10 Things To Know About The Newly Reformed 'SARS

                                                                The Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, has obeyed the orders of the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo to overhaul the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).

This directives is coming months after several Nigerians, have cried and blew horns of misconduct, and criminal offences carried out by the SARS operatives.

However in response to the instructions, Here’s a list of the new changes announced by the Police:

1. The unit which will now be known as Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS). “All SARS teams nationwide have been collapsed under FSARS,”, now has a new Commissioner of Police nationwide.

2. The Commissioner is answerable to the Inspector General of Police through the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Department of Operations.

3. The FSARS, previously under the Force Criminal Intelligence and Investigations Department (FCIID), is henceforth to operate under the Department of Operations, Force Headquarters Abuja.

4. As directed by Osinbajo, the FSARS will be intelligence-driven and will be restricted to the prevention and detection of armed robbery,

kidnapping and the apprehension of offenders linked to the stated offences only.

5. New FSARS Commanders will be appointed across the country and operate in the State and Zonal Commands under the Commissioner of Police (F-SARS) at the Force Headquarters, Abuja.

6. A Federal SARS Commander of a Rank of Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) but not below Superintendent of Police (SP) will be in charge of FSARS in State and Zonal Commands across the Country.

7. There will be Human Rights Desk Officers for FSARS in every State to take complaints from the public and forward same to Force Headquarters, the officer will be answerable to the Commissioner of Police (FSARS) at the Force Headquarters and not Commander FSARS in the States.

8. Medical/psychological evaluation of all FSARS personnel will be carried out immediately.

9. Redesigning of new uniform with identity name tags for all FSARS personnel throughout the country will be done immediately.

10. FSARS personnel will not perform Stop and Search duties except on distress call to respond to armed robbery and kidnapping offences only.

Under the reviewed arrangement, many of the measures that were announced last year, December 2017, were also announced again in Tuesday’s statement.

The only new directives that were not explicitly announced in December but on Tuesday are numbers 4, 7, 8 and 9.