For days, protests have rocked cities across Nigeria. It is organised around #EndSARS, a movement that is calling for a complete ban of the so-called “anti-robbery” wing of the Nigerian Police, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS – no relation to the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2). Set up in the mid-90s to combat incidences of armed robbery, which had become rampant as a result of deepening poverty under the corrupt military regimes, SARS has since then metamorphosed into a dreaded force associated with all sorts of evils.

The world’s poorest countries are going through a vicious cycle of spiralling debt. The coronavirus epidemic has added a further heavy burden to their state coffers. These mainly raw material producing countries were already struggling to deal with the collapse in raw material prices, and this latest crisis makes the situation completely untenable, which has major implications for the advanced capitalist countries as well.