2 kept adjusting and re-adjusting the placement of the gun hung around his neck…They demanded 50k to let us all go, even after recounting our story.”
Targeting Investors Too
The ordeals extend beyond young people, startups or their employees to even investors in Nigeria. According to Aubrey Hruby, an Africa-focused investor and Partner at Baylis Emerging Markets as well as Co-Founder of the Africa Expert Network, it was a nightmare when she brought some venture capitalists from Egypt to Nigeria in 2019.
“It is high time,” she says, “…they were completely shaken down and robbed by the police as they were leaving the country after an amazing week of meeting with stellar Nigerian entrepreneurs.”
Nigerian startups police brutality Nigerian startups police brutality. Nigerian startups police brutality.
A Massive Support From The Nigerian Startup Community
As the protests rage on, Nigerian startups are increasingly playing active roles, largely in support of their workforce and customers, a majority of whom are young people.
“Startups have coughed out almost N10m to support #EndSarsProtests in 30 hours,” says Oreoluwa Shonibare, co-founder, Wii CREATE, a Lagos-based content creation startup. “Not just tweets, but an active costly support. That’s showing they care. Almost none have (sic) 1,000,000 active users on their products. Nigerian banks have 10m+ (+40% youths) users and still NO TWEET.”
Flutterwave is one such startup company that is going as far as fundraising.
“So many of us are affected by this injustice,” says Olugbenga Agboola, CEO and co-founder of the cross-border payment startup. “Flutterwave staff have also been victims of the brutality of SARS, so we started an internal fund so we can help victims of SARS and support protesters.”
So far, the startup has raised more than ₦8m ($20.8k).
A New Chapter?
With the protests persisting and government promising reforms, the country’s startup ecosystem, filled with young people, is on the frontline, and is severely threatened if no tangible reforms as demanded by the protesters are implemented.
Amnesty International says government’s promise to just reform without scrapping the notorious SARS unit is no longer sustainable.
“2015 — SARS will be reformed; 2016 — SARS will be restructured; 2017 — SARS will be reorganized; 2018 — SARS will be reformed; 2019 — SARS will be disbanded; 2020 — SARS brutalize Nigerians more,” the organisation notes in a tweet.
According to the most recent report from the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, between 2014 and 2019, Nigeria accounted for 14% of all total VC funding deals done in Africa, just behind Kenya (at 18%) and South Africa (at 21%). Nigeria also houses Africa’s most valuable startup ecosystem — Lagos — which according to Startup Genome, in its Report, was worth $2 billion as of 2017.
Whatever happens in the coming days will not only shape the future of a lot of the country’s youth population, but will also open a new chapter for its nascent startup ecosystem which employs a substantial amount of Nigeria’s young people.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer