Review: Chude Jideonwo’s Documentary on Police Brutality and End SARS

Chude Jideonwo’s documentary, Awaiting Trial & Nigeria’s Criminal Justice System, explores police brutality in Nigeria, that foremost thief of limb and life. And because one cannot discuss the subject without broaching the End SARS protests of October 2020, this documentary, tangentially, skids around the protests. Jideonwo frames the documentary like an inductive argument: first, he lays out the facts, and then towards the end unveils his thesis, in this case why he thinks police violence thrives in Nigeria.

Published on his YouTube page and produced by his Chude Jideonwo Presents, it is Jideonwo’s first feature-length film. But it isn’t his first time taking on a traumatic subject. His interview with the Nollywood actor Joke Silva, published late last year, turns a surgical eye towards her husband’s dementia.

Jideonwo has previously shown what is either a tendency towards tragedy or the cynical understanding that sad stories are more marketable than happy ones. “Trauma-trafficking,” as one critic I admire calls it. Although, in his interview with Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate mostly challenges conservative attitudes toward homosexuality and only briefly discusses having recently being diagnosed of cancer, Jideonwo chose to signpost Soyinka’s ailment by the way he titled the video. We spy this sensationalism in this documentary, with its click-baity subtitle, “The most evil policemen in Africa,” Jideonwo’s estimation of the Nigerian police. It’s instructive that Jideonwo released the documentary on October 21, a day after Nigerians commemorated the youths killed by the Nigerian army in what is now dubbed the Lekki Tollgate Massacre. Jideonwo, intending to stir emotions, chose a date when emotions were primed for stirring.

Anyone who stalked social media during the End SARS protests of October 2020 must have gorged on a feast of dreary facts about the Nigerian police. One tweet narrating a tragic experience with the police was quickly displaced by another with even more grim details. So the most obvious difficulty Jideonwo must have faced is this: how do you tell a story with commonplace facts in a way that is insightful and not repetitive?

An interview with a bespectacled Obianuju Iloanya opens the documentary. It takes place in a well-lit room, a counterpoint to the darkly tale with which she will soon regale us. Equally bespectacled, Jideonwo sits opposite her, his face a rictus of shock whenever Obianuju divulges a particularly grisly detail.

In November 2012, officers of the Ajali police in Anambra State arrested Obianuju’s 18-year-old brother Chijioke. He was then transferred to the Awkuzu SARS branch. There the officer in charge, CSP James Nwafor—so-called The Killer Cop—allegedly told Obianuju and her parents that “I have killed your son and there’s nothing you can do.” Nwafor proceeded to extort money from the Iloanyas. During End SARS, protesters shared Nwafor’s image online, usually with the promise of a reward for anyone who could disclose his whereabouts. 

Jideonwo interviews sisters of other victims, such as those of Okwuchukwu Onyemelue and Solomon Yellowe, both young men, both allegedly killed by officers of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad even though they were guilty of no wrongdoing. He interviews the parents of Jimoh Isiaka, whom a police officer killed as he watched from a distance a flock of End SARS protesters who had camped by the Owode police station in Ogbomoso, Oyo State. Jimoh was not part of the protesters, making his death even sadder. During the interview his parents’ faces bear a resignation, contrasting the optimism of Chijioke’s mother, who to date considers Nwafor’s deathly pronouncement as a bluff, hoping that one day her son’s voice would ring through her phone’s receiver. Both resignation and optimism are colored by sadness. This documentary makes you sad. That, however, is all it does.

None of the interviews reveal anything which one cannot find in a newspaper or in a Twitter thread. Not even those with the End SARS de facto leaders like Rinu Oduala, the online comedian Mr Macaroni, and the rapper Falz offer anything beyond platitudes. Something Falz divulges, however, gives one something to chew on. The rapper admits to feeling guilty while watching DJ Switch’s Instagram live video and seeing the Nigerian army shoot at protesters at the Lekki tollgate. This guilt, likely felt by leaders of public-spirited campaigns that end up bloody, has not gotten its due attention. It is, I reckon, a kind of survivor’s guilt. 

So did Jideonwo intend the documentary for those unfamiliar with the facts, say non-Nigerians? Even so, they would struggle to orient themselves around the narrative. For one, Jideonwo doesn’t explain the full meaning of SARS at the start of the documentary. An attempt to move beyond known facts happens toward the end of the documentary. Up until then, one thinks by “Awaiting Trial” Jideonwo is alluding to the fact that trigger-happy cops like Nwafor have yet to be brought to book. But, as we learn, it means a different thing: Jideonwo is referring to inmates in Nigerian prisons yet to have their day in court, who are awaiting trial. “Of the 8,000 inmates in Lagos, only 1,200 have been convicted,” says a woman he interviews. Jideonwo concludes that “the Awaiting Trial system is what creates the context for End SARS.” 

It is unclear what he means, his phrasing imprecise. Things become clearer when he explains his thesis: Nigerian police officers use unlawful incarceration as a way of swelling their purse—relatives of the incarcerated, impelled by familial obligation and eager to dissociate themselves from the stigma of being involved with the police, would pay anything to see their loved ones free. A reasonable argument, even if not an original one, but it doesn’t explain the callousness of certain police officers—if money is the sole object, then why do police officers like CSP James Nwafor allegedly kill young men rather than just detain them and extort money from their family members? A statement Obianuju makes explains why: “They do this because they know they can get away with it.” 

Jideonwo’s film deserves some points for documenting an important, even if hideous, aspect of Nigerian society. But it does so by rehashing known facts. The sadness it evokes, sadly, does not lead to a new understanding.